The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - NFL Schedule Release + Top 5 Games To Look Forward To | Local Hour

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

"I have a pact with a friend. If we both live until 90, we're gonna do heroine."Last night, the silliest thing in sports took place: the NFL schedule release. Which social media team nailed their release video? The whole gang is here to tell us, while Tony tells us which games on the schedule he is most excited for. Plus, Myles Turner of the Milwaukee Bucks took some shots at Doc Rivers and Giannis Antetokounmpo on the latest episode of his podcast with Breanna Stewart. What does this say about Doc and Giannis as leaders, and where Giannis could end up in the future?Today's Cast: Zaslow, Dameshek, Chris, Roy, Tony, Mike Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's back now. Football, that's right. Schedule release yesterday. Everybody, we did it. We made it to Friday. Let's give it up for Friday. Give it up a Friday. There you go. Dave Damashek, of course, joining us from out on the West Coast.

Hello, Dave. How are you today? Zaslow, first of all, congratulations. A nice little write-up on you in awful announcing. Good to see you get some flowers there. And yes, like the football season, 2026, I'm born and new. I gave myself a new haircut for this occasion. And now I'm ready to launch into 2026 football in five months. And in between, I hate to start off on a sour note, everybody. But I looked up this morning and realized it's just about all over. Yes, we can make snarky remarks about the schedule release of the NFL. But after a few more NHL and NBA games, we got nothing but baseball.

Okay. Hold that thought for a second. I know Mike Ryan's going to jump in. Hold that thought for a second, Dave. You gave yourself a haircut? I did. Yeah. Since COVID, two major events.

I haven't worn denim jeans since COVID. And I've been cutting my own hair since that event. All right. Now I want to ask about that. Why have you not worn denim jeans since COVID? What is the correlation there? It wasn't really an act of choice. It just is something that happened.

And I looked up a couple years after the fact and realized, you know what? Then denim jeans have been sitting on the shelf for quite, some time and I went back in my brain and realized it was during COVID. You know, remember, all rules were off. You know, as we get a half decade away from COVID, Zaslow, can you look the man in the mirror and say that there weren't some benefits to it? I'm not trying to diminish the real life consequences, the heavy consequences. But for your life, did you gain something from the experience? I kind of did. I didn't mind sitting around a lot in the house. People lamented like, I can't go out. I was like, I can't go out.

Terrific. I gained weight. That's it. That's the only thing I gave. How much? I don't know. I'm not one that steps on the scale on a daily basis, but I know that that is certainly what I gained during COVID. You start hitting the bottle?

Oh, of course. We did so much drinking. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So much alcohol. Did you have a rule? Did you have a rule? No.

I don't start until five or anything like that. Oh, you know what? See, that's an interesting question. question, actually, okay, because there have certainly been times from, okay, I'm only going to drink on the weekends, all right? And then the weekend quickly turned into, okay, well, the weekend's obviously also Friday. So now we're doing Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But then it's like, you know what, when I was in college, Thursday night was a big drinking night, all right? You go out on Thursday. So now we're doing most of the week we're drinking. And then it just turned into, you know what if I feel like drinking, I'm a drink. well it's funny because i've been saying for about 20 years now that i have future dave isn't going to be

living for much i'll live vicariously through my kids that's why i had them because i'm vain i want to get something from it and i suspect that when i'm old i'll just live through them um financially and otherwise but also i used to say when i turn 80 all bets are off that's when the heroin starts. But then I moved it up to 75 a few years ago. I'm thinking now 65 years of age. 65 years of age I start taking the spike. How say you?

Okay, I thought I was the only one. Well, me and my friend. And now Dave is doing the same thing. I have a pact with a friend that if we both live until 90, we're going to do heroin. I didn't know that that's something that other people have. Did you make that pact with Dan? because he has this take, too. But no.

Yeah, really? He wants to become a huge heroin guy. I mean, Dave has the take also. I did not know this. William as Burroughs, Zaslo and Damacheck, and Lovatars, welcome to the party, too, to our heroin den. Me and my buddy have a plan that when we get in our 70s,

we're going to go to the horse track every day. So you're just going to be normal. You're just going to become your dad. Okay, now, Dave, back to the hair. How are you cutting your own? Like, you got scissors in the back. That's how well. I'm doing it well is the answer. As you can plainly say, okay, the wife gets very upset. She's always got it. I don't know who she thinks appointed her to be the negative Nancy

about everything. But she's always like, she's like, oh, you guys, you're going to Miami? Oh, no, you have to go to a professional barber and get that fixed. Look at what you did your hair. And I say, I can't see what I did. I can only see the front. And that's all anybody sees anyway. Who cares? I'm not a three-dimensional person anymore. All you're seeing is, this punum staring at you. Who cares what's in the back there? It's an afterthought to me, literally and figuratively. Apparently, I don't do a great job on the back. It's hard. I think, I think the results are in. This looks pretty good, right? It looks like shit. I do my own hair. Please. I do my own. I do it myself. Does that surprise that? That I believe. Yeah, I do it myself.

How would we know with that hat? Well, you could just imagine, all right? So, yesterday, the Dolphins schedule came out. That's right. A very big to do. At 8 o'clock last night, the Miami Dolphins and the rest of the NFL.

They released their schedule. And, I mean, I look at this, and I'm, you know what? I got three wins here. Oh, man, it's brutal. I got three. I'm looking at three. You should have heard, Dave,

you should have heard Chris Cody's rationale as we're looking at the Dolphids schedule before the show starts. He thinks that week one game at Vegas, huge tone setter. Because if they don't, if the dolphins lose that game, that one, if they lose that game at Vegas, you're staring at a two-win season. And I piped up, I said, if they win that game, then you're staring at a three-win season? Like, what's a difference here?

If they win that game, they're looking at a standard bad four-five win season. you come out of the gates one and oh against Las Vegas, even though Las Vegas is not good. You lose that game against a bad Las Vegas team. It's just like, this is going to be awful. They're not going to win a single game against anyone that's decent. They have two games against the Jets. They're like, all right, they got to win those. And you know they're just going to split those.

This is a two-win team. Big game week one, Dave. I mean, in the copycat league and what have you most recently seen, you know that the team that represented the AFC in the most recent Super Bowl, in week one lost to the Raiders. And I don't know, I'm trying to think of what happened with the Raiders the rest of the way. I don't think it went real well, except that it yielded them Fernando Mendoza, who the last time we saw him was beating Miami in a big game.

And now in week one, who is Fernando playing? Chris, can you say that the Raiders are bad when the Dolphins are worse? Can you look at a team that the team is better than the team that you root for and be like, they're bad? But I'm just, if you're the Dolphins, you look at that Raiders game. I get it. Raiders are looking at it like this is a great week one game. I'm not saying, you know, both teams think this is a winnable game.

And I'm just saying you got to, this is just a tone setter for the season. The Raiders and Dolphins are two of five teams in the entire NFL. I think the other ones are Arizona, Tennessee, and the Jets. Those five teams right there, no national TV games. Good. None. No national TV. See, the sketch release is stupid to me.

We've known all the teams they're going to play. We know if they're home or away. We just haven't known exactly what week they're playing. Okay, fine, whatever. I don't care. The one thing that I did like when I was a kid that I liked about the schedule coming out was, okay, how many games are the dolphins playing on Monday night football? Like, that was such a big deal to me because that meant the rest of the country is going

to get to see how good my team is, you know? And, you know, my father would be able to buy us maybe one, tickets for one game a season. I want to go to Monday night football. That's the game I want to go to. But now, who cares about this schedule release? I can't remember zero. Like, even the dolphins who have been bad forever,

they have one Sunday night game. And then now they don't have 30. You know, they've gone away from every team gets Thursday. Dolphins don't even have a Thursday night game, which is kind of good, I guess. Good, good. You know, I didn't remember until moments before I was on ESPN last night, so I happened to be thinking about this.

And I didn't remember until moments before the schedule came out. Oh, yeah. This is when all the teams, their social media departments, they make the videos, and they put the videos out on Twitter. And it's like, all right, somebody's going to have to do an apology because they're going to be the ones that had Tyree Kill and handcuffs, you know. And all right, then there's going to be another team. It's like the big winner. Oh, my God, you were so funny and so creative. So that I do like a little bit, but I didn't see the dolphins.

Like what did the, Chris, you know what the dolphins did? Did I did not see that. The dolphins did a thing where the players were pulling up to the facility and it was just like, oh, no, this is intense. And the front desk person's like, Mr. Ross is expecting you. So players were like, oh, I need to see the owner. Mr. Ross, oh, no, this is scary. What players did they? It was just they should.

I mean, Dan told us yesterday, as much of no names on this team. To that point, there weren't a lot of recognizable players, but just random players. Mr. Ross wants to see you. Mr. Ross wants to see you. Oh, I'm so nervous. They walk into the big reveal, chair spins around, and it's Rick Ross. I don't want to be the guy that I saw it come in but as soon as the first joke of Mr. Ross wants to see you

I was like okay clearly Rick Ross is going to appear like I saw it for a mile away so it didn't do much for me but it was trending it was one of the more popular ones views wise so what was there anyone that came out as like the clear winner the most viral social media team Detroit well they do all business Zaz it was Dan Campbell at a computer he printed out a sheet of paper he put a thumbtack to it on a board and it was a static image of a schedule.

And I'm sure Dave Damashek love that. Listen, I'm not such a cynic that I get down on this. It does have, to Zaslow's point, a little bit of sort of a school project kind of effect that all the students go off into the 32 different directions and they come back to present to the class. Their cute little project for the year, look at what Timmy did. look at what he came up with this year. And then we all have to gather around and applaud and tell them how cute it was. It was fun.

Listen, those videos are cute. They now pay top dollar. They pay, they go out and hire comedy writers and obviously big time celebrities. Well, the cults use the Simpsons. They must have to spend a lot of money to do that, right? I was wondering about that partnership because clearly they had to flash the, what was it, Disney Plus at the back end of it and hold on that at the end of the video. So that must have been a big part of the deal.

But they still had to pay out, right, for the Simpsons rights? I would think so. Yeah. Chris, can we play a, you have a fun one that maybe we could play? One of my favorite ones was the Raiders one. It was, you know, they have the two quarterbacks that you would call maybe nerdy with Kirk cousins and Mendoza. So they recreated the Step Brothers. Hey.

Hey. I'm Kirk. I'm Fernando. You're going to have to call me, Kirk, Chains. Cool. You're gonna have to call with the Nandelorian. So this is the locker room and rule number one is do not step on the shield. Well, I'm gonna do these around it. Don't do it. What if I... Don't do it. So what's the best Star Wars movie? Empire Strikes Back or Rogue One? Ha! Trick question. Star Wars New Hope, which was originally titled just Star Wars in

97 but then they've changed it to Star Wars New Hope in 1981. Say your favorite football play on three. One, two, three. Turbo ride, 63. Y, shallow. Jinks. Did we just become best friends? Yup. Number one, Fernando Mendoza, a little bit stiff.

Number two, that's really funny. That's a great video. Dave, that's really good. I like that one a lot. That's very strong. I think that is your winner. I thought the Titans was good. That's good.

I thought the Colts was fun. in parts. I think that would be my winner stand there. One, two, three. This Sunday, NASCAR is taking over San Diego, Palm Trees, Pacific Ocean views, all set to the soundtrack of fighter jets and stock car engines. The biggest stars of the sport will push limits that have never been challenged before and make history that's never previously been imagined. This isn't just any race weekend. It's a full throttle, edge of your seat, waken the hell up kind of spectacle. Every second matters. Every moment is filled with

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goes crazy. Yeah, you usually take all the credit for it, but it's because Tony usually walks in with Quervo. Walking like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quervo is a thing that turns hanging out into this is the night. It has that effect on people. It does. You usually take the credit for it. But again, it's the Quervo effect. It's like that moment in a big game where everyone in the crowd just starts standing up, hooting and hollering. Keep it Quervo. Keep it Quervo, baby. Hey, it's Greg Cody's inner monologue. You know, every friend group has that one person who's somehow better at summer than everybody else. Weekends, you'll never see me without a beer in my hand. Straight up, that time is Miller time. As soon as I

finish the column, I'll say a little something. Head over to the garage. Crack open, an ice cold Miller light. And I'll stay there. For a good 90 minutes, listen to my own voice, watch back some videos, see some feedback of people loving me. Then I'll, uh, I'll send a voice note to Yeti or something, more, you know, about myself. More talking about myself. That kind of thing. Legendary moments start with Miller Time, and they're made even better by a Miller Time MVP, like me.

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Don Lebatard. My algorithm on Instagram is dance all boobs. Stugats. It's a good algorithm. This is the Dan Lebatar show with the Stugats. Dave, let's throw it over here to Tony, who was all over. Let's not acknowledge what just happened, okay? Okay.

I meant to say... Please acknowledge it. I meant to say Tony, I accidentally said Dave, so I tried to do a quick cover there. Quick? As if I was telling Dave what I was going to do. But there's no reason for me to tell Dave what I'm going to do next. I can just do it. It's like a waste of time.

But you're okay. Yeah, I'm all right. Everybody calm down. Tony, NFL schedule release last night. You got a top five for us? I've got a top five NFL games I'm looking forward to now with all the schedules set in stone. Top five NFL games of 2026. Do you get music or no?

Give him some music. Come on. Music means we're serious. First day of NFL season. Thank you. Okay. Pick and choose when you're looking. Pick and choose.

It's the NFL. You know that my music hits in the NFL. In defense of Tony, you pick and choose when he has some music. All right, number five, the first game of the 2026 season of Super Bowl rematch. Game one, Seattle Seahawks, New England Patriots, big game. Huge game, not for on the field, but for things off the field. I want to see how Mike Grable comes out to that one. I mean, everybody's like, oh, my God, amazing Patriots Seahawks opening, like, whatever.

I'm going to watch it. Like, it does, whoever's playing, I'm a, watch. Number two, all Thanksgiving games. Have you seen the slate for Thanksgiving? Wouldn't it be number four? I think there's like five Thanksgiving games. There is. So they have a Thanksgiving Eve, which I don't remember Thanksgiving Eve being a thing.

It's like the day you go to Boogies and hang out with all your friends, correct? That's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Oh my God. You go to Boogies? Zaz? You know boogies? No. Too far south for him.

Me and you, we'll see each other at Boogies. But we'll also see Packers Rams on Thanksgiving Eve. So I'm going to read. you the slate. Packers, Rams on Thanksgiving Eve, then Thanksgiving. We got, of course, the Bears and Lions. We've got the Cowboys versus the Eagles, and then the nightcap.

We've got Chiefs and Bills in a massive game. Plus Black Friday, we got Davey Steelers against the Broncos. So a loaded slate for Thanksgiving Eve, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday. Dave, you know about that Black Friday? I know about Black and Gold

Friday, friend. Come on, Broncos. We'll see you on the banks of three rivers, Beau. Maybe Drew Aller be starting by then. Number three. All Christmas games. Another just absolutely crazy slate for

a Christmas day. Well, what day of the week is Christmas? Christmas is always number two on these lists. You miss a golden opportunity. So Christmas is a Friday. So you're telling me it's like a full slate of games on Friday? We've got Thursday night Christmas Eve. We've got Texans and Eagles. Christmas Day, we got a triple header. Packers, Bears.

Bills Broncos, Rams and Seahawks. The NBA must be so mad. More on that in a little bit. The Grinch stole Christmas. Number two, the entire Bill's schedule. Well, why? Have you seen it? Have you seen who the Bills play?

No, why would there be a point where I say, you know what? Let me go see the Bills schedule. Okay, well, I want to read you some of the bill schedule outside of their division. It's almost unavoidable. They have so many primetime games. Dude, they are, the schedule's insane.

All right, they start the season. Houston. They played Detroit. They play the Chargers, the Patriots, the Rams. Then they play Baltimore, Minnesota. Then they play Kansas City, New England again, Green Bay, Chicago, Denver. They play 19 games of straight bangers. The entire Bill's schedule is on my list of much watch games. Other than you just read every game except Dolphins Jets? Like, do they have an easy game outside of Dolphins and Jets? Is there like a game that's like that could be considered Vegas? I just think it's interesting that Tony has them playing 19. games when the rest of the league is playing 17.

That kind of thing. Number one, Week 18, Seattle versus L.A. in the battle for everything. I love how the NFL pits their two best teams against each other in the division late in the season. You could have had one game

early, one game late, you could have had one game in the middle, one game late, no. Let's go. Week 16, week 18, for all the Marbles, Rams, Seahawks. Week 18, the most must-watch game of the 2026. All right. There you go. Excellent job, Tony. Top five from last night's schedule release. So as breaking news. Tony just laid it out for us there. I don't know if everybody

heard, but the bills have a tough schedule this year. Also, we knew that five months ago. This thing about reacting to the schedule, even though everybody already had this information is so wild to me. I do think though, to Tony's point because I'm a dip and didn't put two and two together, did the NFL schedule makers really cynically choose

the Patriots because of Mike Rable? Is that why they're in the debut game of the whole season? I mean, they're going to get a lot of attention. You don't usually get the Super Bowl rematch as the first game. I know it's lame on a piece of paper that you're running. I mean, by the way,

as a reminder, everybody who's like, oh, it's the, it's the Super Bowl. Why would you, it's the lamest, uh, idea creatively. Like, yeah, just what we just saw. Just do that again. Uh, everybody'll take that. But also, does everybody remember that that game sucked? That's the start to this season?

Weird. So I want to show you a podcast that I discovered yesterday. I want to show you a clip from it. If I were to tell you, if we were doing real or fake podcast, and I told you, there's a podcast that is featuring Brianna, Stewart and Miles Turner. They're the co-hosts. Would that be real or fake podcast?

What's it called? I don't remember, actually. That'd be a big thing because the whole thing is Mike really gives like witty names for the ones that are fake. So it could draw you. This one's ringing a bell. I think it was actually featured. So it's real.

Brianna Stewart, Miles Turner. All right. And yesterday on this podcast, they got into a conversation about, So I guess WMBA just started last weekend. And WMBA teams, coaches are starting to find players for more and more things, which I guess makes sense because now they actually make good salaries. So in order to keep everybody line, coaches fine you for whatever, any number of reasons.

So listen here to Breonna Stewart as she then asks Miles Turner what it was like as far as the fine system in Milwaukee and what the conversation then evolves into. We get fined for all types of stuff now. You guys can find a lot. It depends on the coach. So Doc Rivers, he didn't find anybody. Guys were late all the time. Guys were showing up to film whenever they wanted to show up.

Guys were missing meetings. Like, it was one of the craziest things I personally have a person ever experienced. We literally, if the plane took off at 2 o'clock, we weren't leaving until 4.30. I'm being so serious, bro. It was crazy. Guys were an hour late to the plane. It got to the point where I just, I knew not to show up until, like, an hour after they said the plane was taken off.

It was crazy. So who's the teammates that's most likely to be late? Well, all of yours, obviously, because nobody gets fined. Janice is going to show up whatever he wants. Okay. So let's start with the first part. And that's Doc Rivers, who apparently is letting the team run wild. All right?

He's being asked this stuff because it was his first year in Milwaukee, he played the rest of his career in Indiana. Doc Rivers is now fired. Anyone surprised, I guess, that Doc Rivers allowed the inmates to run the asylum I don't think anyone finds that to be any kind of revelation. But the second part, which is certainly what is garnering attention, is that Janice would show up hours late, several hours late. Now, this is the kind of stuff that we heard about Jimmy Butler in his last year with

the heat when he was clearly very unhappy, that Jimmy Butler was routinely hours late for the plane. But Miles Turner, straight up offering up the information that Janus behaves that way, the first thing I want to ask you, Dave, what is Miles Turner thinking in offering up that information? Like, why would Miles Turner offer that up unless he believes there's no way Janice is on Milwaukee next year or there's no way that he is going to be on Milwaukee next year? because that's a weird thing to offer up for the franchise's greatest player. I agree with you, but is it calculated to the extent that he is trying to call out Janus to send a message

or to your point that it is understood that Janus is out of there, despite the fact, that's the element. And we kind of have talked about this over the preceding few weeks here where Janus is concerned, is that it's a troubling trend that he's. a pain in the ass. And it's starting to, I mean, he requires, LeBron catches a lot of crap in Los Angeles for more or less insisting that his son get drafted in the second round. Yonis doesn't get, it seems to me, from a distance anywhere close to the heat that, that LeBron catches for requiring not one, but two siblings beyond the board. Oh, you're totally right. Like, you know, I sit here

and tell you, LeBron's son is on the team and he does not belong in the NBA. Yanis is not brother, brother's plural, don't belong in the NBA. And, you know, part of the schism between Janus and the team late in the season, he wanted to play, he wanted to get back out on the court at the end of the season, where he ended up filing a grievance

against the buccaneer, the Bucks, was because he wanted to play. He wanted to play with his brothers. All right, that was part of what was going on there. The Cup is taking over the U.S. and only Draft King Sports has you fully covered. The Draft King Sports app is now available in all 50 states,

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You think you're big time? But you're going to die. Big time. On my infamous scale of 1 to 10, that's a 7.6. Solid. Good job, Dad. Good job. That's a sui nominee right there.

That's a good. This is the Dan Lebatar show. with these two gods. A broken record from a week ago or two weeks ago, Dave, but are you guys sure really meditate on this? By the way, I saw a list of the three preferred destinations of Janus and the Miami Heat were not one of them. And it makes me think because it always hurts my field.

Well, when there's a big time recruit in the region of Football America that I come from, and I see that one of the three final schools for, you know, a blue chip prospect is not pit. I get, it hurts my feelings. Does it hurt your feelings that Janice has not circled Miami as one of his preferred destinations? Or I'm not sure if it's even Janus putting this list out, but they're floating all these names of appealing destinations for him and Miami isn't one of us.

I mean, look, it does make sense to me, except that I don't think if you're the team receiving Janus, I feel like you get about a year, a year for a magic season with Janus, not an Orlando no magic one, but a magic run to a title. And then that's going to be about the extent of what you get out of Janus. Because he's old now. He's not going to be dynamic for much longer. Okay. So even still counts as consistently dynamic.

Okay. So the first part, you know, does it upset me that the heat's name was apparently not on the list? No, because while I don't expect you to remember, at the start of this past season, sitting in that chair right over there. Okay, Dan was here that day. So Dan was in this chair and I was sitting in that chair. And I specifically said, Janus is.

people have reached out to the heat, that they are interested in Miami if things go awry in Milwaukee. So I know this. All right. So no, I don't care what that list says. I don't care what that report is. But I think the bigger thing here is because it doesn't even matter if Janus is the star, if he's the best player on the team. When you're showing up hours late for the plane, I understand star players get treated differently

as they should. but it doesn't mean that they should be disrespectful to the rest of the gut, to your teammates. And that kind of stuff is disrespectful. And looking at things like filing a grievance against his team, all the stuff behind the scenes. The bigger question for me is, is Janus a pain in the ass? Because Janus has had a great reputation for pretty much his entire career. And I'm wondering, are we learning now? Maybe Janice is a huge pain in the ass behind the scenes.

I think that he's been at the perfect organization that is so grateful to have such a transformative player. I mean, he's said in interviews, he wants to be buried in Milwaukee. That is such an insular town in franchise. Not a lot of leaks. I mean, expectations aren't as high. They're not this great legacy franchise, even though they recently won an NBA title. he can do things like miss the playoffs and you don't hear like what a failure really the the narrative is whatever yonis wants it to be he's been in control of the message he's even had people in that franchise

do his bidding to try to protect him here i think he's got to realize very quickly wherever he goes next because it seems very unlikely that he's going to stay there how good he had it and we talk about yonis and we look at other superstars and other just like bigger than life personalities in the NBA and everybody kind of goes to the beat of their own drum like you you think that Jimmy Butler, you think that other LeBron, guys are making the team bent to their will. Like, yeah, I'm going to be late, an hour and a half late to the plane. Like, what's

up? You're going to do something about it or not? I don't think that's normal. I don't think that's a common thing. Like, yeah, stars get catered to differently, but they, it doesn't mean that they put out their teammates. It doesn't mean that they're disrespectful to their teammates' time. I don't think that that's a very common thing that

you have the star player behaving that way. Like, that's that's bad what we're hearing there. The same way it was bad how Jimmy Butler was being disrespectful like that in his final year. And it just like, and so Miles Turner made those comments, which I think is odd, all right? And then kind of a sub-tweet here. You tell me, all right? A little bit of a sub-tweet from Janus onto Tocompo where he put out now, it's on Instagram it looks like, where he was playing basketball, he's in the gym with his son. And the caption underneath it is he just writes,

getting better every day and minding your business. And he put that out shortly after that podcast dropped with Miles Turner. Kind of feels like he might be referencing what Miles Turner said there. I think it's a little bit of a sub-tweet going on there from Janus. But this, like, I think this is a guy who might be a little bit of a pain in the ass. Yeah. Are you souring on him totally since like the whole mid-season trade drama striking out? I'm of the mind.

Because that kind of behavior doesn't work here in Miami. No, I'm, well, it has. You do make some concessions. I mean, to a degree, they both bent, right? LeBron and the Miami Heat when LeBron came here a little bit. But they were rigid at first, famously was Shaq, like, no, you're going to talk to the media. But, you know, as the times have changed, players have been a little bit more empowered. I'm curious, though, where are you on Janus? So the behavior stuff doesn't bother me as much as he's 32 years old. He's 32 years old and he's coming off of a season that he hardly played because of injury. And I'm not 100% sure if adding Janus, forget just, you know, does it make them a contender? You see what Oklahoma City and San Antonio are doing. And it's almost like, all right, does adding Janus get us close to those teams? All right, if it doesn't, do we trade everything?

Do we trade all of our assets right now when it might not even matter? Like, overall, I think the heat are going to be all in on Janus. And certainly they'll be better if they acquire Janus. But my hesitation comes from his age and his injury more so than this stuff. I mean, you're used to this franchise acquiring players that you didn't like, right? I've had to, I always hated Kyle Lowry and I didn't really keep it secret and I just had to like roll with the punches but I held him to a very high standard. I didn't dislike Kyle Lowry before he got here. I disliked him very much when he was here and I was also very loud. But I've never disliked the Miami Heat player more than Kyle Lowry. Even Jimmy Butler. I didn't like Jimmy Butler when he got here.

No, I was fine with that. Yeah, I don't think the heat have ever actually like the closest I was to the heat acquiring a player who had been very openly against. was Kevin Durant. Like, that had been interesting, all the things that I've said about Kevin Durant. You were a Terry Rozier guy? He wasn't really on my radar. Like, what, like, I didn't actively dislike Terry Rocheon. Like, who cares, you know? When you talk about OKC and the Spurs on the other side of the bracket,

I feel like that's aiming a little bit too high. And I don't want to say that as like it's NBA championship or bust, and I get that. But we've seen so many teams get injured on the way to an NBA title. Like Lucas Mavs were just a shell of a team that we're getting there. And then obviously Boston ran through them. So when you look at Janus acquiring him and getting him to the east, obviously you're taking for Milwaukee and adding to your team, but you're trying to beat the likes of Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia,

like those Boston, those are the teams that you need to make sure that you're better than because you can always have the puncher's chance in the finals. Wembe gets hurt, Che gets hurt, check gets it. Like something happens on that other side. You know, a dark horse comes through. Like you have an opportunity to win a title. This kind of stuff doesn't bother me as far as Janus's behavior, you know, if he would acquire him.

The part that I just, I find interesting is, like, maybe is Giannis a little bit of a phony? That's the part that kind of gets to me. Yeah. Like, I didn't think that. Really? I think this season kind of, he's Dwight Howard Redux. Like, he's. It feels a little bit like that.

The same kind of corny humor, the same kind of half measures. You might be a little phony. Everybody likes him. He gives off Dwight. Also, LeBron vibes, right? I want to say the thing, whatever I think the people want to hear that will make them be into me. I don't like that. It doesn't it exact money exaggerates what you're predisposed to do. So they say.

They say that about Larry David specifically that money hasn't changed him. It's just as intensified. Is that what they say? I've heard I remember seeing Jerry Seinfeld say that before I really knew about Larry David or had experienced him on camera himself that Larry David is exactly proves that point that money doesn't change you. It just exaggerates what you are. And maybe that's what's happened with Janus. And I am intrigued to hear your thoughts on who there in that studio with you would be most likely to spin off if you started throwing a lot of money and saying, oh, like who would change the most? Who the most? Yeah, who the most? Who would get out of bounds the quickest? Probably Roy. What? Here are the keys. Here the keys to the organization, basically. That's

what happened with Janus and all right, he got corrupted. This happens all the time to people. It shouldn't be surprising, I guess, but, you know, Zaz, you're right too. Tony, by the way, made a good point, too, that I think you do have to consider if you want to contend this next season, robbing Peter to pay yourself is the plan, right? If you take, if Janus goes to the Knicks or Boston, or Philly or whatever, that really puts you out of contention, period, right? If you're the heat, but if you get him, you can at least indulge the fantasy, then maybe this will be your year. It would be a huge blow. Look, the heat fan's upset as it is. It'd be a major blow if not only did they not get Janus, but he goes to Boston. That would be a

heavy blow. But, you know, we're in an interesting inflection point in, you know, spectator sports. Russell Westbrook, I floed his name for the last five years because I remember saying five years ago, how much meat does he have left on the bone? His entire game is dependent on attacking the rim and and giving his, given his physique, he's breaking down already. He's not going to make it much longer. And here we are. He's kind of sort of still relevant. And then there's Tom Brady winning a Super Bowl in his 40s and Sidney Crosby playing well deep into his 30s and so on and so forth. So are we optimistic that Janus is going to remain dynamic into his mid-30s? Or is he about to go the path of most athletes that we've watched in history,

which is they start to break down and slow down as they get into their 30s? I think ultimately everything we've seen over the last few months and Miles Turner's comments yesterday, there's no way Janus is on this team past the draft. There's no way. Zero shot. There's no way. Yeah, the Haslam comments were pretty damning. But to echo Dave's point, a little bit.

He means Jimmy Haslam, by the way, not Udonis. Yeah, not UD. But I do think, while I agree with you, and there are holes in his game, right? He's not a consistent shooter from mid-range or certainly outside or the free throw line, and he has this frame where you put a body to him, you're rewarded to get him to the line.

I still think as he gets older, he's a Greek freak for a reason. Defensively, he's going to be a force as long as he's able to step out onto the court. He's going to be able to be dating. dangerous around the cup. He is going to be a big time factor in next season, provided that he's healthy. I don't think he's going to fall all the way off, but there are questions about his game.