The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Local Hour: The Sports Equinox & A Horrifying Deadline (feat. "Levi McCathern")

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

"It's a friends and family plan..." Chris Cote is here with a tip of the cap to lead our crew toward the Sports Equinox Livestream tonight, but it could seemingly be interrupted by the end of the world as we know it. There's not really anything funny to say about it. Just... scary. SO LET'S TALK GIANNIS DRAMA! Today's cast: Dan, Zaslow, Chris, Jeremy, Mike, Roy, and Tony. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tony thinks he just soothed me by whispering in my ear, I'm going to be better today. Low bar. I thought to myself, as he said it, it's not possible to be worse. That's possible to be worse. But I'm going to be better, I promise, okay? I can't talk about later on for the live stream tonight. Today, though, for show, I'm going to be better. Well, today is an awkward day because things in the world are moving a little bit too fast to be sane.

And if you're walking around life, depressed or angry or scared because the world seems like it's on fire, we are solving it tonight by at the same time. And this has to be a live stream first in the history of sports media. I don't believe that anything this pioneering has ever existed. During an 8 p.m. deadline where the president of the United States is threatening to nuke a civilization at an appointed time. tonight, we're going to be watching the Marlins Heat and Panthers. That's a first in the history of the media. These things have to be planned out weeks in advance. We could not plan for an 8 p.m. war deadline.

We could not plan for the Panthers not being able to defend their trophy. We could not plan for the Miami Heat being a 10 seed. And we could not plan for the Marlins coming off of a shutout loss. I think you're short change in the heat a little bit because the C. season tie break is on the line with the Raptors. There are two games from the six, right? Like if they were to win out, they could get really good positioning and get you excited all over again, not that they're going to win out with two games against Toronto and Atlanta.

But again, 8 p.m. tonight, because this continues to escalate somehow, we are being run as a country by a totally deranged lunatic who needs to have the keys of the country taken away from him because he's going to get everybody killed. Here's the post from this morning. I don't know how else to sort of put plainly the lunacy of America behaving this way. That at 8 p.m. we're setting a lunatic deadline where we're just going to say we're going to nuke a civilization because the guy in charge is clearly crazy and out of control and somebody needs to put a stop to this because we are in great peril as a people.

That wasn't a statement. This was a statement from Donald Trump this morning. A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionary wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out tonight. Why is he treating this like American Idol? One of the most important moments in the long complex history of the world. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end. God bless the great people. People of Iran. This is, you know, a couple words after threatening to destroy the entire civilization.

So the Marlins, the Heat, and the Panthers is the live stream tonight. I'm going to try to be better for that one, too. We're going to start at 6.30 p.m. and then we're going to be on at 8 p.m. And the president is threatening to extinguish a civilization at an appointed time. But God bless them. The Panthers, the Heat, and the Marlins are what we'll be watching together at 8 p.m. A historic broadcast tonight. Cyclones also have a big one.

This is the Dan Levator show with the Stucats podcast. We've got a basketball championship in college basketball to talk about. Chris Cody, you're already in character because you're already tipping that cowboy hat. To the champs. You, all right, so that was the tip of the cap to the champs because you today are what? And I'm sorry about this. Jeremy, what were you yesterday? I never commented on the punishment you were paying.

Your voice was hoarse. You couldn't talk. And so we basically ignored you, but you addressed as something. What was the punishment you were paying? Randall Cobb. Okay. So you were a corn on the cob and it was the Randall Cobb punishment. Yeah, it wasn't a punishment.

It was self-imposed. I figured if I couldn't contribute with my voice, I would contribute visually. being literally corny. Yep. So, Chris, what are you doing today? I'm proving how much better I look than Levi MacArthur, the attorney. Wow. Kukinakua.

That's really good. That is pretty good. And, yeah, that is excellent. So much better. You're not, but you're not serving a punishment either. Maybe 25 years younger. I think I was wrong, saying 20. You don't look that much younger, but you do look better.

You look cleaner. I assume that that suit is. What are you looking at? You look cleaner than that man, but not necessarily... You look better, but not that much younger. Can I ask, seriously... What's up? How is that Puka Nakua's attorney?

How? He went to law school? Like, I don't want to judge a book by its cover, but... How's that his attorney? You want this guy on your side? No, I don't think so. I do want him on my side, at least. Maybe not representing me, but I want him on my side.

You don't want this guy against you, and I'm sure he's an excellent attorney. My guess is, well, instead of guessing, please... I'm sure he's very expensive. And my guess is he gets stories in the press. And my guess is that he is one of the most successful attorneys anywhere to be found in that region. Yeah, he is both the Dallas Cowboys lawyer and Jerry Jones family's personal lawyer. Okay, now I'm in. You instantly think more highly of him.

Yeah, yeah, you have to when you hear that. No, but you don't. The thing about that is, have you not noticed that our jurist system is a clown show? Like, have you not noticed that our government systems are failing throughout and that the judges can be jerry-rigged and you don't actually have to be the smartest? You could just be the guy who's next to Jerry Jones. On macathernlaw.com, it says Levi's down-to-earth approach makes him uniquely effective both in the courtroom and in media engagements, where he's often called upon to represent clients in high visibility matters. It does look down to earth. I'll get back to that in a second because I can't talk about this guy enough because Zaz is correct.

How do you hire that guy? Because that guy can't get up in the morning, dress like that, go to work and be a lawyer, and consider himself looking like a serious person. It's not down to earth. He looks ridiculous. It doesn't mean he's not a good lawyer. He looks absurd. You can't walk that way into a courtroom.

It's the cowboy hat. I mean, that guy so obviously owns a car dealership. He makes cheesy commercials. We'll get back to that in a second. We have serious things going on in America at AP. PM tonight, we have a deadline with Iran because we've got a lunatic running this country and he's threatening to extinguish a civilization and we will be doing a live stream of Marlins, Heaton Panthers. That's what we're doing at 8 p.m. tonight. What we're doing right now is checking in on a

Shams report as some details are coming forth for the first time, really, about everything that's happening with Janus and Milwaukee and what Shams is saying is the most toxic, through quotes, is saying is the most toxic environment that there is in the NBA. The freshly reported details are confirming that the offer for Janus from the Miami Heat was the most seriously considered, that the heat and Bucks felt like they were pretty close to a deal less than 24 hours before hand and then ownership stepped in and a different decision was made and then everything changed in 24 hours, a deal that centered around Tyler Hero, Kalil Ware, and draft picks. Now, what else was interesting in that story before we get to other matters locally here Zazlo, because this

Shams, this is an interesting space that Shams is traveling in, right? Because he's an information broker and he's also a journalist, but his sources clearly very often are agents with a story to tell. And so you get a distorted version of the truth from an angle, depending on what his relationship is, with which camp. So this doesn't represent the truth. It just represents the truth through Janice's camp as far as I can tell from reading it. But Shams also writes now. He's one of the few still writing. Mike, where are those newspapers you found?

You never found a Miami Herald yesterday, but you found, I don't know what the Epoch Times is. What is the Epoch Times write about? That is basically a once a week national newspaper, I think, and the Miami New Times. My plan of going to a hotel concierge did work to get a newspaper. just not today's paper. They told me over at the Intercontinental, which is a serious hotel. That's very surprising. It's where the Indiana Hoosiers stayed. They told me that they stopped having the daily Miami Herald delivered around COVID. I did find where you could reliably count on being able to pick up today's paper, though. This was after the fact. If you want

today's hard copy paper, your best bet is a local Publix. And I did bump into a payphone on my walk back. A working payphone? A working pay phone with a dial tone right around this corner. This may be a stupid question. I hesitate to ask it because I think it is so stupid. Are there kids who don't know what a dial tone is? Definitely. Like that the dial, so because the dial tone, if I say dial tone to a kid of what age, that child is looking at me and saying, I don't know what you're talking about. What is a dial tone?

I'd say 12. Because Mike Ryan finding a pay phone, a landline. surprises me. I would have thought that those would have gone extinct. Him not being able to find a newspaper, a daily newspaper, makes me profoundly sad for both the state of journalism and the state of our country, I would say, as more than ever, we need a strong press to challenge the lunacy happening at the top of someone trying to break the government and make America his seventh bankruptcy. And now brings us to the brink of something that is war, but they're not saying his war. They don't want to say his war because then they're going to be accused of crimes that are

war crimes and beyond that. We've got a president who's guilty of all of the major crimes. Military operation crime. You understand what is happening in this country right now and it is scary to all of us. But the Schaum's report as it relates to journalism in our small little playpen. What do you believe? Who do you trust? What's the reporting that's real? What are the facts that's real when everyone is compromised in some way? And as, you read that story, you can tell that's coming from Janus' camp. Yes or no? Almost all of it is coming from Janus. Absolutely. Especially when you read stuff like, because, you know, so this part I find interesting after back and forth discussions,

including a meeting in Greece in late July, the New York Knicks became the only team that Janus said he would play for other than Milwaukee. And then you have, quote, Janus has wanted to handle this professionally by being very upfront with the team. One source with direct knowledge of this situation, said this could have been a happy resolution, but instead might end up being a nasty breakup. And yeah, it's obviously coming from Janus's side because I'm sorry, handle it professionally. Like, you're not handling it professionally if you're telling the team, hey, there's only

one other team that I would go play for. Like, I understand the perspective of Milwaukee. You know, you want to do right by Janus because, hey, he did so much for you. You won a championship in 2021. but it kind of works both ways a little bit, doesn't it? Like, there has to be like a mutual respect between Janus for the team and everything they've done for him. I mean, Dan, you've seen these highlights of his two brothers running around the court together? These are not NBA players.

All right. Like, Milwaukee's done a lot for Janus as well. And it doesn't seem like there's respect being reciprocated. Oh, this is an interesting one, though, when you get into that. Because quiet as it's kept, that part he just said is ridiculous, like truly absurd. Those jobs are really coveted. is fighting for the jobs at the end of that bench. That's a friends and family plan.

They work hard. Those are not NBA players. But that's a friends and family plan. That, look, man, that's Janus being in a different country, being a superstar with monster temptations at every turn, surrounding himself with the closest thing to family that can be to protect. Look, Janus is worth more than what the bucks are. Like, I know he's not worth more, but Janus, as a face,

right now, I take him out of Milwaukee. I have gutted your franchise. I've gutted you. Miles Turner is going to be an albatross for years. Like that, when I say he's more valuable, the franchise has its value, but the bucks become irrelevant the moment that he leaves, and will be there for a very long time, even if they had Khalil Ware and Tyler here, which is the best that they were going to do in this incarnation.

But when it comes to how it is that these breakups work, there is no good is no good way ever to do this. This has not been done well by anybody. There have been a great many different forms. No one knows how to do this correctly because not everyone's going to agree with how any of this is done. So now we enter the spin cycle of, as far as optics go, this person's story is crazy in terms what a star he's become in a different language. Okay, we don't really allow that in this country very much. Your commercial spokesmen speak English. They're the ones who connect with the audience. Yokic is excellent, as best as I've ever seen. Not a real star in this country. Basketball star. Basketball star. This is a foreigner who is a superstar in

this country. That franchise has protected him by keeping his family there. His family will move with him. The next place will have to do for him. Man, Dragich got this done. Like, there's a real power center. They change, they change the worth of your franchise. This person moving. The reason, LeBron's underpaid is because every city he's come to. He has increased its value while salary capped the economy around the stadium by tons of money. There are how many guys in this league who have this kind of value, this kind of interest, this kind of story is worth writing about them right now. Probably like half a dozen, maybe. They are the league. The league isn't whatever they're going to put in Seattle. This league made a star league. They've got

a star problem. Your franchises aren't your franchises. He's Milwaukee. When he's he leaves Milwaukee, the Bucks cease to matter. So in that sense, that's why I'm saying the respect doesn't seem to be reciprocated. Because what you're saying is true. When he leaves, that franchise is going to cease to matter for a very long time. So why can't it be let's both come up with a resolution that's good for each side? Instead of, yonness, it only matters what I want here. Like, shouldn't we allow the Bucks to talk to other teams besides the New York Knicks?

I don't leave you floundering forever. The other night I was staying in. At least that was a plan. Then the text from my buddy Eagle Eye comes in. Mike, we've got the games on. I say, yeah? I grab a pack of Miller Light and immediately my plan's gone. Now it's playoff basketball.

Every possession feels huge. Baseball's on another screen and I somehow care about that too. Everybody's got takes flying. Nobody's watching just one thing. And we're all way more into it than we, ever expected. It was one of those nights that you take a sip, you look around and you think, yeah, this was the right move. That's why I reach for Miller Light. It's clean, refreshing, easy to drink, root for taste with simple ingredients, just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs, the original

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This is the Dan Levitar show with the Stugats. Here's what's funny about how many different ways this gets contaminated, though, by the bias of whatever it is or whoever it is that's looking at it. Whether it's Shams, whether it's the media, whether it's the betrayed fan. All the personality types, because Janice cares about his image, about the optics, how things look, how things look in the commercials. The only guy who actually came close to getting this right, not fighting with the franchise, is the personality type of Russell Westbrook. That guy figured out how to get out as triple double MVP of the league. Oh, they're losing anyway. Oh, Russell needs a new home.

It's okay. Let's break up. What are the odds you would have gotten five years ago or 10 years ago? on Westbrook being the only one to be able to get this right. It's pretty amazing. Jeremy and I were laughing about it. He was left at the altar by Paul George. And so OKC fans kind of understood his plight.

Yeah, it was KD that leaves Oklahoma City, right? And Paul George ends up in Oklahoma City. And when he wants to be traded to the Clippers, after extending an OKC because of Russell Westbrook, that sets up for SGA. Then you have all of the. these big men that he made look better over the years. Guys like Enos Cantor and Stephen Adams and Sergei Baca at different points of his career

who all gather picks. Then Russell Westbrook himself was flipped for Chris Paul and two more first round picks. And Chris Paul at the time was a leader for a young team that was needed. I hear the hurt in your voice still. You guys, he's playing hurt though. You guys can hear the knot in his hamstring as he tries to run the basis. I thought the pain in his voice was describing how a franchise turns the page and rebuilds. Jeremy, I am looking forward to you being your strongest self this evening during the live stream

when we are going to be eager about the Marlins with you if we don't have to go off the air at 8 p.m. Because America has done something horrible and criminal. Well, don't worry. At 8 p.m. will be going to the your song, Your Choice selection. Setting up the songs we'll be able to listen to later in our program, as well as our first look at the lebitard AF merch alert. Also we'll have a 50-50 raffle. But save your voice, please, because it's a...

not doing well. It's not doing much better than it was yesterday and I hear the hurt and it's distracting. I can't. Like, I don't know if this is happening to anybody else, but you were making very good points. I couldn't understand because I heard the knot in your hamstring. I found it sexy. Yeah, I've been told it's sexy. Okay, but that's not what I'm telling you. It may be, teach their own. It may be indeed sexy, but what it can't be as audio is distracting to me when I don't understand what he's saying because I'm listening to the knotness hamstring. Thank you. for telling me that it's fair how it is that I try to do an audio program. Speaking of Janus's brothers playing for the team,

who's the star in the league who thought he was good enough to get his sibling or cousin on the team? And they're like, hey, sorry, buddy. You know Janus. I'm picturing Tyrese Halliburton being like, hey, guys, I got a good cousin. You don't know. You don't know how funny it is that the media got so mad because LeBron put his kid on the team when Janus's his entire family is on the payroll.

Like, it's an absurdity. And who's the guy around the league that's like, I want to do this? and the teams like that. Look, I'm assuming the Yokic brothers have some sort of management position ambassadors or something. Wasn't there a controversy involving one of the Yokish brothers this last weekend? Didn't one of them try to fight an old man or something? Dan, the one, I mean, both of them are obviously super big. But one of them is like significantly bigger than the other one.

Just a, like he looks like the mountain in Game of Thrones. Like an incredibly giant scary man. That is correct. He's about 300 pounds and you don't see but 5% body fat on him. He seems like he's made all out of his skull, that the skull just runs the entire base of the skeleton, and it's 300 sturdy, muscled pounds. 350, and he's about 610, 350 pounds, all tatted up.

All complete muscle. I'm not going to try and say his name because I'm trying to be better today. Okay. How's that working out so far? Great. Okay, okay. I'm looking forward to your contributions this evening. Again, when we're doing a live stream unlike any, I believe, ever done in sports history, we're going to be watching the Marlin the Heat and the Marlins the Heat and the Panthers as there's a deadline for the world literally burning. You may remember at one point, Chris, J.R. Smith's brother was signed by the Knicks. Wow. Now we're talking. I would have thought that would have got to know. Jeremy just whispered to me because he wants to

win the argument while you guys are doing show and I'm trying to listen to you, people in the chat are saying my voice does sound sexy. It does? I see you put it in the chat. Yeah. Put it on the poll. Yeah. Put it on the poll. Does Jeremy sound even sexier than usual?

That's what I asked. And guess what? They all said yes. You would represent it as the chat is saying when I saw you get in the chat. I provoked it. I asked the question. I was mad at Dan and I said, do I sound sexy or do I sound sexy? And the answer was sexy.

I hear the knot in his hamstring. Yeah. There it is. Like he was making great. points. I heard like Paul George and Chris Paul and I was like, uh, it sounded like he was, like he was wildly informed. It sounded like,

you don't call me that. But I was distracted because he was hobbling down the baseline. And so everything he was saying, I'm like worried about his health because something doesn't sound right. From that stories, Zaslow, the most interesting details. And I want to ask you again,

framing it in the journalism of our times. He's writing it. That still means something, okay? But he can't do that on television. The, the, what he just wrote there where it's reported, it's framed, that takes many hours to do. That's not just getting on television and gas bagging for, for 90 seconds. He's got to do substantive reporting. That takes him all night. That takes him several days to put together the information there. He doesn't just spit it out. He's not a typewriter. What is in there that is meant like just, I want you guys to watch this part. Janus just got his guy to do the story. Janice is at the height of the fight with the union and the league's going to investigate.

Janice is getting out. This is what it looks like at the beginning when you go get your gatekeeper, you tell him the story, and you put Shams to work on, tell my story to protect my family's economy. Like, the machine has kicked to work here. And Shams passes as a journalist. Journalist or not a journalist? No, he's a journalist. Okay, because, but we've got some...

Adam Schaefter is guilty of some breaches here, journalistically, that would make somebody in a previous time no longer be allowed to be a journalist because the information guys are compromised. Shams is telling a story here on behalf of this entire agency. This might as well be a press release. It's got details in there. But what I'm telling you is this is an orchestrated thing meant to, hey, Yonis still has the commercials.

Let's go protect all this. Shams, go write this story. Well, but there is some other stuff. like, you know, you have this one quote here where the crux of the issue is feeling Janus doesn't want to be here on any given day one team source set. Like quotes like that are not coming from Janus's agent. Most of the story is Janus's agent. Oh, listen, I'm not, this is the thing about the dance that these guys are doing.

I, look, man, I've been, I've sold my soul to the entertainment vehicle over the last 20 years where I'm watching what's happening here in journalism. And this is the best there is right now. He's got all the contacts, all the sources. I did not believe that this job could be done by anybody in the world the way that Woage did it. Like I literally thought there was no other personality anywhere walking the globe, seeing everyone who's come through journalism as uniquely qualified to be as cutthroat, as nuts, as 20 hours a day talking to every single person as Woge.

But this guy is that. This guy learned at that tree and I didn't think anybody can do that. and he writes the stories. And when I tell you that right now, Janice and his family need protection on the optics of however this goes next when nobody gets this right but Westbrook, what do you do with the information

that this person is writing a story that I'm telling you is part of an orchestrated plan to clean up whatever it is that Janus needs cleaned up here. And it doesn't mean that he can't put in the other side here and there as well. But that was a wildly flattering article to Janus.

Oh, you think I don't think so. I didn't think it was very flattering to Janus. Can you clear up for me what you think is very flattering to Janus? I thought the agent wanted it to be flattering. Yeah, I didn't seize on that. I was interested in the machinations of the deal, but I didn't come out reading like, oh, Janus looks really good here. I think it looks bad.

Okay, so go ahead. Explain to me why you think that it looks bad as they're trying to... Okay, so you're not making the jump that I am making, that the team of Antitacompo and Yanis are in the mode right now preparing for and in the middle of a public relations fight that they don't have the apparatus to execute themselves so they have to summon somebody who wants the story and then give it to the person who's going to disseminate the story

to give it more reach than it would have under any other circumstances. As you can color in the lines here, I don't doubt that that's the intention. I do believe that. Yeah, that's PR spin 101. And I think that it's backfired. Yeah, but they didn't control the narrative. They're subject to whatever Shams applies to it. But I also think they think their story makes them look sympathetic, and I think they're wrong.

Yeah, it's just a miscalculation. Go ahead. You think that they're wrong because the audience is predisposed, I believe, to think that the money-grubbing athlete is doing the wrong thing, behaving the wrong way. when in a system that doesn't allow that athlete the freedom to ever do this with a way that will be met with grace from a public that's not already ready to be outraged. Janus is a sweet person. He got to that superstardom the best ways. His story is crazy. The way he performed in the finals was nuts.

He won a championship and that buys you forever. He won a championship for a market and did it the right way. As all the other guys were fighting each other, he did it as the one guy. You could get me Middleton and Drew Holiday, but it's going to be me. I'm going to be the star. I'm going to do it the old-fashioned way. It's not going to take three guys. It's going to take one.

And his story makes it so that he's a bigger star than Yokic, who's a better player. It's a bigger star because he's in the commercials. He let us get to know him. Books have been written about him and his connection to the city. The details of which are him jogging through the streets to practice because he came from such humble beginnings that he just ran to the practice facility, didn't have a car, and would run miles to the facility because he could run for miles, turned himself into an amazing player when he was super raw and never considered to be this. Like, it worked his way to that.

Janice, I know we see it now and we're like, wow, what amazing gifts. Yes, of course, wasn't drafted in a way that would suggest that people knew that that was going to be this. Nobody knew that was going to be this. Story has worked his way to it. Wins the championship, perfectly humble, pillar for everything you want. Here come the commercials. Here comes the connection to Milwaukee. Here comes the parade. Milwaukee hasn't felt this good as a city in a long time. Hey, time to break up. Middleton, go to the wizards. Drew, get out of here,

win it for somebody else. Hey, Janice gets left behind and he's waving his hands. Get me help, get me help. Miles Turner. Get me help. Get me help. Ooh, they got you Damien Lillard. Ouch, that one hurts. That's the one that's supposed to work. All this plays out differently. If Dame Lillard comes into camp in shape and doesn't get injured because he was sad, because this hurts when you've got a genuine connection with the city,

Damien Liller gets there emotionally broken and then physically broke. Like got their fat because whatever that stress was, didn't want to leave the city, goes back to the city now because these connections matter to people like Janice. I don't believe that's fraudulent. Like I don't believe, I don't believe that Janus ever thought that the love with Milwaukee was going to be temporary. I obviously the player is by far the most important in this scenario.

But why don't the Bucks get any credit? Like the Bucks did draft this kid who no one thought was going to be this. He was a project, no doubt. Huge project. They helped nurture that. Like, if we want to talk about heat culture and the way the heat developed players, like the Bucks, at very least helped Janus get to the place that he got to. The Bucks did get pieces, including trading for guys like Drew Holiday,

and helped him become a champion. The Bucks put his family on the team. I'll tell you who wouldn't have done that, the heat. I mean, if LeBron James had brothers that weren't embe, players, they wouldn't have been on the Miami Heat. Not so sure. LeBron tried that. Look, this is known Shabazz Napier. This is known within

heat circles, all the things LeBron and his camp wanted. Look, they were right to want them. Why wouldn't they want them? Give us a ton of season tickets. We're coming to Miami. Of course, they knew what they were worth. They were trying to change and shake the system and get the skyboxes for themselves

so that they could turn Miami into the party that I'm sure Los Angeles became in some ways, where his kids on the roster. Don Lebatard. What is the worst part of the life? Stugats. The worst part of the life of what? This is the Dan Lebatar show with the Stugats.

Says, I read this article and I just see more of the same. More of the same half measures from Janus's camp, who never really actually has the balls to say he wants to leave. That's the interesting part, right? If he would have said that before the trade deadline, I don't think Bucks fans would have been angry. I think they would have understood. And now we have this story and all this.

Yes, we have the whole drama that it's still, it's still unclear. Like, okay, come back and play. You don't like that we're waving the white flag. Oh, you don't want to do the things necessary to actually come back. He just wants to play with his brothers, which Amin told us yesterday, and that's a nice sentiment. But can you give the team a little bit of credit? They need to watch you practice one day. At every turn with this Janus drama, there are obvious questions to ask, well, then why aren't you going in practice and working your way back here?

This is so important to you if you take such offense to waving the white flag. But he's along for the ride. It seems like this is part of his plan, them tanking, because him on the court helps them win, and he doesn't want to be on the court. It wasn't just the playing with his brothers. It was also, apparently, according to the sources within this article, that not playing 41 games cost him a significant bonus in his Nike contract. Okay, like he's been hurt.

Well, right. But if he wants to come back and get to that amount of games, and the bucks are telling him, no, we don't want to clear you, no, we don't want to clear you, no, we don't want to clear you. There are multiple reasons he wants to be back that have nothing to do with competition. The team claimed, hey, we want you to play three on three, and he wouldn't do that as a part of coming back. Yeah, they need to see him practice before it's just a show up from not even play.

Hey, guys, I'm ready to play. Put me in the game. Again, it's always the most obvious follow-up and the entire story from Janus's camp. It just cracks. Okay, you say that, but we really are. Over here is the biased. Everyone is gathered around, tired of the athlete leaving. Like, who likes this?

This is all broken. And it's like, this was a lovely relationship. And now it's all busted up. And he loved Milwaukee. And now he's going to leave hurt. And the league is investigating the team. And again, he wants to play and isn't being allowed to, for whatever his reasons, whether it's the Nike contract or he really cares about winning three more games.

One correction. He says he wants to play. Okay. I think scrutiny should be applied when they're very clear and obvious benchmarks to clear here that he is... Practice one day. He's just not interested in. He says he wants to play and here is a detail offered up for your perusals on. I don't know what the amount was, but he wants a bonus from Nike.

That sounds like the truth because it's just cold and no one better. Just follow that trail. Follow that trail at all times. I don't know what the bonus is. Janus will be okay without the bonus. I was going to say, plus he'll be all right. He's one of the biggest sellers for Nike. He doesn't play 41 games and all of a sudden people stop buying Yanis shoes.

No way. Bolt prediction. He'll be made whole. Yeah, I would imagine Nike takes care of that. Okay, and that is all well and fine. The detail is in the article. Why? Why is the detail in the article?

Why do you know? Because it helps make him look good. Yeah, he wants to paint an argument. Which is what Janus's camp went into this doing, and yet the entire thing collapses when you will a modicum of scrutiny to it, which has been the deal this entire season. This is a breakup. Janus is especially struggling with how to do it right. It's beneficial to the bucks that he actually doesn't play because they know how good they can be when Janus is on the court, and they don't want to be good this year because they want a higher pick. This is just all posturing and half

measures, and anybody with a brain can understand what's going on here. It's a guy that wants to be well like this is Dwight Howard all over again. That's a good comp. It is Dwight Howard all over again. He does not have the guts to do what is necessary to force his way out because that burns some bridges and he doesn't want to be unpopular even if it's just for a few months. But this is this one's god this is so interesting right. I watched Arod sort of collapse under the weight of this and rebuild himself from there. But the optics on who do I have to be so Americans will love me. The optics on not who am I and then America loves me. And he'd walk around and he'd ask Michael Jordan and he'd ask Cal Ripkin Jr. What do, like, how do I shake hands? What do I need to do

so that America will love me? This guy's been very good at the optics until now, right? Like there's that I remember the flames climbed real high on Dame Lillard when we all love Dame. And then it was like, we're sniffing around because it's near the money and the relationship isn't as pure as I thought it was. Oh, I thought that was love. No, you're the businessman. Only you get to be the businessman. The customer, the media, everyone here is aligned against this guy being able to do this correctly. Because you guys are wildly full of shit if you think somebody who comes out and just says, yeah, I want to leave, get my ass out of here, isn't going to be perceived as arrogance and him shaking the system. That guy doesn't care about.

team when everything he's shown you optically and has been trying to prove to America for the last 13 years is do you know how much I care about team it's not about me it's about us I'm the humble superstar I'm the best but I'm pure it's all about team that's what he wants people to believe no doubt but we know and we know from the summer of reporting how serious he was in his flirtation with the New York Knicks he I have no doubt how important it is to young honest, that people have a good opinion of him. And he is afraid to go all in on fully requesting a trade and being that bad guy because he doesn't want to navigate what few weeks that might be in the new space before everybody forgets about it. This is a less bad opinion that people will

have of him than the prospect that you're telling him to do. That would go more poorly for him than this. Right. In terms of maybe Milwaukee, in the eyes of the basketball world, he's a chump. But that relationship matters to him. Can that relationship? Is that relationship allowed to be real or is there always going to be a business transaction? It's always going to be real. And even if he forces his way out, he can open up a car dealership in Milwaukee whenever he wants, provided he waits six weeks and the fan base gets over it. On top of that, Dan, like, is not the humble and his humility nature just part of the ego?

Right? Like, you're going to tell me Janus has zero ego whatsoever? No, man, like this is part of who he is. He's the alpha top tier athlete on the planet. And the way that he's built is like nobody else. his ego is hurt right now and the way that he fixes is by being humble that's got to feed into it. Okay but

what I would just tell you is the way he got to be a superstar in America through all the obstacles I just said is because it was always well camouflaged whatever his ego was that got him to excellent always was shrouded in the humility of this guy's not one

of the assholes he's not one of the arrogant ones we're going to allow him to be face of the league for a little while here because he's one of the good guys just like we made Steph one of the good guys, and it's because he's hidden that from us. Like, yes, you do not win the championship coming back from what I thought was a career-ending injury, unless you are an assassin of ego who knows you're better than everyone who you're playing against. That is a cutthroat.

That's a cutthroat buzzsaw. Like, that guy is absolutely an ego monster in that furnace will bite anyone's face who comes at him with that kind of ego. But he wants it to look to America like he's sweet. Yes. There's no, we don't have our wires crossed here. What's going to happen this summer is he's going to get to position himself. He's like, look, the franchise is going in a different direction. They have this lottery pick.

I wanted to play. Things didn't work out. And he's got to get to play up to whatever narrative. And he'll do all the profile pieces. And you'll get to smile and take out a huge article in the newspaper. He'll get his way. And it takes time. But I do think that people are right to call BS on it as it's happening.

You guys are just mad because he nuked it. Like everything that's happening there. I'm mad because it's like Dwight Howard Phoney's stuff. We all know what he wants. But you guys are mad here because the other detail of the story, the one that Miami cares about is this was 18 hours from done. Yeah. Like this was a – Yeah.

No, I'm mad about that in the Kalshi stuff, no doubt. Because he's taking – he's actively perpetuating this trade drama. Meanwhile, he has a minority's sake in a prediction market. Adam Silver's all over it. Don't worry. That's an – you have to admit that all of that is an amazing evolution of the superstar story. In the places where you say, well, Janice has got a – enough. There ain't no enough. These guys are competing on money the way that they're competing on

the court. Like, if Nike takes, if Nike takes $1,000 from Janus, someone's in his family, he's going to notice. Another place where I judge him is, Janus, you're in the prime of your career, right? We don't know how long that frame at that level is going to maintain itself. And the optics meant so much to you that you'd rather the good optics than force your way out and compete for another ring and that we judge everybody in that sport on rings and he just didn't want to have that mentality here he'd rather have the optics there ain't no enough you sound like chris looks the other night i was staying in at least that was a plan then the text from my buddy eagle eye comes in mike we've got the games on i say yeah i grab a pack of miller light and immediately my plan's gone

now it's playoff basketball every possession feels huge baseball's on another screen and on another screen and I somehow care about that too. Everybody's got takes flying. Nobody's watching just one thing. And we're all way more into it than we ever expected. It was one of those nights that you take a sip, you look around and you think, yeah. This was the right move.

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