The Bill Simmons Podcast - NBA Optimism Alert!!! Plus: MJ vs. Tyson, Quarantine 'PTI,' 'The Wire,' and Post-Virus Social Un-Distancing With Tony Kornheiser and Van Lathan | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons shares his thoughts about Adam Silver’s meeting with the board of governors which seems to garnered "positive feelings" (2:28), before he's joined by ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser to discuss Tony’s mortal enemy, modern technology, continuing 'Pardon the Interruption' during the pandemic, and all-time captivating athletes including Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Bobby Orr, Secretariat, and more (16:53). Then Bill talks with The Ringer’s Van Lathan about his rewatch of HBO’s ‘The Wire,' quarantine thoughts, COVID-19’s impact on Louisiana, ESPN’s ‘The Last Dance,’ and more (1:04:35). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's episode of the BS podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by zip recruiter. If you've been wondering what athletes, some of our favorites have been doing on their hiatus, you're not alone because I've been wondering too. I can't wait to see if Steph Curry is now shooting in the low sixties and golf. While some people in businesses are branching out during this time, there are places that are doing what they've always done. Like our presenting sponsor zip recruiter throughout all this, their mission has remained the same. They're still helping people find jobs and help growing companies hire for their teams. They're doing it by bringing together candidates who need employment and employers looking

for great candidates. ZipRecruiter committed to helping our workforce stay strong. Let's work together. ZipRecruiter.com slash work together. We're also brought to you by World Central Kitchen, where we've been helping them raise money. They're doing some awesome stuff, bringing food to the heroes on the front lines all over the country, as well as trying to keep local restaurants in business. And if you care about that stuff, I would highly recommend new episode of the Dave

Chang show. You might've heard of Dave Chang. He's been on here a few times. He has an awesome podcast. Him and Christine called up former world bank president and epidemiology, epidemiology. Boy, that's another word I can't say. Epidemiology expert, Jim, to discuss the science-based methods for the United States to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Changshuo's doing a lot of good stuff about what's going on these last few months. Coming up, we're going to talk to my old friend, Tony Kornheiser, about everything with this Jordan doc, how they're doing PTI during the pandemic and everything else. And then Van Lathan, who's hosting The Wire way down on the whole Great Ringer podcast, by the way.

We're going to talk about why The Wire is so sustainable 15 years later as an entertainment source. And then a lot of quarantine stuff, especially stuff going on in Louisiana where Van's from. So that's it. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, I'm taping the beginning of this podcast at 7.15 Pacific time on the West Coast, Tuesday night. We'd actually finished the podcast, Tony Kornheiser and Van Lathan coming up, but a lot of basketball stuff happened over the last couple hours. Wanted to talk about it really quickly. Some information came out about Monday and Tuesday. I was very pessimistic, as we discussed on Sunday Night's podcast,

that we were going to have momentum to continue this season because a few things were happening. One, there were three different camps with the owners. You had the owners who thought, hey, let's bring this back. What are we doing? We can play in our own arenas. You had the owners saying, let's bring this back. What are we doing? We can play in our own arenas. You had the owners saying, let's not come back at all. This isn't worth it. And then you had owners in the middle trying to figure out this bubble strategy. So you had that. You had Adam

Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, who for the last six years hasn't really taken a loss. He is somebody that likes to listen to everybody, to take consensus, to really make smart decisions and to make as many people happy as possible, which is one of the reasons why he's been such a beloved commissioner. This was turning into a situation where whatever decision he made, nobody was going to be happy. If they came back before all the other leagues, it would look like maybe president Trump, you know, and some owners kind of pushed him into coming back before it was safe. If he didn't come back at all and other sports are coming back, like not just UFC, but, uh, major league baseball and the MLS and, um, anybody else that comes back before the NBA, then it would look

like he was not being strong enough. So I think he was in a tough spot for a lot of reasons, trying to balance a lot of competing agendas. And then the third piece of this was the NBA Players Association, which until recently hadn't really been vocal. And once Michelle Roberts got involved a little vocally last week, that's when I really got worried because now it's just so many competing agendas, what's going to happen. And what needed to happen is basically what happened on Monday

and what we'd kind of been waiting for. This is a league that is run by superstars. That's been the case since the 1960s. And at some point, the best players in the league are going to have to band together and either push one way or the other. They're going to either have to push for, this isn't safe.

Stop talking about this. It's not right for us to come back. Or, hey, let's really try to get this going. If we're running out of time, we have to exhaust all our options and we try to get this going. If we're running out of time, we have to exhaust all our options and we got to figure this out. So Chris Haynes at Yahoo reported that on Monday, there was a call arranged by Chris Paul.

And the people on that call were LeBron James, Chris Paul, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Giannis, Kawhi, Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, Russell Westbrook. So you have on that phone call, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 of the most important players in the league. It's interesting who's not on that phone call. So you don't have James Harden or Paul George, but they all have teammates that are on the phone call.

You don't have Nikola Jokic or Jimmy Butler, and they're the two best players on playoff teams. So whatever system that comes out of this, it would have to be 14 or 16 playoff teams, whatever they decided, 12, who knows. There were no Celtics, Raptors, Jazz, or Sixers players. So you have six of the 12 playoff teams, don't have anyone on the call. I'm actually okay with it though. I think this is, they're getting this together quickly. These are 10 of the most impactful guys in the league.

So it reminded me, much different stakes, obviously, of what happened in 1964, the all-star game in Boston. And not just because I wanted to bring Boston up here. You had the best players in the league who were frustrated for a variety of reasons, low wages, too much traveling, lack of a pension plan. And they've just kind of had it. And they finally tell the commissioner two hours before the All-Star game that they're not playing without some sort of pension agreement in place. ABC is televised in that game. They have a new TV contract that is coming potentially from ABC.

But if this All-Star game falls through, now it might not happen. You had basically all the best guys from the first 20 years there. Will, Russell, West, Oscar, Baylor. And then you have Jerry Lucas is there, John Havlicek, Tom Heinsohn, Lenny Wilkins, Sam Jones, Hal Greer. You have Red Auerbach coaching. You had a guy named Larry Fleischer who's advising the players in the locker room, who's a powerful lawyer who became basically their first big advocate.

And they end up, they take a vote in the locker room. David Halberstam, when he wrote about this in Breaks of the Game, he said there were two movements. One was a movement who wanted to strike the game that was led by Heinz and Russell and Wilkins. And then a couple other stars wanted to play and negotiate later, including Will Chamberlain. And it turned when the Lakers owner, Bob Short, sent a message down to the locker room

ordering West and Baylor to get dressed and get their asses out on the court, which made everyone mad. They said, screw it, we're not playing. And they end up on the fly. The commissioner agrees, all right, all right, if you play, we'll recognize your union. Since then, this has happened over and over again with the league where we've had these

moments where the best players had to band together in some way. You saw it happen, the 99 lockout when it really seemed like that season was going to get canceled. Eventually they all figured it out at a table. There's a legendary story about Charles Oakley slapping Charles Barkley, but this is a player driven league. There's only basically 12 guys on a table. There's a legendary story about Charles Oakley slapping Charles Barkley. But this is a player-driven league. There's only basically 12 guys on a team. They really have 15, but 12 suit up. At any given time, there's only 15 or 16 really, truly relevant, impactful guys. And I think we might remember this as a real moment in history where, again, the guys are Chris Paul, LeBron, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Giannis Kawhi, Steph Curry, Damian Lillard, and Russ Westbrook. They all, by the end of the call, they're all in agreement, according to Chris Haynes,

quote, take the court with proper safety measures once the league is given the green light to commence. Now, the most interesting guy in that call is Lillard because he's not going to make the playoffs. So, all right, well, why is he in there? Because even if you're not in the playoff picture, as Chris Haynes points out, quote, there's concern a canceled season could negatively affect this next CBA. So really this isn't just about the playoff teams and about LeBron trying to win the next title and all that stuff. This goes, you know, a little deeper.

This is about our financial situation will never be the same if we miss a season. The CBA will not recover, it will bounce back. So, you know, I don't think there's any way this season happens if the best players in the league were against it. I think it's a positive sign that the best players were for it. Okay.

Now next, Wojnarowski, our guy Woj at ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski. So he tweets, attendees left board of governors call with Adam Silver today, feeling positive about momentum toward an NBA return to play this season. Discussion included how league players will need to get comfortable with some positive tests for virus,

not shutting down a resumption that has been one. There's been two big sticking points that I've heard over and over again with this. One was that Adam silver, some of the owners just didn't feel comfortable with a potential PR hit that the league would take if they do this whole bubble system and they're just burning through tests,

tests that other people in this country are going to need, especially if there's a second wave of the virus coming. I think they were very wary of the outside world looking at them and being like, you guys, why are you playing? You guys are being greedy. You're only doing this for the money. You're burning through these tests and they could be going to a better cause. So that's in the air and that's something they were concerned about. The second piece of that, again, from that tweet, discussion included how league players will need to get comfortable with some positive test for virus not shutting down or resumption. This has been the other sticking point. What

happens if we have another Gobert situation? What happens if the Bucs are leading the Raptors 2-1 and heading into game four of a playoff series and somebody who starts for the Raptors 2-1 and heading into game four of a playoff series. And somebody who starts for the Raptors comes down with Corona. Do you shut the whole thing down? Do you panic? What do you do? And I think they're trying to wrap their heads around right now. Hey, we might have a couple tests here. No matter how well we do this bubble system, you just never know. It might be somebody who is asymptomatic. It might be somebody who had it in them and now it comes out because everybody's been playing basketball for a month.

Who knows? You just don't know. So what do we do if that happens? And it seems like from at least that tweet, and I haven't talked to enough people about this yet, but it seems from at least that tweet that they're starting to wrap their heads around it. Hey, we might have a couple of positive tests.

Is that the end of the world? Is that if somebody who's in his 20s or early 30s who's in prime physical shape gets this, how long would that knock him out for? Could he be out two weeks? Would that knock him out for the rest of the year? What if he doesn't pass along to anybody else? At least they're having this discussion now. And if they end up not coming back, the thing that worried me

and what I talked about on Sunday is it didn't feel like they were actually having the practical discussions of, okay, what happens if this happens? What happens if that happens? So you have that. Here's the second thing that made me more optimistic than I've been in a couple of weeks.

This is another Woj tweet. Silver used the term campus environment when referencing what's been called a bubble. All right, think about that. That means there's been real thought put into this because the bubble, the quarantine bubble, it all makes it sound like these guys are in basically an outdoor pseudo prison. You can't go anywhere. I'm in a bubble. You say campus, it's a little friendlier, right? Campus is the word that ESPN uses. Come to our ESPN campus. Well, guess what it is? It's a bunch of buildings in the middle of Connecticut. Facebook, same thing. Hey, the Facebook campus, it's really great.

Apple, come to our Apple campus. Campus seems happy. Campus is like, oh, I'm on my college campus. It just seems like a big place that has a bunch of things in it that you'd want to be. So very subtle, but very informative that they're now not saying the word bubble. They want to say campus, campus environment makes it seem happier, makes it seem like

people aren't trapped. The reality is people are going to be trapped if they do this correctly. Once you're in, you're not leaving. Once everybody's in, nobody else comes in and that's how they're going to have to do it. That's the best way to do it. That's what they've been talking about for the last six, seven weeks. As we keep talking about in this podcast, the other part of that tweet,

Woj said, quote, call included significant detail on how other pro sports leagues here and abroad are working toward their returns. This is key because I think they were kind of doing the wait and see thing. And now you have the Bundesliga is coming back. Seems like MLS might come back. You just had the UFC last week. So we have things moving. Who knows with baseball?

Who knows if they'll get their shit together in time? So that's good. And then Sham said, Sham Sarania, there's a sense, his words, that players in the NBA both want to finish the 2018-20 season and inform reps of the players listed below, serving on a new committee working with the league on potential plans. And that committee includes Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook's on it, Jason Tatum, Dwight Powell, and Kyle Lowry, actually.

So there are Raptors and Celtics involved at some point, which makes sense because they would be top five seed. So I think all of this is really positive. And what really scared me, and I talked about it on Sunday's pod, was that we didn't seem like we had any momentum. It was just a lot of people staring at each other, waiting for someone to make a move.

And they ended up having to be the players. And I don't know, I'm sure we'll get more information over the next coming days who really pushed for this. I still don't know who were in the different camps with the owners. I have a couple ideas, but I think like anything else, and we see this like in times of crisis in the NBA, you end up having four or five big owners and somewhere between five to 10 players. And that's who ends up driving this. You look at somebody like LeBron, he knows he's running out of time,

just in career-wise. He's been in the league since 2003. If he's not the oldest player, he's one of the three oldest players. He doesn't have a lot of chances left here as a title. If he feels comfortable with this whole campus setup, we'll call it, he's going to push to play. And all these guys are, not to mention the CBA and the financial impact. So I think this was really encouraging. And it's funny. I was talking to somebody this morning and I was saying how, how, uh, how dismayed I was.

Cause I just didn't seem like I thought it just felt like they were running out of time. It's May 12th. We're headed toward May 15th. And for this to get going realistically, we'd have to get going in the beginning of July. I think they understand that, uh, intuitively. So the fact that we have real momentum is positive. I wanted to get my thoughts on the record. I am pessimistic. Bill is gone. Optimistic Bill is back. All right, let's bring in my friend Kornheiser.

All right, Tony Kornheiser is here. We just came off a traumatic 13-minute episode of trying to get him on Zoom, which failed. So now he's on audio and Zoom. You know, you're advertised as a's, he's on audio and zoom. I, you know, you're advertised as a guy who doesn't like technology and flying. And I just found out firsthand, you really don't like technology. You really don't. No, I would, I, I would like to use the word hate and loathe. I'd like it times 300,000. I don't like any of these things. I was on a call last night with about 15 friends in high school. My wife can get on zoom occasionally. She couldn't get on your zoom

because it just, she just couldn't get on it. But I was on this call last night with about 15 high school friends. And, you know, I liked seeing them in the little boxes. I didn't like the fact that only one person could talk at a time. And it was, to be honest, it was creepy. It was creepy. I felt like a voyeur and I didn't enjoy it, even though I was so happy to see them all physically. I would have been happy just to look at them and not have to join in on any level. You assured me this would be easy. It not only wasn't easy, it was traumatizing. I'm three hours later than you in the East. My day, I'll never get this day back. I'll never get it back. I love you. I'm happy to talk to you, but I hate all notions of Zoom or all of

these things that enable people of a certain age to interact in a certain way. I am past the line. I'm past the line. I'm in the outback. Everybody else is in the city. I'm in the outback. I don't want to do it. I thought you were at least technologically savvy enough to be able to press control C and copy the link into a Google browser. But when I told you, you should do that. You reacted like I was asking you to donate a kidney. No, I can't. I can barely do self-serve gas. No, I can't do control C or control alt or any of that stuff. I can't. And you are the only person who even asks me to do it. Most people have pity on me and they just let me be. That's all. All right. So I'm on a telephone. I'm comfortable on a

telephone. Yeah. We, we figured out how to do an audio zoom with you, which I, I it's, it's working. So I'm not unhappy about it. It's really nice to talk to you. I don't understand how you have pulled off doing PTI because you're doing that from a location. Wilbon's in another location, split screen. That's right. Even that, I felt like the odds of them successfully pulling that off with you were like 100 to 1. Okay, so let me explain exactly how it works. I am in my attic.

You see a small background behind me as I try to sell my most recent book back for more cash and then put Carol's paintings on the wall, my wife's paintings on the wall, in case anybody wants to buy them. Some of them are really quite nice. And I said, you need to send somebody over here every single day. And they said, why? And I said, because if anything goes wrong, and when I say anything, I mean anything goes wrong, I am incapable of fixing it. Are you not going to be able to walk me through it? I'm not going to even listen to you. I'm going to say to you, send somebody over here. So they send somebody over every single day. And that's the only reason that it works. We've done it about, I don't know,

30, 40 times. And three or or four times it has not worked. And there would have been no show. It's pretty simple. I know what my skill set is and my skills. I don't go to the Home Depot. I don't go to Target. I don't go to these places and pick stuff out. I don't do it myself.

I don't know how to do that. My only skill set is talking and some would say you're not very good at that, but I have no mechanical skills. This is a true story that I'm going to tell you. When I was in junior high school in New York State before you were born, there was a series of tests called the Kuder, K-U-D-E-R, preference tests. And they were designed to test your aptitude in a variety of formats. There were five or six tests. And on the tests that were sort of academically oriented, I was 99th percentile. And on the one test that was mechanical ability, I got an 11. And on spatial relations, I got a 14. And I've remembered this for 60 years because I cannot do those things.

And this was God saying to me, you know, the best you'll ever do is type. Learn how to type, get a career as a sports writer. I don't understand how you even sent in stories for the Washington post and whoever else you're writing for. How did they even get them? Dictation. I could call up somebody, get a live person dictate. So down the road, they had these, these things that spun the copy around and they always had people who operated them. I think they were technically called copy spinners. Uh, and, and then however it got in, however it got to the office, it got to the office and I got out of the way. It's like, it's like basically traveling with a seeing eye dog. That's what I've had to do. Simple. Your worst fear with PTI

really for the last 20 years is that our friend Wilbon would finally figure out a way to never have to do the show where you were in the same room. And now he's gotten his way. Not the way he wanted, obviously, but he's finally... It took him almost

20 years to get here, and now you're on the split screen with him. And that's just your destiny now. This makes me, you know, look, I love Mike. I love doing the show. I'm so grateful. So many people are out of work and I feel badly for them. I have my work.

I'm very grateful for that because it gives me something to do. But this is a relationship show built on sight, built on looking at the other person, interrupting the other person because there's no delay. You just look at the person, you go, what are you talking about? And that's what we did for a long period of time. Mike loves to be away, loves to be on the road, always tells me, you know, my friends text me all the time,

it's better when I'm on the road. And I go, your friends are lying to you. It's not better when I'm on the road. And I go, your friends are lying to you. It's not better when you're on the road. But now this is it. This is it for the rest of time. Split screen with a delay, with a full second to a second and a half delay that I guess the people in Bristol are able to cut through that. You know, I mean, we do it early enough in the day so they can play with the video,

but it's, it's, it's not, it's a fine show. It represents a certain degree of normalcy. I think people are grateful to have us on, even though we're folded into sports center and we are not our own entity. We're still doing about 20 minutes worth of content, but it's, it's not, it's not the same show. I'm happy if people like it, but you know, cause you've done the show. I always insist if there's going to be somebody doing a show, you have to do it with me. You have to sit with me. I, when, when Levitar did it, we used to make Levitar come up from Miami. If you're going to be with me, you were always with me, Bill. You, that's what I want. I want that relationship

show. Well, remember when I started hosting it more in 2011, 2012, and I basically told them I wasn't doing it anymore unless I was in the room with you because I hated being in the closet. I called it the closet. I'd be in this closet. I'd have an earpiece on. You were on a second delay. I'd be staring there. I would have to start laughing at your joke before you finished the joke because so it would match up with the delay. I was like, this is ridiculous. I'm supposed to have energy. I'm in, I'm in this empty room. It's, I don't feel like I'm doing television. I just don't like this. And I stopped doing it. No, it's, it's no good. The delay, the entire purpose of the show is in the title. Pardon the interruption. He can't interrupt on delay. It doesn't work.

I hope it's good, but it's not the optimum circumstance. It's just not. So yeah, what are you gonna do? Kenan, we, I want to talk about the Michael Jordan documentary with you. Sure. You were one of the many old white guys left out of the interview list. I think they were at capacity. It was like a nightclub that can only fit so many in. Um, I know you've watched all this one more in, you know, that scene in good fellas where they bring the table for Ray Liotta right down in front, even though there is no table. That's true. They could have brought a table for me. Yeah, that's true. You have a complicated relationship with him

over the years. You covered him. You've talked about him, obviously. And then randomly, out of nowhere, he comes to Washington and is actually with the Wizards and is tight with Wilbon. They're playing golf.

And then he ends up not, it doesn't go well with the wizards, but as you're watching this, what were your expectations? And then how are they realized? Well, um, I didn't,

it's not that I had expectations. When you start to watch this, you get about 20, 30 minutes in and you say to yourself, I'm sorry, why isn't Jordan on the screen? I don't care about Dennis Rodman. I don't care about Scottie Pippen. I don't care about their lives. I care about Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is an assassin. He's 6-0 in championships.

That's Joe Montana land. That doesn't happen in most sports. He's, he's insanely charismatic. I want to see him. Yeah. If other people want to talk about him, I'll live with that. When BJ, BJ Armstrong, I had no idea. It's fun to listen to BJ Armstrong talk about Michael Jordan, but I don't want to hear Scotty Pippen talk about Scotty Pippen. I didn't, I didn't dial into the Scotty Pippen documentary or the Dennis Rodman doc. I'm not interested in that. Yeah. I want to watch this one guy who's the most charismatic, one of the most charismatic athletes I've ever seen. Don't you feel the same way? Yeah. And that's why I liked the last two episodes the most, but I also understand why they had to do it that way. Cause they're trying to do a 10 hour doc.

And at that point you have to dive into the character. So I thought it was the right choice, but I just personally liked the last four more because now we were able to really start to get to the heart of Michael and you know, they, they get to most of it. They, they ignore the family stuff pretty much completely.

And that might've been because he just wasn't that tight with the family or whatever. Um, other than that, I was actually impressed that they dove into the gambling stuff and that he was willing to talk about it and the stuff with his dad and, and things like that. It certainly was not, it didn't play out the way some of these other docs play out where they're basically, let me show you the revelation for me. And this really was a revelation. We have all seen where Michael Jordan takes the championship trophy and collapses holding the trophy after the win. I guess that's the fourth one, right? That's the fourth one. Yeah, 96. We've seen it, but we haven't heard it. When you hear it and you understand the context,

you understand those are sobs of anguish. That's not happy. That's not happy at all. That's such a real moment. How many times have we seen real moments from Michael Jordan over the years and this one was deprived to us because we didn't have sound I I don't know if you felt the same way at the Kobe Bryant service I was slack-jawed at Jordan I was awed by Jordan, that he allowed himself to be that human. I wasn't used to that. And I was so impressed and empathetic with him at that moment. And that's not a word that I would have used before. There are moments in this doc, but they're in seven and eight more than one through six for me so far. I might've stopped it. I might've ended it at the end of seven when he just pulls the earpiece out and says, break. I'm going to say that's him. That's it. That's good. I'm good now. I'm good. So where does he, you know, I, it's been interesting to watch younger people talk

about this and, and really experienced the whole Jordan thing for the first time. I think the three greatest athletes that have passed through my lifetime where I can remember watching sports, which really starts in like 1974, 75 range, were Ali, Michael, and then Tiger. And I really feel like those three were kind of levitate above everybody else that I got to witness. Where do I what's your list? Yeah, I mean, my list, because because I studied English and history as a kid, my list always includes Babe Ruth, even though I never saw him because. Yeah, he changed sports in America and Jackie Robinson. I have no real recollection of Jackie Robinson playing, but he changed sports in America. And Jackie Robinson, I have no real recollection of Jackie Robinson playing, but he changed sports in America. I'm better off if I just tell you this, that

being in an arena with a certain athlete where you tingle, you literally tingle in anticipation of what that person is going to do and the possibilities unfolding in front of you that evening. I would say that my top three, I've got two of your three. I've got Jordan. I've certainly got Ali, but my third will surprise you. The single most charismatic athlete I have ever been around, and it's a very specific time was Mike Tyson walking into a ring wearing only a towel. And I just said, and I covered enough Tyson fights where I went, Oh my God, this is elemental. This is so different, different, even than Ali. Different than Ali. And I was, I could not take my eyes off Mike Tyson. So he's the other one that I would add.

And that's a wild card. Nobody else would use him. They wouldn't. No, I think that's really fair. Tyson was basically three years older than me. And I saw every Tyson fight. I loved watching Tyson. I watched all of them. I literally, I watched every single one of them from the, whenever he started going on national TV.

And you know that, I think that's why the Douglas loss was such like an, I remember where I was when this happened moment, because it was so inconceivable that anyone was going to beat him. Valentine's day, wasn't it? I thought it was so inconceivable that anyone was going to beat him. Valentine's Day, wasn't it? I thought it was Valentine's Day. It was somewhere, it was a February, Saturday night, and I was in college, and I remember everybody

I watched that fight with. And it's still the most stunning loss I've ever seen. Sure. Oh, sure. It surpasses anything. So yeah, I think that's fair to put Tyson in there.

I think we penalize him for some of his off, out of the ring stuff, which was horrible. I mean, I'm almost apologetic when I say it because I'm not endorsing character. I'm not endorsing behavior. I'm not doing any of that. I'm talking about the sheer act of one human being just almost mesmerizing and hypnotizing someone else. I could not take my eyes off him when he walked in the ring and then always ran

across the ring as soon as, I mean, before the bell ran across to do business. So I'll tell you, I'll tell you who got like 80% there. And I think got further than maybe, um, maybe they get credit for now is those Curry warriors teams, especially in the regular season, when, when the way that they were connecting with opposing crowds in different stadiums around, around the country and how beloved that team was and what an experience it was to go see them in person and how people were showing up an hour and a half before to watch Curry warm up that the change of rules warm up. Yeah. And I, I don't think LeBron had ever, and I, not to turn this into a LeBron versus anyone conversation. I just don't think he ever got to that specific point where the Curry warrior stuff really reminded me of what it was like with Jordan there

during the last three bowl seasons, when the people would show up for the games as, as soon as they could get into the building, just hoping maybe he was warming up when they got there. I mean, yeah, all sports are different. All sports are different. There's a warmup quality to Steph Curry. That's different from other sports. You can watch a quarterback throw the ball down the field, sort of arcing passes, you know, two hours before the game, but you pretty

much have to be a sports writer to get in at that time and see it. I have that same feeling, the same feeling of desire and longing to see a certain thing. It's very often to see a specific picture. I felt that with Nolan Ryan when I was a sports writer, because every time he went, he had seven, he had seven no hitters. Every time he went out there, there was the possibility of something you had never seen before. And in Nolan's Ryan, Ryan's case was a possibility that he'd strike out 27. Like he bring it. Nolan Ryan could do that. Living in Washington now, if you give me a chance

to see Max Scherzer, whether on television or live, I will plan my evening around that. It's usually for pitchers and not hitters, because in hitters' cases, Bill, it's situational. They come up at a certain time in a certain situation. We go, okay, I'm watching this in football. Football is really different. You may want to watch a quarterback, a quarterback may excite you, a running back may excite you. Sometimes a pass rusher may excite you, but they're not, they're not out there enough. They can only be out there half the time at most, You know, so it's sort of not the same. I was talking with Wilbon today off air, because he was wondering if there would ever be a Brady documentary

and whether Brady would, because it's important to Mike to believe that Brady's a terrible human being, you know, like Jordan is. That's important to him. And that he's led his team to win that way. And I said, Mike, it wouldn't be the same for a football player because they only really know half the team. They're only on the field half the time.

They can only elevate the people who play with them. So the whole other side of the ball is a foreign language to them. So it really, I don't think it's the same. In basketball, you're one of 12. It's the smallest grouping. You're there every day. It's not, it's, you know, pitchers are different than hitters and defensive linemen are different than tight ends. And in basketball, everybody's pretty much the same. I imagine in hockey, well, hockey has a goalie. Goalies are probably different. Don't you think? Yeah, I think hockey in the 70s, I think Orr was like that for people.

And I caught the tail end of Orr and he'd already had at least one big knee surgery at that point. But I think the people that went to see him in the late 60s and early 70s felt this way. It was like, this guy is just skating at a different speed. And, uh,

and the angles he's taking is just, there's nobody. He almost looks like he's a different species. I felt what you, when you were talking about pitchers, that's what it was like with Pedro in Boston for those couple of years, where it was just like, sure.

I wanted to see him throw a perfect game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It felt like every start, I wanted to see him throw a perfect game. Yeah. Yeah, he's 5'8", 130, and look what he does. Yeah. Yeah, it felt like every start, he had a chance to either strike out 20 guys,

throw a no-hitter, throw a perfect game, and it dominated your two years. So I'm with you on that. You got to see Russell, though. At least on TV. Well, I got to see him on television. Yeah. Yeah, I got to see him on television

because I am old enough to remember when there was an 18 league and Russell and Chamberlain were on TV. Yeah. Yeah. I got to see him on television because I am old enough to remember when there was an 18 league and Russell and Chamberlain were on all the time. Um, and I admired, I admired Russell so much, um, because of the way that he played because, uh,

because he understood what he was good at and what he wasn't good at and didn't attempt to do things like Russell today when they say, Oh, you, you know, the big man has to move out to take the person's not moving out that's what's not shooting from 26 feet that's not what bill russell did and bill russell maxed out because bill russell understood

everything he could do and he wasn't he wasn't like wilt mean, nobody was like Wilt as a physical specimen, but he wasn't like Wilt in that he did not suffer the agony of needing to do everything. Remember when Wilt, at the end, had to leave the league and assist just to show you he could do it because he didn't want to be thought of as this one-dimensional player, which he certainly wasn't. I mean, Wilt is just amazing. Just amazing as an athlete. Amazing.

But that was also the problem with Wilt, where he cared so much about the numbers of things. And he was like, people think I'm selfish. I'm going to try to lead the league in assists. And then he actually changes the way he plays, in some ways, for the worse. Because he's so intent on getting eight to nine assists a game. Russell was always just,

you know, what, what is it going to take for us to win this game? I don't care what my stats are. I think it's important. I think that is a, a distinction that is important. It is not to say that Russell is better than Chamberlain because I would

never say that, but Russell won. Russell dominated. Russell's Russell's teams.'t just say Russell Russell's teams And they may very well have been Markedly better Than Chamberlain's teams But Russell's teams

More often than not Went home winning Chamberlain's teams did not In playoffs They did not I debunked that in my book about Chamberlain had Russell had a better team than Chamberlain

The first couple years And after that It was either even Or Chamberlain was, Russell had a better team than Chamberlain the first couple years. And after that, it was either even or Chamberlain was better, basically from like 1963 or 64 on. Like he played with Jared West and Alja Miller. And his Philly team was good too. I know, but he had, you know, the Philly team, he had Hal Greer and Billy Cunningham and Gus Johnson. Oh, and Jack Walker and Lucius Jackson. No, and Wally Johnson. Walker and Lucius Jackson. No.

And Wally, no, they were Jackson, not Gus Johnson. Yeah. Yeah. Lucy, that team was loaded.

Yeah, that was, that may have been the best NBA team ever. That one year that they finally won. It may have been. It's great team. Russell. I mean, I will from 66 to 70.

I think he was the, his team was the prohibitive favorite every year for the last five years of the sixties. And Russell ended up winning three. Anyway, Hey, can I ask you, this is going to be a weird one.

Secretariat was kind of like that, right? Secretariat. Yeah. Um, like just like by that third, by that third race, it was like,

who, it was the most compelling thing that was going. Okay, so I'll explain this because I do remember that pretty well. And it is a sore point in my life, actually, that nobody's going to care about. But I will talk about it because it's my life and I'm entitled to. Secretary, when ESPN did that series, the 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century. Yeah. Somebody on this phone call had Secretariat 8.

I don't think it was you. I think it was me. And I would have put Secretariat higher, but the crescendo of laughter when I put him 8 bothered me enough that I couldn't get him any higher than 8. Although he should have been three or four. Anyway, so he's racing. He's racing in the first two legs of the Triple Crown, and he's racing against a horse named Sham. I believe it's Secretariat and Sham, if you look that up. And he beats him in the derby, I don't know, by a length. And he beats him in the Preakness by a length or something like that. And he breaks Sham's heart by beating Sham twice in a row. In the Belmont, he beats him in the Preakness by a length or something like that. And he breaks Sham's heart by beating Sham twice in a row. In the Belmont, he beats him and everybody else by 33 lengths.

The gap between Secretariat and the second place horse is the joke that they make about Linda Rodstead and Blue Biden. You know, that's what it is. Right. And he breaks Sham's heart. And Newsday, Newsday is a Long Island paper, certainly was a Long Island paper. Newsday is my first job.

I love Newsday like I've loved no other employer in my life. It's my first job. And I'm living at home. I grew up on Long Island. To cover Long Island high school sports is a dream for me. It's anything and everything that I could have asked for. Well, Belmont Park is half in Nassau County and half in Queens County, half, the great Stan Isaacs, is going to blow out the coverage of the Belmont with Secretariat because it's a triple crown. It hasn't been a triple

crown in a while. It's going to be a real big deal to see if he can win it. We have, I guess, 25, 30 people on the staff. He assigns everybody to go to the Belmont and assigns a very specific little story. Everybody other than the lead writer and the lead columnist is going to write, I don't know, 10, 12 inches, except me. I don't get invited to go. I don't get invited to go. I watched that race on TV, basically weeping that my career is over. Oh, wow.

Career. Because I'm the only, I'm it. And it's not like they said, Tony, and go to the office. And if all communication fails, write all the stories yourself. No, it's Tony, take the day off. And so I didn't watch the bell. Everybody on the newsday staff watched the Belmont live. I watched it live, but it was live on television. And it, it, um, it kills me to this day that I was not part of the coverage. No. And I loved it. I loved the horse. I love the story of the horse. I used to listen to Bill Knack talk about the horse, you know, and stuff like that. And, and I have a great endearing soft

spot for Secretariat. And when NBC did that simulated derby thing the other day, and Secretariat won, I was thrilled. Totally thrilled. You were celebrating. Yeah. I love all Secretariat content. And I really wonder, that's somebody that was definitely ahead of his time. If he comes in in 2020, I think people, I can't even imagine what would happen when somebody- It drives me nuts. Wilbon just dismisses all horse races.

Oh, the little horses. Oh, the little horses. Why do you care about that? This was a giant red horse. I mean, it was just fantastic. In a horse race. And this is the other thing that Wilbon doesn't even consider to me. The strength to in a horse race. And this is the other thing that will bond doesn't even consider to me,

the strength to be a jockey. They're not sitting down. This is a rocking chair. They're up in the irons the whole way. They weigh what? A hundred, five, a hundred,

six, you know, they don't weigh anything. The strength in their arms, the balance that they show, they're fantastic athletes. Fantastic. So what?

What? Soapbox. I love it. I can't imagine between Wilbon all-star weekend in Chicago. He's, he's the King gets, he gets into the, he gets the hall of fame thing.

And now he's in this Michael Jordan doc. It's a big year. Career-wise, except for the terrible pandemic, which is a little separate from this. But it was really shaping up as the year of Wilbon. It'll just be postponed. It'll be postponed a year, that's all. But what did he say the

other day he loves the he loves the jordan doc so much but we were actually on the air and he used the word it's a world the three four words it's a worldwide obsession and i mean if the camera was on me at that point the camera would have registered my complete disbelief that I heard this sentence. It's a worldwide obsession. Well, I think it's, I think it was going to work, but the fact that we have those sports and nothing to talk about every day really helped.

I know I've gotten four solid weeks of podcast content out of it, mainly because it's the only thing I've been, I always try to, I want the podcast to reflect whatever I'm talking about with people in my life. And what else are we going to talk about? Just be, be depressing about the pandemic. The ratings are spectacular. They're, they're, they're larger than NBA finals ratings.

I mean, people are, people are starved for sports. It's not that they've waited a long time for this, but Michael Jordan, he has not diminished in people's eyes. Maybe he hasn't been a great owner. He hasn't been successful. But as a player, he has not diminished in people's eyes. And that's the debate that keeps him alive all the time is a debate that I don't even think is a debate, Jordan and LeBron.

It's not to me. I love LeBron. LeBron's great. He's not greater than Michael Jordan. He's just not. 6-0 in the finals. Tell people what that means. Listen,

I've never wavered from Jordan as the goat. The apex and the ceiling and all that stuff. The only way LeBron had a chance to get him was just by playing 23 years at a high level or some crazy durability slash performance thing that we hadn't seen. But he was never going to have a higher ceiling,

I don't think, than the stuff we saw from MJ. He'd have to win more. He'd have to just win all the time. And once you don't win all the time, it's just, it's, you cannot compare to,

to Jordan in that regard. I mean, just can't, some guy wrote the other day in the Washington Post, some guy was writing about why he picked LeBron over Jordan. And he mentioned the early Cleveland team, I guess that, that LeBron carried to the finals and lost, you know, when he

said there was nobody good on that team and didn't, you know, when, and Jordan always had Scottie Pippen. And I wanted, I wanted to take the newspaper and I wanted to crumple it up in my hand and throw it through this particular writer's head. You know, if I could have done that, because you look at, you look at the Chicago teams. This is the reason those people are good is because everyone's attention is on Michael Jordan. It's on Michael Jordan all the time. LeBron then went to play with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, and then went to play with Kyrie Irving. Yes Kevin Love. Yes, let's not make LeBron's career into reaching down into the bucket of a dumpster and pulling out players.

That's absurd. It's just absurd. And to say that Jordan played with great players, again, I would tell you that Jordan made those players great, that they had the ability to be great because so much attention was on Jordan. And I'm not trying to make Jordan into a godlike guy. I'm not doing that. But as a basketball player. And the other thing this guy said was, well, LeBron out-rebounded him. Well, no kidding. LeBron is 6'10". What are you talking about?

I mean, that's not an argument that LeBron has more rebounds than Michael Jordan. It's absurd. Am I right on this? Yeah. Listen, you're preaching the choir. So I turned 50 six months ago. Can you tell me?

Don't even talk to me at 50. Don't talk to me at 50. Well, I want to know. 50 is so far in to me at 50 well i want to know my rearview mirror i want to know what are the signs that i'm officially turning into an old sports media white guy or has it already happened and i don't see the signs yet give me give me some tips i don't mean i don't know i don't know how that works i I mean, old is crusty chronological. I, you know, well, I mean, Levittard always says that about me. He says that I'm musty and crusty and maybe that's true, but I don't necessarily think that everything I saw when I was 25 is better than it is now. I

don't, I don't either. Yeah. That, that feels like a stereotype. I mean, I liked what I saw, and it creates fond memories for me. But, you know, I don't necessarily think that this stuff is better. I don't knock everything that's going on now. I mean, I look at Tom Brady, and I go, my God, my God, nine Super Bowls. He won six. Two more he should have won, my God, nine Super Bowls. He won six, two more. He should have won, but two more. He should have lost. So six and three seems like a fair count, doesn't it?

Doesn't seem like a fair count, but he's spectacular doing it in his forties. It's totally spectacular. I wouldn't just automatically go back. I would tell you that Unitas and Montana are great. They're, they're all time great, but I'm not going to stand up and say they're better than Brady. I'm not going to do that. Plus, Brady regenerated his hair. I mean, never gets enough credit for that.

He's got like a Michael Landon head of hair these days. Really nice. I hate people with hair. It's one of the reasons I'm just like you. You need to get rid of your hair. I still have my hair. It's just whiter. I was watching last night.

The NFL network was showing the 1994 Dolphins Patriots week one game, a Dan Marino drew blood. So battle with Jim Lampley and Todd Christensen announcing. And I was like, and guess what? Todd Christensen had, he had exactly the hair you thought he would have had. So I watched most of the game with my son, who really got into football the last year. And I got to say, football was just incredibly violent.

The mid-90s. I can't believe the amount of cheap shots. Poor Ben Coates, the Patriots tight end, took a couple shots that the guy would just be kicked out of the game. Now the quarterbacks are getting annihilated. Like Marino, guy's coming at his knees, guy's getting thrown to the ground. And my son was like, God, football was so much better back then.

Like he loved it. He loved the violence. And I was like, yeah, we have to get rid of all this. Yeah. I think I used this phrase once in something I wrote recently for, you know, one of the happies, um, unapologetically violent. Yeah. That's what they were. It's basically like UFC now where UFC, the guy gets knocked down early. Whoa,

what a knockout. We don't judge it in football. That was what we were like. Yeah. I can't watch that stuff. Are you a fan of that? It's not for me. It's not for me. I'm a casual fan who will get the big pay-per-views. I got the pay-per-view on Saturday night and really enjoyed it.

I was surprised how well the no-fan thing worked. We talked about it on my pod on Sunday about how cool it would be if the NBA just said fuck it And they played these games in the quarantine bubble. And instead of fans, you just had really good audio of, of the guys talking on the court and the coaches. I don't think they would ever have the balls to do it. I think there's too many landmines to it, but I think it would be amazing. I would love to hear this stuff on the court, even if they had to put the game on a three-minute delay

to make sure if somebody started screaming, you know, motherfucker at somebody else or whatever, you protect whatever you have to protect. But I thought it was so cool to listen to the corners and even just hear the sounds. Because you remember what the NBA was like in the 70s when they didn't play music during the game and during timeouts. And you could actually hear the coaches,

like especially like you were covering, you're sitting courtside, midcourt. You could hear everything on the court, right? Yeah. I mean, what I used to listen to more than anything was, you know, because now, now I go into my wheelhouse of the Knicks and how much I love the Knicks in the late sixties and seventies. And in those days and people young will find this amazing. They didn't need 14 assistant coaches

over five rows deep. They didn't need that. They had a coach, they had a trainer, and they had a publicity man. That's how it worked with Red Holtzman. Red Holtzman had Danny Whalen, who was the trainer, who was in charge of two things, keeping track of fouls and getting on the referees. And they had Jimmy Workleys, who was the PR guy who also got on referee. And then Red was paid to coach the team and amazingly he did. He coached the team. And I think

it was that way throughout the NBA. The amount of assistant coaches and the real estate they take up which could be seats that could be sold. It's amazing to me. And I think it started with my friend, Larry Brown. I do. I think Larry was one of the early guys on that. So when I started going to Celtic games in the mid seventies, we had,

and this is when they used to let me walk on the court. I could rebound for the guys before the game. Like it was great. It was just totally different era. But we only had two coaches. We had Tommy Heinzen as the head coach and John Killley as the assistant. And there was a game and I swear this happened. This is how I remember it anyway.

There was a game where both of them got kicked out and Red Auerbach was there sitting in the third row and he came out of the stands stands and coach the rest of the game because they had no more coaches. Like think about how insane that is. Now they would be like, all right, which one of the other 13 coaches do we have here wants to take over? We had a football that there's probably 25 assistant coaches in football. This is, it's just, I mean, you, you can actually, you can actually, as a profession, be an assistant coach for 40 years. I mean,

that's sort of new to me. In baseball in those days, you had a manager. Now there were a couple of guys, you certainly had to have somebody in the bullpen and you had a guy sitting near the manager, but not as many as now. The education I got in baseball from managers was priceless because managers, if you were covering a team and you were new to the team and you had a night game, it's a seven o'clock start. Manager got there at three o'clock. Manager sat in the dugout from three o'clock on and told you every single thing he did the night before and why. And it's like taking a master class in

two weeks. You can actually, baseball, I'm not sure about basketball and I'm not sure about football. Baseball is a knowable sport. You can learn baseball. You really can. You can figure out and guess alongside because baseball stops long enough to figure out what you're doing. And there's a strategy that you start with early because you know you're going to have to go to it late. I'm not sure basketball is that way. I think basketball, I think the movement is too quick. And in football, I just think there's too many moving parts. Baseball is one guy. It's nine against one. I mean, it's a different dynamic. It is. I guess I will sound like an old guy sports writer when I say how much I still love to watch baseball. And I do, I miss baseball terribly. Well, you had, I really miss it too. I miss it way more. I, you know, you would get to the spring

and it would just, the sounds of the spring for me were always the NBA playoffs, uh, any hockey game seven, and then just the Red Sox. And that was it. And they would just be on the TV every night. And now, now, now I'm watching the nine 1994 dolphins Patriots game on a Monday night. Just wondering what's happening. I am. I, I seem to land on either bridesmaids or mission impossible fallout every

single night. I'm so those are movies. Yeah. Those are solid choices though. At least you were, when you were covering, I've memorized them. I'm so sick of these movies. Yeah, those are solid choices, though, at least. I know, but I've memorized them. I'm done. When you were covering baseball in the 70s,

if you wanted to get even more from the manager, wouldn't you just go to the hotel bar? I mean, how much journalism was done at the hotel bars in the late 70s, early 80s? Because they all ended up there. I think that, yeah, I think that there was a rule that, that the, you know, the players didn't drink where the manager drank and the manager may or may not have drank at the hotel bar.

I was not a bar guy. So, I mean, I didn't do that. I, I got up early. I went to the ballpark. I sat and I listened and I took notes. I listened to Ralph Houck for two straight weeks, explain baseball to me. It's just spectacular.

And you find over the course of time all managers are willing to do that. They're willing to tell you about the day before because they've made a lot of decisions. They've had time to think about them and they want to justify them too. And they go back and forth with you with that.

Do you think, do you think Terry Francona was being honest about Michael Jordan's baseball ability in the documentary? That's so interesting. When I didn't know that Terry Francona was the manager at Birmingham and I told her and Kelleher knew that. And he, and yeah,

Francona said he would have made the majors. I'm, you know, I don't know. because it's a real small sample size. And then maybe I'm informed by Tim Tebow and his lack of going up the ladder in baseball. But I don't think he had to flatter Jordan in that way. I think maybe, maybe it's true. That's not to say that he would have been as good as Bo Jackson or Deon Sanders, but maybe he would have made it. Maybe it just feels like as the years pass,

nobody wants to be the person who, who says, look, there's no fucking way. Jordan was making the major leagues. All right. Like let's not get ahead of ourselves. Yeah.

He batted 202. It's very possible. He couldn't have done it, but I don't, I'm a, you know, Francona. Well,

you love Francona. Oh, he was, he was an unbelievable manager to win. So, so wouldn't you believe him? Or do you think that's just flattery? Yeah.

Who knows? I just don't think at this point in life, anyone's going to be the one who just comes out and was like, look, it was ludicrous. The guy was 30 years old, you know, hadn't played baseball for 12 years. He wasn't going to make the majors, but it was impressive that he hit 202. I don't know. I went and looked at it. Here's something, here's something that is true. Um, that had he stayed with it and I don't know if he would have stayed with it. He would have worked hard enough. Yes.

He would have tried hard. True. Right. I don't, I think he would have tried. I think if he had given it three full years, it would have been different than, you know,

what one year, half a year, three quarters of a year. Really? You know how much, I just wonder about like the, the body that he had. That's a really hard body

to have for baseball. When you're 6'6 or higher, you have to be like a behemoth at that point. Wasn't it interesting in the doc when the trainer said, I trained you to become

a baseball body and now you're going back to basketball and it's entirely different. Yeah. I found that interesting to hear that. I really did. So, well, you had to bulk up at that point, do the whole thing.

We did, we did a 30 for 30 about when he played baseball and it does, you know, it does seem like it rejuvenated him and at least paved the way for him to, to come back. Well, he got three more. He got three more with a different cast, basically.

So he came back. I remember when you retired from writing, people were like, he's going to come back. Well, he got three more. He got three more with a different cast, basically. He came back. I remember when you retired from writing, people were like, he's going to come back someday. It's going to happen. It never happened. You just became a TV man. That was it. It happens when I'm up in my attic with the happy birthday and the happy anniversary, which I take great

pains to write. I do. I'm writing, no doubt. You said earlier, you were like, when I was writing, and there was like a very split second where I was like, Tony was writing something, and then you were writing happy endings for your show. Yeah, and I'm happy.

That's what I do. That makes me happy. No memoir. Get me out of here. No memoir coming from you. No memoir. No, no, no. No memoir.

All right, yeah. I'm sorry I postponed your dog walk by 10 minutes. Coronizer, pleasure as always. No memoir. All right. Yeah. I'm sorry. I postponed your dog walk by 10 minutes. Coronizer pleasure is always good to talk to you. Um, yes. Do me one favor. Tell people out there that I have my own podcast. They can listen to it. Why don't you tell them? I have a podcast that I, that you can listen to. You can get it on all the places where you get podcasts. Like I guess, Apple and Spotify and radio.com. It's basically a radio show. It's not a long extended interview. It's, you know, it's different than this. It's, it's for old people. It's called this show stinks.

Yes. This show stinks. That's how you reach us on email. Thanks for having me. I hope I passed the audition. Thanks for coming on. Say hi to everybody. Okay. Be good. Bye. All right. Van Lathan coming up in one second. First, I want to tell you about a couple ringer podcasts like Baseball Barbecue, Jake Mintz, Jordan Schusterman. They're serving as your guides to the good, bad, and utterly bizarre corners of the baseball world and all that makes it special. We were hoping to launch this before the baseball season, but then, you know, the pandemic happened. So

they've delayed baseball. We're still going to have fun. They're going to be going down a whole bunch of rabbit holes. If you don't know these guys, you will, because they're, uh, they, they're really talented. They're young. They're funny. Uh, they love baseball and it's a sport that's become increasingly hard to talk about in an entertaining way, but we feel like they can do it. So subscribe wherever you get your podcast to Baseball Barbecue. The Wire Way Down to the Hole with Van Lathan and Jamel Hill. Van's about to pop on there about once a week to talk about shows that I'm watching. But if you want little 12 to 15 minute, not deep dive, shallow dives on shows that are going on and whether you should watch them or not. And then finally, we have Behind the Billions with Brian Koppelman and David Levine breaking down every episode of the show as it happens on Sunday night.

Go check out all of the Ringer Podcast Network offerings that we have. You can get them on Spotify and Apple and everywhere else. That's it. Here's Van Lathan. All right, Van Lathan is with us. He hosts a podcast on The Ringer with Jamel Hill called Way Down in the Hole.

It is about the wire. They are watching every single episode. This was something we conceived before everything that just happened the last 10 weeks. And we thought we could do it in person, but now we're doing it on Zoom and it's working out well. You are back in the world with your old friends from The Wire.

What's it been like to relive this show? It's been amazing. First of all, it's made me understand just how old I've gotten. When you rewatch something that you rewatched for the first time, that you watched, should I say, for the first time when you were 23 or 24, and then you go back and you do the rewatch at 40, you find yourself getting emotional at things that you didn't care about then. You look at characters differently, like some of the stuff that you thought was cool and amazing. Now you look at real wasted life and the real socioeconomic

kind of situations going on in the wire. You have a much better vantage point to appreciate the show when you have a little age on you because it's not just about cops versus gangsters. It's about all of these other mechanisms. And it solidified to me that it truly is the finest television that's ever been made. I deep dived it last summer, which was when I started to get really passionate

about us doing a pod about it. And I'd watched The Sopranos right before it. Those are the only two I've gone back and really dove in. And I, you know, there's some other ones like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Lost is one I keep hearing about. Game of Thrones. I'm not, not, I already did that before the last season. Um, and I don't know what it is about The Wire, but it reminded me a lot of The Sopranos in that I was so happy to be with my old friends again. All these people that I just cared about and liked and were in my life.

And then the show was over and they were gone. And it's something that my wife always talks about when she has these friends that she loves from these shows that she doesn't know. And they're fictional characters. And then they're on again. They're like, oh man, I forgot how much I missed Elsie from the Hills. Oh, yeah.

Right. Justin Bobby. Yeah. Just like, oh yeah. I miss these people. And it's fucking weird. The Wire is even weirder because it's not real people.

But I think out of any show ever in my life, it had the most people that I just kind of missed seeing on a TV screen. Who did you miss the most when you were re-watching it? Who were you like, oh my God, I forgot how much I loved Person X. I talked about it a little bit with Rosillo, man,

but Bodhi. Like, it was Bodhi for me, man. Like, just kind of seeing the way Bodhi came up and like everything that that character represented and uh knowing the full sort of the the whole ball of wax all the ramifications if you will um about his character art just going back like when I saw that first episode and then a young Bodhi comes in I'm like oh there's the hom's the homie, man. He's doing okay. Like, he's at the beginning of something. Things are going to be dope.

You know where stuff is happening. You know where it's going to go. But just to like, it's almost like some of these characters that you watch meet their demise, they get reincarnated every single time you watch the show. And it's dope that way. So like, watching that character and kind of how he exists in West Baltimore just reminds me so much of people I grew up with. But it's dope that way. So watching that character and how he exists in West Baltimore just reminds me so much of people I grew up with. But it's Bodie, man. That's my favorite character in

Wire history. They want your favorite character to be Omar. It's very clear that Simon and Burns want... Omar is the hero of The Wire. But my favorite character by far is Bodie. You know, and it's funny with the rewatch experience and some distance, and since The Wire's on,

Russell Westbrook shows up and literally looks like Bodhi and carries himself a little like him too and he gets the nickname Bodhi. But then you think like as we've watched Westbrook's entire career,

the personalities are similar. Like Bodhi's one of the only characters in The Wire who literally does not change for five years or whenever he finally, spoiler alert, he doesn't make it to the last episode. But he kind of stays fundamentally who he is from day one. And I feel like Westbrook was like that when he joined the NBA.

I don't feel like he's changed at all since he got into the league in any way. He is who he is. That's it. You don't feel like Westbrook has gotten better? I think he's gotten better. I'm saying as a character, as a teammate, as a person, what he cares about. He's never had a stage where he's like, hey, man, Russell's launching this production company.

He's going to be making documentaries. He just kind of seems cool. He's got his family. He plays basketball. He likes kind of seems cool. He's got his family. He plays basketball. He likes fashion. That's it. And he doesn't really care what you think. He's not out there. He doesn't have a media strategist.

He's just kind of doing his thing. And Bodhi's like that on the show where he's just like his life's not changing as everyone else around him is changing. As a matter of fact, that's sort of the tragic characteristic of Bodhi. The tragic characteristic of him is that while everyone else

is sort of realizing all of these truths about the game and the real about what's actually happening around them, he stays entrenched as a soldier and believes it to the very end. The only thing that could convince Bodhi that him soldiering up and keeping his nose clean and doing exactly what's told of him is not going to work. The only thing that convinces him of that not being the path to his greatness is his

death. That's the only thing that convinces him of that. Other than that, he even laments it. He says, listen, I never fucked up a count. Never been late. Never done this. Never done, and he's still in the same spot.

It took that. That's the only thing that could remove him from the reality of West Baltimore. You and Jamel did a whole thing, either the first

or second episode you did, one of the early ones, about, as they're conceiving this show and the two guys who are basically doing it are white guys. And they're making a specific effort not to make this a quote-unquote black show.

It's a show that has a lot of people and most of them happen to be black. But it's never attempting to be a black show, which I think was one of the cool things about it. All the nuances are in there, but it's almost like advanced beyond the point of what I think people would have maybe thought it was on paper. How does a show go badly in the wrong hands? What are the mistakes somebody could have made if they weren't approaching it that way? To deify somebody. So one of the major things that The Wire doesn't do is it doesn't deify anyone.

You get a 360 panoramic view of every single character, right? So you don't have a situation where you have incorruptible police officers who would never do anything wrong or never thump somebody, bust their head. You don't have robber baron sort of drug dealers who are deep down. They really have hearts of gold, but they just have been corrupted by a system

that's exploiting their neighborhood. You don't have any of that. I watch a lot of Crash Course World History. Shout out to John Green and those guys. I love that. And he often talks about and laments when he's doing these crash courses about how, and a lot of times in history classes everywhere, people, they resort to great man history. Like they talk about like great men who've done these great things and they refuse to acknowledge the systems that helped these guys do what they did.

Like say something like Edison invented the light bulb. No, Edison was the head of a team of people who invented the light bulb or current or whatever it was. When you look at history in terms of systems and not in terms of just this guy came along and changed everything, it changes your perspective of who's good and who's bad. The Wire does that inherently. It inherently looks at systems. It divorces itself away from who's the good person, who's the bad person. And a lot of times in society and in these shows, we have a tendency

to look at things because we want a villain, right? We want somebody that we can hiss at. We need Thanos. We need Thanos. We need someone who is just doing something for their own reasons and it's bad. It's going to hurt people and kill people and we want to stop them. And because the wire never gets into that, a lot of things that we get hung up on in society, the show never gets hung up on them because they're just aspects of society and not the entire ball of wax. These people are in the position that they are in in West Baltimore, partly because they're Black, partly because they're poor, partly because industry and capitalism has forgotten them, but it's not one specific thing that leads them to them.

And the cops, it's partly because they want to stamp out drugs that they do what they do, but it's partly because they want to make rank, and it's partly because they have all of their own interests at heart. So because nobody gets deified, it's hard to hate anyone. With that said, who is the worst person on the wire? Because I actually have a nominee. You do? The worst person on the wire.

The worst person on the wire. Single worst person. Ooh, good question. Like, not redeemable at all. It's either Rawls or Ziggy Sabaka. I hate Ziggy Sabaka from season two. Ziggy, the little scrawny dude with the big penis. Ziggy Sabaka. I hate Ziggy Sabaka from season two. Ziggy, the little scrawny dude with the big penis, Ziggy Sabaka, hate him.

Can't stand him. But he's just more tragic. Really, the worst person is probably Rawls. It's probably Rawls. I think it is the semi-crooked cop, the black guy, who just starts fucking with everybody later the uh later on in like the fourth season the fifth season he's messing with the kids i can't remember his name oh that guy definitely i think his name is uh don't tell me nah you're actually right that guy has no

redeeming qualities at all he's just evil he breaks your man's fingers. Officer. Yeah. I can't remember his name. Bro. He gets the ring taken from. When the ring is making his rounds, he ends up having a ring. Because they name him. It's going to drive me now. They name him because they're talking about how much of an asshole he is.

Yeah, no. He's pretty bad. Michael finally gets a little revenge on him. But that's the only character they had in this show where it was like, there's no black and white with this guy. He is, he is just evil. That's it.

There's no, there's no counterbalance. There's no other things going on. Hey, speaking of deifying and great man stuff and all those things, I know you've been watching the Michael Jordan documentary. Of course. Do you feel like there's been some of that with the documentary? There's been some

great man hagiography stuff? Or do you feel like it's been an even balance? Because I actually think it's been about as even as you can get considering they're relying on the man to do interviews

and to basically bless it. If they haven't blessed it, they're not doing it. No, I think it's been pretty... I think it's been pretty... Look, I think Michael has gone somewhere, gone some places to talk about some things that he really hadn't gotten into. It's impossible not to indulge into great man history when you're talking about Michael Jordan, just because he's so fucking great. Right. But no, I think the last episode in particular is the one where I feel like it gave you the last couple of episodes where it gave you the sort of the fullest special look at him. Because you could tell in that episode that they didn't like him and nobody pulled any punches to say, listen, no, they were like, no. Was he an asshole? Was he a jerk?

Was he horrible? Like the last couple of episodes, you know, the ones that just ran, they make Michael Jordan look like you see the price that he had to pay in order to be who he was. They make Michael Jordan look bad a little bit. And when he cries, that's a very important moment in the documentary because when I saw Michael, when he was crying, he's like, that's because you never won anything. And he was like, break. I think in that moment, he realized exactly how much he sacrificed to be sitting in that chair doing what he did.

He sacrificed a lot of meaningful relationships with people for a long time. He sacrificed all those fuzzy memories. Like, that hit him so hard because he realized that even though it seems like to us that Michael Jordan has it all, in order for him to be Michael Jordan, he really did have to give up a lot.

He had an atypical sort of 20s and 30s in terms of building lasting relationships with people, in terms of his family life and all of that stuff. And when you saw him get emotional, it's because, listen, he's saying, I gave all that up to be the greatest winner in the history of basketball. So, no, I don't think that they've done too much. Listen, I can understand the criticism of doing a documentary on somebody and having them have final cut on it i get that but i think they're doing a hell of a job with it and i think it's been a very fair portrayal of not just michael but everybody that was involved in the bulls at that time you just made a key point that i think people missed with the crying thing because i took it the same way as you and I thought it was pretty obvious but I don't think it was because I think people misinterpreted it in a couple different

ways to me that was to me it was all about what he gave up with the family and if you notice we've seen eight episodes now his family's not mentioned at all not I mean in it his son no not even the son the sons no that was the dream team documentary that the son was was in. But no, you haven't seen them at all. No, you saw there's been a couple shots of him practicing with them when they were younger. Obviously, he got divorced. I think they've been really careful about not acknowledging or mentioning his ex-wife at all.

Even when they showed in the episodes on Sunday, you could see that when he does the press conference when he's retiring before he plays baseball in that cramped room. And there's all these people there and they go on down the line and they show Ryan's door for Jerry Krause and Phil Jackson. But he's sitting next to his wife.

And there's two wide shots where you can see her for a split second, but it's basically like she wasn't there. And I think, you know, they say it when they're talking about the baseball stuff, he's playing baseball and he's, he's hitting three times a day. They're at the game. They say tonight it's obviously he wasn't really involved with his kids that much at all. I don't know what the, what the balance was, but I don't think he, he was around and I'm

sure he probably regrets that a little bit now. So I took it the same way as you did. He probably missed a huge chunk of his kids' childhoods and all that stuff to pursue this obsession. Yeah, you sit down and you start to relive these things and you start to, you know, there's a price, man. You know, like people talk about the comparisons between Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

The one thing that you can say about, obviously, I think that this documentary is putting even more space between Michael Jordan and LeBron James. I mean, all of this stuff was happening with Jordan at his peak when I was, especially the last, I was in high school. So obviously I have a sense of how great Michael Jordan was, but when you see the level to which he really dominated the game, the level to which when they were on top, nobody was really kind of getting at them. And you see that there's something separates him and LeBron. But I will say this though, LeBron has a loving family. He has all the adulation from everyone politically and socially. He's like a

sitcom dad almost in a way. That's almost a separate sphere of greatness that he has. And it tells you that for whatever reason, maybe because LeBron, maybe because Jordan had that growing up, that type of idyllic family life and LeBron never had it, that it was something that LeBron wasn't willing to sacrifice. He wasn't really willing to sacrifice that for greatness. He wasn't willing to sacrifice having all of these friends and stuff like that and being the killer. He wasn't really going to sacrifice that. Jordan, that was second nature to him. He had a great relationship with his dad, had a fantastic family, supportive mom,

all of that stuff like that. So when it was time for him to build this, I'm not jumping into Michael's mind. I'm saying there were some things that were second nature to him that he wanted to go build some other things. For LeBron, you're seeing the difference between the two guys.

So I think with LeBron, you look back and you see maybe not as great a basketball player but probably a more fully formed human being uh and i i think that kind of that that's important to note well and also pulls it off with a background that was a hundred times worse than what jordan had to deal with right and that which that's like the really crazy thing about the position lebron's at in his life now is all the obstacles and all the ways it could have gone wrong whereas jordan you know to to have like a pretty normal family to have older brothers and a really loving parents that came to his games and things like that you know hey that stuff that stuff can matter in certain cases

you know and i think for him um it's always been weird to me how tight he was with his dad but then you would never hear stories about him having that same kind of closest with the sons. Maybe he had it. I don't know, but I, I took it the same way as you, that the tears seem to me about like, I wonder if this was worth it or somebody telling him that it wasn't worth it, but him still feeling like it was.

And maybe like the scars from that or something really interesting moment though. I think for, um, well, I think about the ways this doc could have gone wrong. He easily could have been like, you're not using that.

Take that out. I don't like that part. And they would have had to take it out, I think. I don't think he had final cut of the doc, but I certainly think he had veto power over certain things in it. I don't know if he had final cut, but it's his footage though, right? So without his sign off, it's not going in there. I don't, and you know, you'd be better to talk to Jason about this, but I don't, I'm under the assumption that there's not much in the documentary that Michael wouldn't want to be in the documentary.

So I don't know if he had a final cut of it. But look, you know, it goes back to something that is kind of talking about it's a luxury to have to invent things to overcome. So LeBron didn't have to invent nothing to overcome. True. Like LeBron didn't have to, he didn't have to to say he didn't have to think up stuff to overcome he was right there 16 year old uh single parent home and the the whole nine there was nothing that he had to invent to overcome he didn't have to get slighted he didn't have to like not make the freshman team everything was all right there all the hardships and all the things were right

there so for Jordanordan while it's also uh it's remarkable that he was able to continuously motivate himself throughout the years by inventing things to overcome it also shows you that at a certain point things are kind of good for mike yeah hey let's talk about the quarantine. We're mid-May now. For college football to happen realistically, you got to, right? What's the top six? Texas is one. Texas is one. Alabama, Louisiana, Florida. Florida. Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida.

You know, after that, oh, Oklahoma. Oklahoma's a good one. Yeah, you're in the top seven or eight. Yeah. What happens to the psyche of Louisiana beyond all the other shit that's already going on if we don't have football this year it's weird i i fear i have fear uh what people are gonna gonna do with their saturdays listen it doesn't even obviously lsu is coming off

the greatest season that we've ever had by leaps and bounds um but that's not even what we're talking about we're talking about how not having college football affects baton rouge south louisiana uh mentally economically um and culturally and yeah it's so stupid man i know people are gonna listen to van is being hyperbolic no it's a big fucking deal it's a huge deal understand that people this is the biggest part of their year this is the biggest part of a lot of people's existence they're people that can give you uh can name everybody out of the recruiting class from 1976 and this And for guys like that, that are that old, that can do that,

this is the only thing in their life. They follow this. They're following kids when they're in the eighth grade and the seventh grade and when we're getting looks and when we're getting all of this stuff. They're going to sign-in day

jambalaya parties and stuff like that. And they build their lives around Saturday morning. And even if there are, even if they do play with no fans, right? The culture is still completely shifted because there's no tailgating.

There's no gathering in bars to watch it. Like we can't go to the Chimes or to the Silver Moon cafe or to some, some people to the varsity or all of these different or walk-ons, uh, down there and watch any of the games or anything like Mike Anderson's or any of those places and watch any of the games. Like that's going to have a significant effect on how people like,

uh, are getting through this down there. Now that doesn't mean that you run back and you do something that's unsafe. You want to make sure, you know, the Tiger stadium holds nearly a hundred thousand people. That's a lot of people to get together to have one or two people or even three people, you know, be sick. Like that's a huge citywide outbreak. Um, but it would be nice if they could figure out something. That's all I'm saying. What's New Orleans like these days? Because I would imagine you always hear about the places that get a lot of tourist traffic

have obviously been decimated the last three months. New Orleans, I would say, is a top four American city for people coming outside of New Orleans into New Orleans to spend a weekend. You have all these different events, things like that. What's it like there on a Thursday Just what's it like there on like a Thursday? What's it like there right now? Oh, right now, I mean, it's nobody out.

It's like a ghost town. It's like everywhere else. Yeah, from what I'm, you know, I had people that were down there and they sent me some pictures. One picture that really should be more shocking than anything you've ever seen, I posted it on my Instagram, is of a completely clean bourbon street, which should tell you like,

that's like a completely clean bourbon street, a clean bourbon street is like a clean Charlie Sheen. You're not supposed to be able to have that, like a clean bourbon street. And you know, even their economics matter a lot to the city in terms of tourism, but they also just like to throw a party. And what does it mean when you can't do what it is that's been in your DNA for 150 or 200 years? That starts to mess with people. So obviously when people go without jobs,

it's going to always be tough. But also when New Orleans can't be New Orleans, when they can't get loose, when they're feeling cooped up, it's a concern. But the first thing we want to do in South Louisiana, especially in a place like New Orleans and in Baton Rouge, where I'm from, and there are so many pre-existing conditions, you want to keep people alive. And then if we got to put a pin in it and come back and really get live in 2021, then that's what will have to happen. I remember we were talking when this whole thing was breaking and you were really scared for what was going to happen to Louisiana because you just felt like the region is just too social and too wired for people to be around each other. And that the whole concept of just, all right, everybody stay indoors, stay away from each other. It just wasn't, not the DNA of Louisiana. Do you feel better about it now as we head into month three?

Yes and no. I feel better that people have an understanding about how serious this was because of the havoc that it wrought when it first kind of swept through the southern half of the state. I feel better that people are taking it seriously. I wonder about the long-term sustainability of a shutdown there

or a stay-at-home there. And it's hard for a lot of people. It's a gathering state. We gather just to eat. I could be in Louisiana right now, and I'm like, yo, I'm on the Madden. I'm playing Madden. Before you know it, it's 20 people in my house,

and we going. Fruit punch and Popeyes everywhere. We getting it. You know what I mean? We just get together a lot. Even when we have hurricanes. When we have hurricanes, hurricane party in Louisiana is a thing. It's we have hurricanes, we have hurricanes, hurricane party

in Louisiana is the thing. It's not so much of a party as it is a hurricane's coming. No one wants to go through it alone. So, hey, the hurricane is hitting on Tuesday. We're all going to one place and it's going to be X amount of us in there while we don't have no lights, while the water might get cut off, all of these things. But we've pooled together our resources, we've pooled together our collective spirit, and we're going to make it through this together. What the virus is asking Louisiana to do is make it through a part, which I've never seen tried in my home state before. So what I'm concerned about is just the long-term damage, like I said, not just economically, but to the spirit. But we got to go through it. We got to figure out kind of new ways to skin the cat.

What else have you noticed during these last 10 weeks? Because you're an observer. You're watching things. You're looking at things. You're observing the culture of stuff, all different types of things. What have you noticed? What has alarmed you? One thing that I've noticed is something that's been very comforting is that everybody is actually ugly.

We're all ugly. People thought that they looked good. They don't look good, Bill. If you break it down, okay? I remember I saw a picture of – I saw something with Ryan Reynolds. And I was like oh my god that's how you look like like everything shut down baby we all ugly everybody come join come join into the regular looking groups i like i see y'all now and i'm not happy about it but i'm not i'm not i'm not i'm not gloating but i have to admit it's nice that

everyone can see that we're all just human beings with faces and and that's been interesting to kind of see a disheveled john ham you know what i mean like just seeing him but he usually that's a bad example he usually is disheveled he looks a little disheveled when you see him, but when you see the, he's not quite Don Draper right now. Right. I've noticed it more with like, oh, so we don't have this many blonde actresses and celebrities and TV hosts. No. I guess not everybody was born a blonde.

Not everybody was born a blonde and not everybody's beard. Like, cause you always look, you'd be like, oh man, this beard is not going great. No, it's going great yeah and beijing was keeping guys looking youthful but when you see some of them are really gray and they look now like they supposed to look like somebody's uncle or somebody's dad or grandpa paul um that's been good also Also, I'm always impressed with one thing, with human beings, with their ability to adapt. I don't know how long we can adapt in the way that things are going right now, and I house for 10 weeks and we were not going to be going to bars for 10 weeks and there was going to be no Disneyland, no NBA, all of that. And that there would be some semblance of normalcy. I would have said 10 weeks is way too long for that, but it's been 10. And from what I'm hearing, it might be another 10 here in LA, but you know, so far so okay.

Well, they announced today, they're going to open some of the beaches here. I really all the beaches, um, but with, with some restrictions, but who knows? And I think, I think one thing I underestimated, you know, because I think we were all worried about, especially I worried about with my kids, where you start entering this world as we hit the 2010s. Now we're in the 2020s that you can kind of do everything without other people in the room. You could order food. You can have sex. You can watch TV. You can rent movies.

You could literally not leave your house if you didn't want to. And that was always like, oh, man, that would suck, man. I hope this next generation is going to be social. I hope they're going to have people skills. I hope instead of having like a virtual thing, I hope they're going to want to go out and hang out with people and have experiences and not just do everything digitally. This is just old guy, me talking. I think what we've learned the last 10 weeks is that people really miss hanging out and being in the same room with people. Like you've, you've,

you've had some social distancing hangs. I've heard, heard through the grapevine. Yeah, I have. It turns out we kind of, you kind of need to be in the room with other people, which makes me happy because I was genuinely concerned 20 years from now

nobody was ever going to interact at all. But now I think we're learning that it's part of our DNA to want to be with other people. So thank God. Yeah, you're right. Look, before this happened, we had so much stuff going on that I was like, I'm in focus mode. I'm not going out to any bars, any clubs.

I'm writing. I'm figuring stuff out. We're about to launch all this stuff. We're about to do all of this stuff. It would just be, sometimes you go someplace, especially here in LA, you go someplace and just the ambiance of a bunch of people chattering about the most vapid and sippid. You just hear stuff and it's like, you just hear, I'm on my second draft and if they don't just buy it already, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'm built. I miss that. I miss the stupid background conversations at the Soho house. I miss seeing random sitcom stars from 1997 that I haven't seen in a long time holding court at places with people that are trying to be them. I just miss so many parts of LA that I thought were the annoying parts of LA. Now they're gone and I want them back.

Yeah. I mean, we've certainly, that's how we became more and more friendly. We would end up at some of those parties. And I try never to go to those, but I sometimes end up at them. And you really only end up wanting to talk to like three people. And you end up grabbing those people and trying to get in a corner and then hoping nobody else joins the conversation. Exactly. Which, by the way, you can just do anywhere.

We don't need to go to a party for us to hang out right but uh it is funny i'm the same way i do i i'm more nostalgic for things that i thought i didn't like you know like yeah i i was in that mode where it's just like let's just order let's just order food why would we go to a restaurant now i'm like fuck i i wish we could go to a restaurant going to a restaurant would be great i wish i could go and sit down in the worst restaurant like it doesn't even matter the quality of it just the experience of talking of getting bread brought to a table uh just before this all started um me and kalika had gone to the uh to the cheesecake factory over there in Glendale. I'm telling you, if I would have known that that was the last time I would be eating at a in for two, three, four, five, who knows how many months, it would have been totally different.

The whole thing would have been totally different. Maybe I'll even go to the Cheesecake Factory. Maybe I'll go to Mastro's or something like that. But that literally was, I think, the Tuesday before they shut everything down was my last restaurant experience. Well, I remember going to a Clipper-Blazer game. I took my son, and it was a night game. It started late. The game sucked.

Last minute, I think Kawhi decided not to play. Blazers came out. They're just shooting threes every time. Clippers are shooting threes. It's like a three-point contest. There's no energy in the crowd at all. My son's tired. I could tell. We get food at halftime. We're sitting in the third quarter and I'm looking at

him and I know he just doesn't want to be there. And I'm like, do you want to go? And he's like, yeah, this sucks. And I'm like, yeah, let's go. We just watched the fourth quarter on TV. It would be the same experience. So we went home. And now I think like, if we're at that game, I'd be so fired up to be at a basketball game. Like, I wish I could go in a time machine and go and be like, we're fucking staying.

This is live basketball. We're around other people. You're gonna wake up. I'll get you a soda. And so I think stuff like that. I was taking stuff especially live basketball for granted now it now obviously not taking anything for granted so i would literally pay 500 to watch the defenders play the san jose splash or whatever they were in the lakers practice

facility literally i would well have you thought about what happens when everybody's allowed to hang out again together? How many bad mistakes are going to be made? Like, what is the next Coachella where it's like, it's all good. Let's have Coachella again. What kind of a disaster is that going to be? Like, I just think about Nephew Kyle

producing this podcast right now when everybody's like, it's good, you can be normal again. I'm really concerned about his first 48 hours. I can't even imagine what Coachella would be like. Everybody letting loose. Going way too hard. Way too hard.

We're going to have to have like PSAs. Yeah, like, listen, guys, way too hard we're gonna have to have like psas yeah like listen guys like don't do all the recreational drugs that you can do in like a 16 hour span like seriously pace yourselves a little bit with the drink but look i'm gonna be real like it's it's almost getting to a point to where like when this first started i was sort of draconian on people. Like, if I saw anyone, there was a guy that I know that lives here in my apartment complex that had, like, that Friday. So the NBA closed down that Wednesday, right? And so that Friday, he hits me up.

He goes, yo, we're having a party over at the crib. Like, we're going to have drinks and it's going to be hand sanitizers there. And I was so pissed off. I was like, are you crazy? We got elderly people

that live in this building. How could you bring all of this? I'm to a point now to where I still would never go to anything like that and would really look down on anyone that would and judge them,

all these people that have flocked out in these crowds. But in the same breath, I understand people's desperation to get back to normal. I don't excuse it. And I don't and I think that they're making bad

decisions, not just for their personal health but for the health of entire communities but i can't stand in judgment of people who are really having a hard time with this like i can't anymore because um it's been such a long time and there's nowhere for them to escape there's's no place to go where this isn't happening. You know, there's nothing you can't like, you know, we had 9-11 and then that same the next week there was football and baseball and stuff. You don't have that. It's like you can't even like come back and step away from it. There's nowhere to go.

And so people are trying to find any escape they can and it sucks that some of those involve making bad decisions well one of those escapes can be the wire which you can stream on amazon hbo um we're heading into season two on the podcast yeah which i know you have uh a lot of feelings on i'm not going to spoil that. I encourage people to listen to Way Down the Hole. I'm really proud of this podcast. I think it's really good. I'm glad we did it. And I think it will have a 10-year tail

as more and more people discover the show. Because I know, you know, as we all, we get a year older, but somebody also gets a year older who now becomes in the range of somebody who would enjoy this show. And this show is timeless. I think it's going to last, it'll probably be 25, 30 years before it will really feel dated. Some of the beeper stuff, I'm sure if you're like 16, you're like, what the fuck is that? Or a pay phone. Yeah. Why don't they just,

why don't they just track their cell phones right sorry it's a long story we can't do that right anyway so you can listen to way down the hole and then we have another project we're developing that who knows who knows might be launching sooner than people thought but you might have a lot more vein in your life pretty soon yeah bill bill said it best so we had a meeting about it i was like so we're gonna do both, oh, yeah. We're about to put you to work. Yeah. I'm excited. It's been fun working with you.

I am too. Good to see you. Thanks for coming on. All right, my man. All right, thanks to Kornheiser. Thanks to Van. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. And if you missed the rewatchables,

we did Crimson Tide this week, and we have another one coming later in the week. It is Draft Day with me and Natalie Rubin, another episode of our flawed rewatchable series. That's coming too. And then I'll have one more BS podcast later this week. Until then. On the way so I never said I don't have feelings within On the way so I never said

I don't have feelings within