The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - LeBron James: Cleveland Or Miami? | Hour 1

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

"The bar is f****** low." What would it actually look like to make sure Vozinha gets to use whatever accommodations he wants in Cabo Verde for the rest of time? Is Jaylen Brown always the smartest guy in the room? Is LeBron James destined to return home to Cleveland? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You are listening to the Dan Levitar show in partnership with the Drafkin Sports app. Now live in all 50 states. This episode of the Dan Levitart show is presented by Draft King Sports. Drap Kings, the crown is yours. I have asked Pat Riley and Alex Rodriguez about this and they both deny it. I have been told that both of them are the only people who have Armani privileges that allow them to walk into any Armani store in the world and grab what they want because of the kind of customer they've been. When I tell you that the goalie, the 40-year-old goalie of Cape Verde, ends up getting

lifetime accommodations in his country, what does that look like exactly? Like, is there a card? Do you, do all the hotels know about this? How do you imagine the execution of this goes where he's able to get lifetime accommodations for free anytime he wants to stay anywhere. And if you had that, would you just not pop in every once in a while to a hotel and just take a quick shower and use the room without paying

and just leave because it's closer than your house and you can just use, you can use the entire country as if it is your home? Okay, so the question you're asking isn't, does everybody know it's him? It's how does everybody know that this is allowed? Well, is every person who owns an establishment that usually charges to have people stay there, do they all know that they have to give it to him for free?

Or is there a card involved? Or is, like, I've told you the story before, okay? There was a Guns and Roses was beginning its reunion tour. And I was with Carrot Top and he's like, do you want to go? And I'm like, well, I don't have, we don't have tickets. We don't have parking. Like, how do we do it? And he just does this where he circles his face.

And then sure enough, he pulls in and he just puts his window down and all the doors and gates in Las Vegas open everywhere he goes because his face is the ID in Vegas. He's been playing in Vegas for so long. I'm really asking you guys about practically. And we'll get to the games in a second because there's a lot of good World Cup stuff to talk about. and I want to talk about all of it before we get to what is obviously the biggest game in more than 20 years, but we only have drunken Cody imaging saying two decades worth of drunken biggest game. Biggest game in 20 years. You imagine that looks how, lifetime free accommodations in your country.

Seems like you want a real answer here, so I'm going to give it to you. You don't know Cabo Verde Logistics? I would guess that it's some government worker that is now like his person. So anytime he wants to do something, he reaches out to this government person, and this government person will just make it happen. Reach out to the hotel. Wherever you want to go. How many nights?

You want four rooms? Your limits, too. Unless you're going to a cheaper place, then we can get you three. Dismiss it. Say it's not good enough. I like it. Good choice. Excellent work by you, Chris.

Before we get to the World Cup stuff, though, there are three basketball things that I want to tackle with you guys. The first, Jalen Brunson's dad, Rick Brunson, says that the greatest Nick of all time is Patrick Ewing still. And I say that's not true. I say that he is wrong. And the reason that he's wrong is when you average in the playoffs as 30,

when you average 30 and then close it out with 45 and win the championship, that makes you golden forever. I think that's where he passes Patrick Ewing, who never won a title. Your thoughts are what there? My thoughts are he agrees with you and he cannot actually say with other people. listening that his son is the greatest Nick ever. Put it on the poll at Lebitard show. Jalen Brunton averaging 30 and scoring 45 in a clincher.

Greatest Nick ever? Yes or no. I want to get to LeBron in a second, but I want to, one thing that I didn't mention last week because of just the nature of how stunning the Jalen Brown stuff is. First, in the history of the Boston Celtics, they've never been laughed at like. that ever in the history of Boston sports you're going to have a hard time finding anything other than you know babe Ruth and Mookiee Betts basically you're going to have a hard time finding anything in the history of Boston sports that gets a

franchise laughed at like this but the part that's made me uncomfortable I don't know if you guys have seen Colin Cowherd he credited Darry for making that trade even though Darrell Morey hasn't been with the Sixers for a few months now. He was the first to get out there with Jalen Brown is of the belief that he is the smartest guy in every room and that basically he has a disease. He called it a disease of being the smartest guy in every room. Now, that's a step from uppity. like it's it's a couple of notes from uppity on where the smearing of jalen brown goes jalen brown i'm guessing

is very often the smartest guy in every locker room that he's in he's a really smart human being and the smearing of him has has started in a way that makes me uncomfortable because this is not a person who deserves to be smeared based on what his resume of credentials is public behavior and play. Like this does not qualify as earned what's happening to Jalen Brown in the way

that he is being smeared. But let's listen to him react to Colin Cowherd because he is fighting with media members one by one. There's so many different forms of intelligence. Whatever you value is whatever you value. I never told anybody like, look, I'm the smartest person in the room.

That may be how they took it. But let's be, let's keep it a buck like the in sports no offense to everybody in sports but the bar is low you know what I mean like the the bar the bar isn't that high so I think that's people who need to take into consideration it's like okay he's one of the smartest athletes but like a lot of athletes and you know what I mean how high is the bar really you know what I mean no and that's no this we got a lot of smart athletes he's basically saying yeah I am the smartest guy in most of the room look at these idiots

No dis, though. Look at my colleagues. They're dumb as rocks. No dis. I agree with what he says at the beginning there because this is something I object to all the time in sports. You dismiss someone as dumb in sports, even though at what they do, they might happen to be a genius. Like, generally speaking, when you're good enough to be better than the top 1% of the top 1% of something that the world is competing at, you have an intelligence for that in a way that might make you a little lopsided.

might keep you from other intelligences because it's hard to stay there. So the genius for that is, to me, not unlike whatever your genius is in making Tesla or whatever it is that you assign intelligence points to based on how you define intelligence. But do you understand what I'm saying? Jalen Brown now has a negative connotation. He does not deserve. Like this is not based on his behavior. There's nothing on this person's resume.

a really impressive resume of all manner of accomplishment, not just basketball accomplishment. This is a smart human being, and he's getting dragged in a way that's just not reasonable. It's not fair, and it's just because people want to laugh at Boston. Well, which part do you think has hurt his reputation more? What you're talking about there and, you know, the smear campaign, you know, his behavior, smartest guy in the room, that kind of stuff,

or is it what I actually believe has been the most hurtful to his reputation is what his value was in this trade. That to me is what has really hurt his reputation is all the stuff coming out about how nobody really wanted him. No one was willing to give up what Boston was looking for. And look, they just had to trade for Paul George's corpse. That's apparently what Jaylon Browns was. I've read a lot about this over the weekend trying to understand it. And it seemed because the Boston Celtics are not run by dumb people. And what this is is basically them getting out ahead of something that changed over the last three years, which is you can't have 70% of your payroll tied up in two guys.

And that all changed the last three years. You could do it three years ago. You can't do it anymore. And so they're getting out in front of, okay, we'll do the unpopular thing right now. And you're right. His value, his greatness has taken a hit without a game being played. His greatness has taken a hit this offseason. But when you say what's done the most damage to his reputation, I don't think it's even that.

I think it's this. He won't stand down. Like he's fighting everybody. And so you fight everybody. You're in the news stream every day in a way you weren't. And in a way that no number two player in the league on any team gets. Like there's no such thing as what's happening with Jalen Bray. right now where he's now gone from popular to unpopular to polarizing and he hasn't really

done anything like what's he done he's just he's just on the internet saying hey don't treat me unfairly I'm not going to keep quietly taking the fact that all of you continue to treat me unfairly he is occupying a piece of Aaron Rogers real estate though not understanding why he's in the news stream when he injects himself into the news stream by adding on to the story giving something that the talking heads he's openly fighting with more to discuss and then pointing the finger at everybody else like why is everybody talking about me rogers is a great great example also a cow guy and also a guy who i think most of us would describe as smartest guy in the room it's a berkeley thing oh but wait a minute though uh erin rogers did something jalen brown didn't do which

has opine on an assortment of different things that don't have anything to do with either sports or the media. Like Jalen Brown's keeping it classified to one area. He's not giving you a whole bunch of disagreeable polarizing opinions on an assortment of different things. Understood. But that's why, I mean, he has done some social justice stuff, which has been really, really good, but that was years ago. But that's why I said he's in that class, because that's not the only thing with Aaron Rogers. He's several years removed from that. And yes, it applies some context to how we frame what Aaron Rogers does. But Aaron Rogers also makes news because of his sports takes. Aaron Rogers made news because of his dating history. There was an assortment of things there with Aaron

Rogers, making weekly appearances not on a Twitch stream on a mainstream platform where he was saying things that were politically divisive. Jalen Brown's keeping the subject matter to himself. He's just defending himself. It didn't start with Jalen Brown. I guess it started with him being on a Twitch stream and saying he had a lot of fun this season, but I mean, really? Like that's the starting point on tearing down a finals MVP? I think let's give Jalen Brown some credit for being smart. That's exactly how a smart guy would force his way out of Boston. By opening that door, we all knew what he meant.

We all knew what that opened up. We knew that the chances dramatically increased that Jalen Brown would not be a boss in Celtic once he framed it that way. I understand that you think, and most people are going to think, that they have it right and have a right to their indignation. and I'm telling you you got it wrong. No, no, no, no. I'm not indignant.

You're asking questions. I'm answering them. This is one of the good guys. I'm being helpful. He's being framed as one of the bad guys and this is one of the good guys. Well, he's being framed that way because he is literally taking on other people in a I'm right, you're wrong type of way. I know that he's been framed as a bad guy.

Ooh, I think that Jalen Brown right now, you say his reputation is taking a hint. And I'm like, why and where and how? It's not, it doesn't have anything to do. do with basketball. When I say, when I say this is a couple of notches away from uppity, saying that this black man, a proud black man who has accomplished a great deal, is always in the crosshairs on something when whatever it is he's talking about isn't actually that divisive. It's not subject matter that everyone's fighting over whether he had fun last season or not, Jason Tatum was there.

Like, it's just, it's silly. If you're discerning in any way, you know that what this person has accomplished puts him at the very top of accomplishment in competitive fields in American sports. He doesn't deserve what he's getting. Like, it's outsized and it's unreasonable compared to the credentials. I appreciate how fair we're being. We also have to be fair and point out that he didn't disagree with a notion that he's the smartest guy in the room.

I understand, but it's not enough to get someone gone. Like, it's not enough to get some, to undermine all the other things that he is and has accomplished because he is smart. I don't think it is what made him gone. I think he's gone from Boston now because, A, you mentioned the salaries and you can't have two guys making that much money on the same team moving forward in today's salary cap landscape. and B, they know this player's personality, and they don't believe that they're going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube with Jason Tatum returning next year. Also, we're playing a semantics game with Jalen Brown by saying he never asked out.

He also never said publicly, I want to stay a Boston Celtic. He just works through his agents like they should. Hey, I never formally requested out of Boston. No, we know. We saw the Twitch stream. We got what you were trying to say. Yeah, that's all semantics. It's like when Yonis, Yonis never asked.

trade out of Milwaukee, you're agented. Like, that's totally semantics. Yeah, but Dominique laid it out on why it is that he would be bothered by that slight item by item. It's not unreasonable for him to arrive at that position either. When you say that's not the reason that he's gone from Boston, you can say that.

But Coward saying it is the reason. He's saying, he's quoting an executive and a scout anonymously saying he's got a disease. His disease is that he thinks he's smarter than everybody. And Colin Coward is citing it. It's what Jalen Brown is objective. to. That's the thing here is that it's all the reports after the fact. It's the fact that

we can have the discussion about whether analytics is a part of it, whether the disagreements on being the guy are a part of it, whether the contract is a part of it. But now, after the trade, all of the things that Jalen Brown has been saying about us in the media and the way that things get portrayed after the fact are all of these leaks of smartest guy in the room, smartest guy in the room, he's condescending, he's this and that, when, by the way, like, by all intents of purposes, he is the smartest guy in the room, even compared to the executives. Look at the degrees he's had. Look at the lectures he's done at Harvard. I mean, he's a smart guy.

He's objecting to Collins' take while not denying and being condescending to his contemporaries. He should have said second best year. Dan Levitar. God, I would love to see that interaction. Lord, let there be a day. Hey, Oprah. Let there be a day. Oh, the color purple.

You like these glasses? She would see these glasses. She'd be like, this is someone I'll take a picture with. He looks sophisticated. I love big game, not a big game. Jonathan Sasselow. She would say that to me. Instead of me having to go up to her and say, I'm a big fan,

she'd be like, I love big deal, not a big deal. Huge fan of your work. You know, one-time or two-time championship broadcasting? Two. Oprah, two. You think Oprah would say like, hey, Know about that book club? And I would say, yes, I do, Oprah. Yes, I do.

Have you seen weapons? What are the kids? This is the Dan Levitational. You guys saw it the All-Star game, right? That he had an incident and he is feuding with Beverly Hills because Beverly Hills, in terms of their police force, I've never seen anything like it in terms of a police force that gets someplace quickly because that's where the money is.

Beverly Hills, the police arrived. very quickly because of anything happening in Beverly Hills and during the All-Star game in Los Angeles, he had a party in Beverly Hills and I'm assuming what happened is just people didn't like that there were a whole bunch of black people that were there in the neighborhood and then all of a sudden it ends up with Jalen Brown fighting the system and fighting Beverly Hills and fighting everything else. You do understand, right? I understand why we all feel entitled to take Jalen Brown and just make him an avatar for whatever it is that we find disagreeable in sports. And money is at the the top of the list, okay? He's going to be the seventh highest paid player in the sport,

and nobody believes him to be the seventh best player in the sport. So Boston is getting out in front of a money decision. I believe money is the root of all of this, but having the proud and defiant black man with the bank account, now fighting with the entirety of the media, item by item, and step by step on, you're not going to keep doing this to me, where I have to just take it quietly because you're the only one with the microphone. To me, it signals a change on two fronts. It's not just that the Boston Celtics have never been laughed at like this, and they're doing something to get out in front of what is probably coming for the sport

in a variety of different ways, where they have to get the finances different, because what worked three years ago doesn't work anymore. But still at the top of the sport somehow, as July makes the rounds and free agency is now held up with whoever it is that's left, everybody is waiting for LeBron James. I'd personally be stunned if he goes to anywhere but Cleveland because I think that that is clearly the best story. And at this point in his career, based on what it is you're seeing Rich Paul do on a podcast

he really cares about, really cares about. Being the story and having the punctuation be the nice story, he can win in Cleveland without winning in Cleveland by just going back to Cleveland, and it's the only place he can do that. And so I believe that that's, even though it's not an imperfect fit, I believe that that's where he will end up and that all of this is just a show because they want attention on Rich Paul's podcast.

And because they're making a show. And they want LeBron James to be still part of the show. But let's go to the whiteboard that Max Kellerman and Rich Paul stole from Jeremy Tashay. They're going to steal the puppets next. let's listen to what it is they had to do. This is just a hilarious example of... They're listening to our show.

Rich Paul stole our idea. Jeremy did the whiteboard last week, and then you see a couple days later, boom. You got LeBron in the middle with the lines. The same exact thing Jeremy did. I just a little suspicious. I like how you could tell which teams are the most serious because there were five teams and the starting lineups were listed.

And then on the periphery was just team names. You know, well, I don't need to take the time to actually put the lineups together. Would you guys be surprised if he went anywhere other than Cleveland? At this point, are you not, what is it in terms of betting favorites at Drafking Sports? What, where are, is it the cabs that are ahead of everybody as the betting favorite? Yeah, I think the calves are the heavy favorite, matter of fact. And I think, and I think for, I mean, I say for some reason, because it's really not going to happen.

But Philadelphia is like the next favorite, even though there is no chance he goes anywhere but Cleveland or Miami. There's no chance. I have lived long enough to see St. Cronky be a positive. That's right. Cronky's names listed on the periphery there. That's wild. That's right.

My favorite part if we put the board back up is not just that he puts a star next to Tyrese Maxie and mentioned that the Cavs losing Darius Garland is a big issue for him, which I thought was hilarious. He has Davian Mitchell listed on there, which is great, and he keeps referring to him as off-night. But if you look over at the Dallas Mavericks, it just says oil. which is just a remarkable thing to have as a pro on the periphery. This is a perfect whiteboard by Rich Paul. Oil.

How do you guys feel about LeBron James as the oldest player in the league? I'm going to say by Miles, oldest player in the league by Miles, still having the attention currency that makes it so that most people are going to get the alerts on their phone and go to their friends and say, hey, LeBron is going here. Can you believe it? And I'm, and I'm assuming that Cleveland is the one that would feel most anticlimactic, correct? Like, because it's so obviously the coolest story, the going home. He has spent a lot of time over the last 20 years framing the narrative, okay? He regrets some of what he did in coming to Miami. the way that he did that announcement.

And when he left Miami, the way that he did it was more quietly by just calling a Sports Illustrated reporter and writing an article with him, ghostwriting an article with him, that announced to everybody through Sports Illustrated instead of a TV show that he was going back to Cleveland. But that's going on 12 years now. He played for the Lakers longer than he played for any of these other teams. Didn't particularly want to leave Los Angeles. has said before he doesn't like going back to Cleveland, has said that recently that he does not enjoy going back to Cleveland.

But there's no, what is the second best stories? As this is like, it's very obviously and clearly, if you want applause at the end for something that has gone, the rare route of he went popular, unpopular, popular. Popular, unpopular, popular. And when he got to popular, it's because bringing Cleveland the championship and coming back from a 3-1 deficit makes him golden forever in Cleveland. Coming back one last time at the end, what's the second best story compared to that?

I think the second best is – it's definitely not Miami, all right? Everyone hates Miami. Everyone's going to hate if he winds up choosing the heat. I think – I don't know that there's a second best. I think it is Cleveland. That is the good story. But if I had to choose a second best, I think there's a lot of people who would like the idea of him and Steph Curry playing together, even though.

again, he's not going to Golden State either. So if I had to pick a second, it'd be Golden State. The Knicks would be a cool story, but it's really strange to say that I don't think the Knicks want him anymore because they would have to, they'd have to move some pieces in order to make room for him. They can't just put him on the payroll and expect to pay him what he expects to earn and not lose other pieces. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jeremy, but I believe Rich Paul said it would have been the Knicks had they not won the title. But he didn't like the optics of him going after they won the championship. He said that we wouldn't even have made a whiteboard. It would have been the next. So let me ask you guys this question because in the

reporting that I've done around this over what is now 16 years, I can tell you that both Pat Riley and LeBron James have learned some things after they broke up. One of the things that LeBron has learned because initially when he got to Cleveland they were really mismanaged. He did feel when he left Miami that he could go wherever

it is that he wanted and take some of those lessons with him and he wasn't wrong. But the Lakers were run pretty poorly while he was there even though they won a championship while he was there and it is something that he trusts

here which is that he knows they can get the players around him to compliment him. And what he also knows in all of the places that he's gone, there haven't been any places that develop the people around him the way this place does. Cleveland didn't do it. And the Lakers did not do it. The place that developed the players around him where he saw how they grew, right? He's seeing from the first practices how Patrick Beverly can't make the team

because they get rid of him and end up keeping Eddie House. The things that they did in Miami, he had to leave because his only experiences were Cleveland in Miami, and Cleveland's famously mismanaged before and after. They had him, but they're mismanaged throughout. Like Dan Gilbert, everyone knows Cleveland's not run well. The surprise wasn't that Kenny Adkinson blew it. The surprise was that initially Kenny Adkinson did it correctly by using Evan Mowgli correctly. and then everything ends up falling apart in Cleveland because they're Cleveland.

Like the same people are in charge there. He had to go to the Lakers to see, oh, the Cleveland Laker things. This isn't like Miami at all. This is a different way of treating how it is that we make players better. But I'm not sure how much appetite he has for being under Pat Riley's control. Like, why would why would he want to be more controlled now

as he's older than he would be in Cleveland? Because in Cleveland he does get his run of the place and he gets to go there and knock Donovan Mitchell and James Harden and Evan Mobley to the side.

He's not actually coming to play second fiddle in Cleveland. Here he is coming to play second fiddle. So you don't think that if he were to choose Miami that there would be

be an understanding of, hey, we're not giving you the run of the place that, you know, we haven't changed that much since you left 12 years ago. It's one of the main reasons that you left because we weren't going to allow that. But we are willing to meet you a little bit closer to the middle because we've learned a thing or two. And Spow has more influence now than he did at that time of being a coach. And they're much more of peers now after the work they did during the Olympics. But the thing about playing second fiddle, like here LeBron James would be the point guard. Like, he would. run the offense here in a way that if he was playing with both Donovan Mitchell and James Harden as a

basketball fit, it would be the same thing that he was dealing with in Los Angeles, playing a ton off ball. And at the end of games, those guys are going to be the guy with the ball in their hands. The heat we specifically said need a wing playmaker who can get his own shot that's not Yannis or Bam. That's LeBron James. Is it safe to say that Miami would ease up this second go around the power dynamic is totally different. Part of the selling point to LeBron was you don't know how to win. We're going to teach you how. Now LeBron is proven. I know how to win without you guys. I'm an old man here. I'm helping you get into that conversation because let's be real, barring something totally

unforeseen. If the Miami Heat don't add a LeBron James, they got their work cut out for them, at least for the next half season or so. A main reason that LeBron left in 2014 was because the Heat wouldn't allow him to do everything that he wanted to do. And then, you know, years later, but he'd allow Jimmy Butler all of that and they're not going to allow LeBron? A couple of things on that front because the point that Jeremy is making when he was talking second fiddle,

he was doing that on the court. I was not. I was doing, he comes here, he's not, he's behind Janus. Like it's Janus's team. He's LeBron. Yeah, but he's already done this for Dwayne Wade in Miami.

That's not the part I'm talking about. The part I'm talking about is you guys thinking and him thinking, oh, it'll be different this time. Pat Riley's changed. No, he hasn't. No, he has not.

That rules us out. So what ends up... Pat better learn growing emotionally. What happens here is like the girlfriend coming back to the boyfriend who says he's changed in order to get her back. And then you're under contract

and then you're unhappy because the rule of, are a little tighter than they've been in Los Angeles and in Cleveland. You guys, I've told you all the stories about he's not allowed to just take the plane to Las Vegas with the team here. In a way, he was allowed in other places to just say, we're going somewhere else, I'm the star. There are things here that he would have to sacrifice, that he does not have to sacrifice in Cleveland.

But the fact that they kind of bent for Jimmy Butler the way they didn't for LeBron, that implies that Riley has changed maybe on that front a little. You guys say they kind of bent for Jimmy Butler, but they did what they did there reluctantly. Like whatever was done there was not done with their arms around Jimmy Butler. Hey, come on, let's do this together. And they got burnt. It was, yes, that's correct.

They made some concessions for Jimmy Butler reluctantly, and at the end it didn't buy them much of anything. You guys do understand, correct? The last 10 years, LeBron has been making the rules, and that probably changed a little bit with Don Chich, but that's about the only time in the last 10 years. Like, he went and got what he wanted in terms of freedom and championships by leaving in 2014.

And so I don't know what his happen. tight is if Miami's interested, Miami would like this to happen. If it does not happen, it will not be happening because of what I'm telling you, that LeBron doesn't want to sign up for something that is a less good story and comes with a whole lot more rules than would, that he'd have anywhere else that he played, anywhere else that he played. There's a lot of plugged in people that I'm talking to in the industry, far more plugged in than I am, that say this is a foregone conclusion that he's going to Cleveland and he's just stretching this out because it's It's fun to be talked about this way.

Dan Levitar. I don't think strange for me, but like Mike Ryan. Oh, boy. This is the Dan Levitar show. I think that that's what's happening too. Do you believe that that's, do you believe that that's what the nation at large is looking at here and saying that there's not any actual intrigue here?

It's just a play for attention. Reputably, though, Ethan Skolnik did report yesterday that Miami Heat have not been told that they are out of. of it. I mean, Utah Jazz probably not been told that they're out of it. No one's been told. I mean, Rich Paul is enjoying the promotion for his podcast. It's a fairly unusual thing, I would say, to go from 2010, you've got a televised special, an MVP in his prime is changing teams through free agency and changes the entire balance of power in the league, gives more power to the player, and also befriend somebody who now represents, I think it's 94 players

in the NBA and like 600 people overall, who also wants attention in Rich Paul, a fiancé of Adele, who wants the attention of having the sports platform to himself. And now you have an agent on his own podcast. Go ahead and show me all the examples you have of this in your lifetime. An agent on his own podcast with Max Kellerman going through the entire whiteboard of possibilities, is naming players, naming teams, just to bring attention to what it is that he's doing on his platform. It's just not something you see. It has no precedent in American sports, what Rich Paul is presently doing on his podcast with whatever this free period is to just grab publicity and

attention. It's because they'd never watch me before. Like, Rich Paul clearly watched everything I did and said, that's as good as content gets around LeBron. I need to take that and make it my own. Your whiteboard is empirically better than his whiteboard. Nobody does it better than me. Oil was a banger. I was going to say. Oil's really good, though. You can golf down here too. Come, but I put jazz. Nobody had the jazz up there. I think Mike's right, though. My favorite part is in parentheses, cronky. It's a flimsy whiteboard, and it doesn't. What is that on the lower left? What does it say? Brad and Tatum. Brad and Tatum. Okay, so Boston doesn't. Brad.

The order there, the order there, putting Brad in front of Tatum there for Boston. Look, this whiteboard is super limited. I mean, oil is doing some lifting there, but the rest is just an assortment of names and just a galaxy around LeBron. How about Spurs? What could be the selling point there? I don't know. Let's leave that one blank.

When I was looking at all the teams, though, that what would be a cool story, like him going to the Spurs to put them over, like that could be a nice story. Spurs. We'll get back to them. I do like on the top right, it's under Cleveland. You got garland, no garland, and there's a, you know, negative in parentheses. And then right above it, it's weems.

So it's just LeBron's friend is there. Weems. That's right. Getting back to the World Cup for a second, I was bummed that Mexico didn't advance. England is making the case and is not wrong that that that's a big, as big a road victory as England has ever had as a country going into that place and winning that way, where you're down to 10 men and you're fighting the last 36 minutes in a hugely hostile environment with 10 men against Mexico.

Mike, I saw that correct that last night is just the third loss in Stadium Azteca in 90 matches. In competitive matches, yeah. What the hell? No, and I've seen that place a little crazier because that's a more affluent. group of people, but once Mexico got that first goal, because it looked like for a 90-second stretch there, that England

was going to run away with this, and it might get ugly, because Mexico's not built for that. That goal from Quignanis was so great in terms of establishing, okay, we got a bangor here, and then the red card happens, and that place was vibrating, pulsating, and it was amazing, and a huge gut-check

victory. Second in a row, for a team that is often questioned in terms of, do you have the guts for this? Are you mentally tough enough for this? Because we know you have the talent, but can you push through the weight of that badge? What happened in Atlanta against D.R. Congo tested their medal.

That tested their minds, body, and spirit. Their position quite well here, now that they've answered those questions. That was awesome last night. I was watching my boys. We were so into that game. And the final, what, 25 minutes? It was just

a power play for Mexico. They had the ball in their offensive third for like the final 25 minutes straight chance after chance. It was awesome. Jordan Pickford, the goalie for England, was amazing in that game. Well, listen to Harry Kane, England's star.

If you can hear his voice, it's a little bit hoarse. And on the front end, I should tell you, he's talking about a player who injured himself, who wasn't playing, who broke his arm trying to jump over a railing. Well, Harry, huge congratulations. What a contest. What a win.

but I just firstly wanted to ask you what's happened over there by the England goal because there looks to be some concern. Yeah, Jordan, my voice is gone. Hendo just fell over there. I think it's okay. Just something to do with his arm. Okay, well, as for the performance, I think it says it all the fact that your voice has gone. That was some contest to watch.

What on earth was it like to play in? Yeah, it was a crazy game. We had to fight. We had to fight in something. I think. Yeah, I've just been singing there. I can't really talk. But yeah, all the occasion, the team, everything against us, we found a way. I was going to say, is that what pleases you the most of resilience today? Because even your penalty, a word on that as well, not the one you scored, the one you conceded.

What did you make of that? Yeah, I thought I got to the ball first. It was one of those days the ref gave a lot against us. And in the end it doesn't matter. So yeah, I'm happy. I'm going to try one more question if your voice holds out. What can this do for England going forward? You've got a quarter final in Miami against Norway to look forward to.

What can the England fans look forward to now? Well, just look at him here. Incredible. Unbelievable support. Ah, speechless. I can't even talk. Go and rest that voice. Rest up.

Thanks, Harry. Let's get the video of Jordan Henderson trying to just, you know, be athletic and climb over something and clearly just breaking his entire arm. Oh!