Share & Pardon & Tell with Michael Wilbon and Dan Le Batard

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I wanted this to be a surprise.

And instead, I got Levittard on one side.

I got Mike Wilbon on the other.

And Dan has some tiny fans in front of him.

And I don't understand what's happening.

Why do you guys have headphones?

I don't have headphones.

I can't have better equipment than you either because you're sitting in a trillion-dollar studio because I've been to that studio.

I'm sitting in my house in Scottsdale.

In the middle of PTI negotiations that are heating up.

No,

don't be bashful, big boy.

Don't be bashful.

Oh, boy.

No middle of anything that I know of.

What do you mean there's no middle of anything that you know of?

That contract expires next month, and they're losing Wilbon and Kornizer.

You know that?

Maybe I might just go to Chicago and do something wild card.

I don't know.

Well, our air conditioning was down, and you have not prepared me for this, but I am delighted to see our old friend Mike Wilbon, El Padrino, the godfather.

It is nice to see you.

El Padringo.

Wow.

Thank you, Dan.

Wait a minute.

I think you changed that word.

El Padrino is what I called you.

I don't know.

Padrino.

I thought you said Padringo.

I was like, oh, you came very close to saying like

talking Spanish there.

Very dangerous.

It was more or less racist, actually.

That might have been both at the same time.

Good to see you guys both.

Likewise.

This is something that I am doing for a number of reasons, one of which is that as part of the PTI cinematic universe, I saw you growing up

co-hosting PTI together when Tony Kornheiser was out.

And now I'm the guy who only fills in when Wilbon is out.

And I want to get a sense of what your actual dynamic is because you guys, Padrino aside,

it's weird.

I don't quite know if Wilbon actually totally likes you, Dan.

Honestly.

Love him.

Love him.

Absolutely love him.

I love Dan Lebetard.

Let it be on the record.

Well, I wonder why it is that Pablo comes by this confusion.

I think it has something to do.

Eric Rydholm, the producer, pardon the interruption, has apologized about this to me in the past.

He said he went too hard at the beginning trying to beat the audience to the joke of nobody wants Lebetard here.

They want Wilbon in Kornheiser.

So I'm going to make him right off the bat the hatable Dan Lebetard.

There are enough people, and Dan's the Illuno Nisa knows, who know that when I went for decades to Miami,

there were brunches, dinners, attempts to strong-arm Lebetard into buying 4,000 bottles of wine at Prime 112 for Miles, Miami Heat games going back to Shaq and Wade.

So we're talking about the aughts.

You know, my mom was alive at the time, and Dan and his mom were just

unbelievably great to my mom, who lived in South Florida at the time in terms of all kinds of stuff, even at games, helping her get to heat games.

Now we're just talking 20 years of history that have nothing to do with PTI.

So I think I can well chronicle my love to Lebatar.

So I just need to clarify here, and I should clarify this this week, especially, I think,

that while while we are over here striving to create the weird new future of sports journalism,

I also have a deep, deep affection for the past and for the even weirder coaching tree from which I have sprung.

Because for the last decade now, I have been a fill-in co-host of Pardon the Interruption, the daily sports television show starring Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon that airs at 5.30 p.m.

Eastern on ESPN.

And if you've never seen PTI before, just know that Wilbon and Kornheiser are the predominant married couple in all of sports media.

They are two incredible journalists who met while working for Ben Bradley's Washington Post.

And by now, PTI is so good and so influential, inspiring imitators across not just sports, but all of cable news as well.

that for Tony and Mike's 20th anniversary in 2021, I got one of the show's biggest fans to send them a special message.

Tony and Mike, congratulations on 20 years of PTI.

And Pablo, I hope you're proud of these guys for staying together so long.

I know I am.

Because 20 years is a long time.

When PTI first came on the air, I was a state senator in Illinois.

And whenever I had a little extra time, I would turn on ESPN.

If I was lucky, there'd be a good basketball game on.

If I wasn't, it would be you guys.

And as my colleague and now boss, Dan Levittard, knows better than anyone, summertime is PTI substitute host season.

And I always pair up with Kornheiser, whom I have come to regard genuinely as a mentor in this business.

And I feel that way, even though the most time he will give my podcast here is this voicemail

from episode one.

I was Tony Kornheiser leaving this message.

Pablo's podcast is launching today, and I wanted to help because I love Pablo.

I, of course, have forgotten what the title of Pablo's podcast is.

I think it's Pablo Torrey just found out, or Pablo Torrey knows this,

or maybe it's Pablo Torrey has gout.

I'd have made it Pablo Torrey graduated from Harvard, so eat it.

To kill a Mockingbird.

Death of a Salesman, the Bible, they're all taken.

How about this?

Squeeze this with Pablo Torre, huh?

Squeeze this.

I like it.

Good luck, Pablo.

But speaking of eating it, while I always co-host with Kornheiser, I do remember Lebetard, before he self-deported from ESPN, most often working with Wilbon.

And Wilbon is, in some key ways, extraordinarily different from me.

He's more opinionated in general.

He hates analytics as a concept.

He regularly rails against terms like exit velocity and launch angle.

He might also be the last man on Earth who doesn't have a podcast.

But when I was growing up watching PTI and Kornheiser was off traveling somewhere, I would delight in a combination that I shouldn't have loved on paper.

Which was Wilbon and Lebitard

doing stuff like this.

Pardon interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon.

Tony's so tired from doing Monday night football.

So please say hello to Dandy Dan.

Bam

Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam

Why did we do this?

You know, I think I tore this jacket.

I think you tore a pectoral muscle.

This rigid torn more than that is torn, groin muscle.

And I thought to myself, one day I want to sit in that chair.

One day I want to work for that.

That jacket, Mike, I think I have this right.

I don't know if you guys have moved.

I was so poorly dressed at the time, did not know how to dress at the time that I would often go down the street because I spend like big chunks of summer getting really scheduled when those guys would go away and make me cover like a really dry time.

And I think I still have jackets bought from Macy's in your wardrobe closet at PTI.

If I had to bet, I think I could find them there.

That's the only way something would get from Macy's into my closet.

He really drilled me with that wardrobe elitism.

There was no smile.

No smile in a chance that would happen.

Briefly, wardrobes shame me.

I volunteered that I

love.

And by the way, see, that's Papo.

That's what Dan would do.

He would offer himself up

for the show

for the greater good for Tony and me to do stuff like that.

That's a perfect way.

And it's natural.

And Reinhold didn't even have to write it.

I don't remember any of that stuff until somebody brings the clip up.

And it makes me smile.

And it makes me genuinely happy to see it.

I don't remember any of it.

I don't consume anything you guys consume.

I don't consume podcasts.

I no longer consume sports talk radio.

I just don't do it.

Well, you know, though, Pablo, that these guys are genuine heroes of mine.

And in one of the stranger ways, you will ever arrive at your heroes where you feel like you know them before you've met them because you're just looking at their work and you're a columnist.

So you know what that relationship means.

And they welcome me into their world, which was the very top of this world to play with them.

Two very different creatures, two persnickety creatures, one a good deal more persnickety than the other.

Let's rank the persnicketiness for those who are not familiar with the family tree.

Okay, but okay, which way do you want to go here?

Is it that Wilbon delights in being 45 minutes late according to Kornheiser's schedule every day purposely for 20 years in a gangster move that Kornheiser still resents, but will never say so to his face, only in private, behind his back, and Wilbon doesn't care and delights in that.

No.

Or the fact that Tony Kornheiser still writes in a yellow legal pad, the notes that he's taking before the game, as Mike Wilbon just announced to you, I don't consume anybody because I know more than them already.

I don't know sports radio.

I don't need any more information.

I know it all.

No,

no, that last part was not said.

I don't consume anything, anybody, because I don't give a shit.

I don't.

But I do think I know more than most most of the people doing all these podcasts and all this shit now, because I don't believe that they've come by much of anything authentically or genuinely.

So Dan is on to something there.

The late part is right.

I'm usually intentionally or cavalierly

somewhere between 30 seconds to seven or eight minutes late.

I don't give a shit about that either.

I like how the podcast Mike Wilbon would host if he gave a shit about podcasts would be titled Mike Wilbon Already Found Out.

No,

no, no.

Mike Wilbon doesn't give a shit.

Would be more accurate.

I don't give a shit.

Mike, Mike Wilbon doesn't give a shit about your podcast.

Find Mike Wilbon.

There we go.

There we go.

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If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veen Champain, African Alcohol by Volume 40 by Remy Control, USA Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

I do want to say, like, Kornheiser refuses to do this show or any show that's not his own at this point.

Tony's afraid.

Mike, you know this.

Tony doesn't want to, you will say stuff into this microphone.

And Kornheiser is running as far, not even running.

He's just locked the door and is sitting behind the locked door.

And even to me, he's like, I'm not, I can't.

No, I'm not doing that.

Well, that's, I mean, that's largely who Tony was before he decided to do daily television.

Tony didn't engage with everybody.

I know, I tell the story that when I started covering Georgetown basketball, when it was

far more important, groundbreaking, culturally relevant than any other story in college sports at the time, early 1980s, John Thompson, the person, the coach I was covering for a beat, did not speak to me for a year.

Didn't speak to the Washington Post beat writer for a year.

Well,

when I got to the post a couple of summers earlier than that, I don't think Tony spoke to me for a year.

I say this with the most respect, and I think you guys can vouch for this.

I love Tony, but he's crazy.

There's no one I adore more than Tony, obviously.

I'm somebody who professionally investigates things, gets people to say stuff, and yet the guy I would consider a mentor.

as well won't won't do it.

To Dan's phraseology, he is the hardest nut to crack.

And it only makes me want it more.

I've had him on our show once or twice in 20 years.

I think him and Wilbon did me a favor when I was starting the radio show, like the first week.

They did it as a favor to me.

But I've asked Tony over the years and then stopped asking because he didn't want to do it.

I think that

we're the last of the people who did daily stuff the way we did it.

And when you do daily stuff the way we do it, there's not a lot of time.

I don't examine anything.

I don't, people say, how is the show today?

I don't know.

Isn't one tomorrow.

I don't know.

It's like a baseball season.

And so I think that Tony is, I don't think that there's as much reason.

He just doesn't want to do it.

Wait, so Mike, so Mike, you don't, you don't, you don't get the, I imagine that you're not so hardened that you leave every show because I leave every show and don't remember what we did, but I do have the feeling of whether or not we did well or not whether or not uh it felt good when you leave a show you may not remember the details but you know when it's good and when it's not right no i i i because i don't allow myself to examine it i i don't and i don't consume it that way i know when there's been a particularly good one

that's it how do you measure it how do you know

how do you know when it's a particularly good one mike it's just it's just it's just my sense of what's good and what's not that's it well but but when he says that though Pablo, that's sharpened over years.

When he says my sense of what's good, a columnist's gift is knowing for his audience what's good.

Like

it's it's one of the strengths that that's what these people sharpened.

It's why they put us on television, honestly.

It's why ESPN decided to put newspapers on television, going back to when Mark Shapiro was the president and the Sports Century series was just a series before 30 for 30 documentaries that just had sports writers talking.

98-ish starting then.

And that's very well said, as always, by Dan.

It's very well said.

We have a sense of audience, which nobody has anymore.

Can I talk about the competitiveness, though?

Because I don't think people, because again, I was already after this.

When I came in through magazines, I have a totally different path.

I'm trying to do like new media stuff now.

The competition among columnists.

Right?

Which is really the thing, the primordial ooze that birthed all of the argument television stuff because of PTI.

But that competition, Mike, could you speak to what it was like to open the paper and figure out, did I just get beaten by somebody as a columnist?

What did that mean?

Well, I mean, you, first of all, you started as damn mint, you started as a beat writer.

You were competing against most of these same people all the way up.

So from 22 years old, when a lot of us got out of our internships in the full-time gigs in Washington and New York and Miami and Chicago and LA and San Francisco and Atlanta and smaller places too, Columbus, you know, or, you know, Oakland or wherever it is you were, you were covering the same things.

I mean that you were all at

a Sugar Ray Leonard fight, if you go back when I was young, or then a Mike Tyson fight.

And so you could all read the way 26 people wrote about Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield's ear and spinning it out.

You could read every one of those the next day and have a sense of who did a better job, who was more eloquent, who was more forceful, who was more influential, who was more passionate, who had details that somebody else didn't have because they waited and they talked to Mike in a parking lot at two in the morning and rewrote.

You had a sense of all of that for decades on everything.

You had it on Carl Lewis and whether he hated Ben Johnson, even though he ultimately won the race.

You had it on Martina Navitalova and Chris Everett and whether they really liked each other or not.

You had it on everything.

You had it on Michael Jordan and the bad boy Pistons and what you had it on everything.

You covered everything.

I'm sitting there with 25 other dudes writing about Holy Field's ear rolling across the mat at me.

And I wanted to compare those.

And in that moment, it wasn't could you go out and get some other story?

It was could you get this

story?

Could you do this one better?

Could you tell it in a way that would keep 80-year-old men by the fireplace or in the barbershop or at the gas station?

Could you do that?

But at the same time, I wanted to read Lebatard the next day on game one of Dallas, Miami, and whether or not Dirk got in their ass.

I wanted to read his take on that and compare what I said.

And that was competitive too.

And there may not even be a real answer.

For me, that goes back 45 years.

45.

I have later in life lost some of the value that I used to have in being competitive.

And however it is that competitive masked my insecurities back when I was coming up.

I was not good at news breaking competitive.

I remember sobbing in a Miami Herald bathroom at midnight because I didn't want to be doing, I wanted to be telling stories.

I didn't want to be chasing where the Marlin Spring Training Complex would be.

And so I didn't really like what I was doing.

But later on, when it became

writing stories, I wanted to beat Mitch Album at whatever the things were that got you awards when you were the best sportswriter in America for telling the best stories.

But I will tell you where and when, because I remember it, some of this got knocked out of me because it was around a dressing room.

at PTI where Skip Bayless runs into one of your dressing rooms and hides because he doesn't want me to see what his arguments are on the show.

And I'm like, okay, I don't want to, this is not, I don't want to be this kind of competitive.

This is not, I don't want to play the game this way.

I'd rather just put on a policeman's cap and talk to a mailbox and see if I can ruin this game instead of winning this argument.

I've heard that.

But only because you guys existed, but only because you guys existed could I zig while you guys were zagging because you guys had to establish the bit that these arguments matter.

I wasn't interested in zigging when people zagged.

I wanted to zig.

I wanted to compare everybody's zig.

That's what I wanted to do.

I wanted to sit in the same press box on the same Sunday afternoon because I sat there with Eddie Pope.

And when you replaced Eddie, I wanted to compare the zig.

I didn't give a shit about zagging.

I wanted to read everybody's Ziggy.

I cannot relate less to just loving zigs.

I was like, that's just so the opposite of how.

No, no, but I know.

No, but see, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I know what he's doing there on the zigs.

See, this is the confidence of a man who knew his zig was going to be better than most of the zigs.

So he's comparing and he's like, no, mine's, mine stacks up here.

Mine stacks up against just about anybody doing.

Wilbon likes the fastball.

That's what he's saying.

He's like, you know, you're getting 100 miles an hour.

Can you hit it?

I love the deadline stuff and comparing.

Who had balls?

Whose nerves were shot?

The night, I'm going to go back to to the Holyfield Tyson ear thing, because I was asked, that's a real thing for me.

When Holyfield jumped and you can see his both feet in the air, and Tyson had bit his ear, but we didn't really know if you were sitting in the arena, you didn't really know what happened instantly.

You had to see a replay.

I remember thinking when I,

you know, in three seconds, when I figured out what happened,

there was a calm that came over me.

And I remember looking down at David Remnick, the great David Remnick, who was at the fight.

Editor of the New Yorker now,

said, I remember saying to him, mouthing to him, column.

That's it.

That's it.

Because if you couldn't do that, I didn't respect you.

If you got nervous at that, if you missed deadline, if you couldn't get it done on the East Coast in 23 minutes, if it was 1137 and your deadline was midnight, if you couldn't get that done eloquently in 23 minutes, then f you.

And I, then I had you.

So I ask you all these years later, Wilbon, who wrote the best story off of Holyfield Tyson?

Because I think you're bringing it up because you know that you did.

You know that you read 26 stories and on that day, you kicked Remnick's ass.

No, I like what I did that night, but I do go, I did respect the people, the giants who covered

Ali Frazier, Ali Foreman, all of it.

I mean, those guys, when I walked in a press box, Dan, I revered them.

I was in awe.

I would sit around and listen to all of them.

And I remember when Ed Pope called me in my dorm room when I was a senior saying, if the Washington Post doesn't hire you,

I got a job for you here in Miami.

There's no higher praise that phone calls 47 years ago.

Because

he was at those things and he covered those things and those people, those things that mattered to me.

David Halberstam covered those things.

He covered Vietnam, but he also covered Ali Foreman.

I'm going to embarrass you right now.

Pablo, I don't have this wrong, right?

Wilbon, you're that for me and Pablo.

That's frightening.

Yeah, absolutely.

No, I mean, look.

You are, though.

Oh, this is.

You are.

You paved the way.

Whatever.

How you talk about Edwin Pope has to be how me and Pablo talk about you and Tony.

Jesus.

I don't know.

What are you doing?

That's the highest compliment.

It's a great compliment.

It's also

sobering.

It's why I'm sitting here recuperating from foot surgery because I'm old.

You showed us what the top of the mountain could look like, Mike.

No,

that's praise too hot.

That's a bridge too far.

No, it's not, Mike.

Dude, hold on.

I don't know if I've told Mike this.

When I was at Sports Illustrated, they would assign me to like, you know, the regionals of the NCAA tournament.

And I'd show up at various sites around the country.

One of the sites they assigned me to to was, of course, Washington, D.C.

at some point, like a sub-regional.

And it was a sort of thing where I wander through the press box.

I wander through the media area where it's just like, you know, media guides and plates with gross rotting food.

And there,

typing by himself is Mike Wilbon.

And I did not go up to Mike Wilbon.

I did, I was, I was starstruck.

But what I did do, what I did do was I took out my iPhone and snuck a photo of Mike Wilbon working and just sent it to my friends.

And I was like, look what I

look at what I saw.

I was paparazziing Mike Wilbon when I was a reporter.

Like, that's what it was like.

Did you count enough for that to have been 2006 when George Mason

was making the Cinderella run?

Might have been.

Might have been that.

You could feel, you remember the creepiness, 1890.

He mentioned being in Washington, D.C.

And that would have been like the only time I was in D.C.

because because I was on the road.

I went to where the stories were.

I didn't wait for them to come to me.

And so there were, we didn't have very many regionals.

That was.

That's a movie poster.

I went, like, it's a pathetic journalism movie poster, but I went to where the stories were.

I didn't wait for them to come to me.

Do you remember that, Dan?

You remember that those days?

You are, can I just ask a question here at the risk of getting a little too intimate with a man who doesn't like that publicly or privately?

Does Matthew, does anyone in your life who loves you

say that you don't receive affection well, that me and Pablo are here and we are trying to honor you the correct way for someone who is a hero and an idol in our business, gave us permission and paved the way for us.

And almost anytime I tell you this, you get uncomfortable and run away.

Yeah, I'm not that.

I'm not from that generation.

And I, I, I, I appreciate it to a level that you two don't understand or I'm not letting you understand.

But no, no, because that's not, you know, I tell Matthew,

you know, I've hugged Matthew a million times in my life, a million.

I was 27 years old when my dad died of cancer at 60.

I never hugged him.

Never.

Let me try it again.

Never.

That's not what we did.

That's not what that generation did.

I don't know any of my male friends or relatives hugged their fathers.

Never.

So, you know, the world has changed.

Men are allowed to

express things that they didn't.

Listen to them.

Listen to them.

Lamenting.

These men, they used to bottle up their feelings and push it down with all that brown liquor, but now they're out here just talking, talking about their feelings.

Yeah, yeah, that's the that's how the world has changed.

It's gone from watching the games to watching clips.

We evolve from something.

You have not evolved here.

You have not even

look at Mr.

mr beast out here hugging his dad you're staring into the camera i accepted no hugs i gave no hugs i'm giving you i'm just chronicling like the journalist i used to be i also told you i hugged my son every day yes you did well

there's

evolution i asked you about receiving affection not giving it i don't know i don't receive it not that's not how i was you know that's not how i and you know what you know what dan it's great because obviously our work comes through

what we are personally at least that used to be the case I'm not sure it is anymore but yeah that's no I'm glad to be a product of what I'm a product of I wouldn't change it I mean maybe a little but but overwhelmingly I wouldn't change the way I was brought up and there are certain touches of that that I still include in the rearing of my 17 year old who just has to shake his head and go, Jesus Christ, how did I get stuck with the old dad?

You got stuck.

What has old dad life been like for you?

Great.

It's the greatest thing ever for me.

It's the greatest thing of my life.

It is the greatest thing of my life.

And I tell my son, and there's no reaction from him because he's at 17.

17-year-old boys are the same as 17-year-old boys were when we were 17.

They don't give you anything.

But I tell Matthew, the greatest thing I've ever done in my life is be your dad.

That's it.

Pablo, I will tell you, having seen Wilbon make a decision late in life to

be a dad.

And at the time, when he's talking about the story, I went to it, it doesn't come to me.

He was busting his ass.

And he loved that life, traveling, living a big life.

It was an unselfish act of clarity and maturity for Wilbon to decide to become a father at the age he decided to become a father because he was plenty happy with what his life was at the time.

He'd arrived at his dreams.

That's true.

Dan knows how often we talked about it.

We did.

We talked about it in person.

And I tried to convince him of the same thing,

especially when he got to the exact age that I got to when Matthew was born.

And so, yes, I had, yeah, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do.

Daddy, the only thing, I won't call it completely unselfish.

I always wanted to be a dad.

I didn't know what that meant necessarily, but, you know, but yeah, it's the greatest thing I would trade all of it in for that.

And it's the only thing I would trade.

What's the only thing?

What's better about being an old dad, Mike, now that you clearly love being the old dad?

You know, all the shit that you didn't know.

I didn't know anything at 32.

Nothing.

I knew how to get on a plane and go find a column.

I didn't know anything.

That's so funny.

That's all we knew.

Mike, that's all we knew.

I'd say that's all the three of us knew at 32.

I'd say that the three of us were toddlers who had done and gotten good at a specific thing and probably weren't very mature in other places.

But that one thing we were pretty good at.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And yes,

I think we were.

And so then to depart from that took, I won't say unselfishness.

It took a certain determination.

And that could be selfish to prove you could be good at something.

Pablo, I don't think he's remembering because he's been a dad now for so long.

I don't think Mike Wilbon is doing an accurate appraisal of the dusty cobwebs around exactly what he was 18 years ago, watching games at midnight and one o'clock in the morning, really liking being on the road, liking the travel, liking, really enjoying NBA cities.

Mike, Mike, it's talking to Kornheiser.

Cause look, I have the weird position of like, I, I'm the other woman sometimes, or I'm like, you know, filling in for you and I get to hear about you from your spouse, Tony.

And he still is saying,

Mike loves.

to go out, loves to travel, loves to loves to be out in the world.

So I can only imagine what you were like before,

before you quote unquote settled down.

It's interesting, Pablo, that you hear that from Tony.

Dan moved on from that, and I didn't.

Dan moved on to a life that had

other meaningful touchstones.

And so we weren't necessarily at an arena at Prime 112 at 3:30 in the morning after a game or after a ball.

I did not move on from that willingly.

I loved it.

By the the way, by the way, I still love it to some degree.

And I take Matthew with me.

Dan, I don't know if you know this, if Miles told you this.

Boston, Miami conference finals.

I took Matthew.

I said, you want to see what it's like?

We get on planes.

We go to stadiums.

We go to dinner at 2 in the morning.

He's sitting at Prime 112 at 15 years old at 2 in the morning.

you know, with

whatever players from other sports are around.

And that's what I wanted to introduce him to so he could at least feel it.

Both of you guys have had the distinct experience of becoming so good and famous at what you did that you began to know someone you covered,

a true celebrity athlete in a way that became personal.

And if you're going to talk about navigating fame, I'd love to know what it's like for you guys, journalist columnist guys, to figure out, okay, wait a minute, now this relationship with a very famous athlete or coach or whomever comes to mind here,

that is something that you're navigating suddenly.

Wilbond's list here is going to be so much better than mine, and he is so much better at this than I've ever been because he

almost traffics in the relationship business.

The columns would have a richness because he was in the relationship business.

So he's got, I mean, how many friends you got?

Michael, you're, I got to think that most of your friends are either in writing or in basketball.

Look, I mean, it's no secret, and I'm not going to be disingenuous.

I covered people who I covered as a newspaper person, and they knew me that way first.

And then the television happened and it segued and they got a kick out of it too.

I don't know that there's any PTI and Tony can substantiate this if not for Charles Barkley sitting us both down saying, you're not going to do what?

You told Mark Shapiro, maybe.

Charles Barkley.

I'm being real now.

But there were people, obviously, the guys in that generation, the guys on that team.

I covered David Robinson in high school.

So these guys got a kick out of seeing what happened to us, both of us, in the case of people in and around Washington, D.C.

You see a signed jersey from Charles Barkley.

in that corner of my me room in Arizona.

If I do it this way, you'll see see one of Magic Johnson that's game worn,

game worn of Magic Johnson as a Laker in a championship series.

This is not like I look at this stuff and freak out too.

I go, this is insane.

These were people I had good relationships with and then it crossed over.

And there's one, if there's a 23 jersey in here and there isn't.

There's one that,

you know,

people would say if there's fame, it trumps all of that.

One night I'm sitting in Madison Square Garden.

A guy comes up to me, a guy in a trench coat, and says, Mike, I just want to introduce myself.

I love your work.

Shook hands and he said, David Halberstam, nice to meet you.

And that's as close as I'm going to come to peeing on myself.

Okay.

But the others are more famous for most people.

And Dan has these.

Don't let him.

No, I have a few, but no, I have have a few, but mine,

mine are different, right?

I have a few.

Mine are different, though.

A, I gravitate toward the weirdos, the people who others might see as weird.

So the John Amicis, the Ricky Williams,

but also, and I think you can both speak to this, as writers, as storytellers, in some ways, we sometimes have to fall in love with our subjects.

And when we write about them, they're giving us a great vulnerability, the care of their story to tell it well.

And a real intimate trust can be built by writing about somebody with great care.

So I don't know how many of your two relationships can be there, but when you've told somebody's story with a care that they appreciate, relationships can blossom from there because these things can be painstaking, feature articles, and you really immerse yourself in someone's life, talk to the people who love them, get to know them, are curious about them.

And look, that's a fast forward to a friendship.

What Dan's describing is very organic.

And it happened before we became famous.

It happened before television or podcasts were in our lives.

I know I went to Philadelphia in the early 1980s.

And

when I said to Julius Irving, when he was the doctor winning a championship, you know, I'm Mike Wilbur from the Washington Post.

He said, sit down here.

How's my friend Anthony?

is in Kornheiser.

And it's like, that was intoxicating.

Another fake doctor.

Yeah.

It was, yeah, yeah.

Didn't need a coat, though.

That, you know, that was intoxicating to have Reggie Jackson and Julius Irving,

like,

connect because of Tony, who I, who I inherited full-blown relationships from because of that before television.

Because of how he wrote about those people.

Because of how he wrote about those people.

And Dan and Tony did much more of that than I did.

What I wanted to know about really was what is the most

dislike you engendered from someone you had a relationship with because of something that you wrote.

So you become closer than a standard journalist subject, but now you do something and they

let you know about it.

Do you remember?

The funny thing about what you're saying is that I can now look at relationships, and this will not surprise Michael at all.

I'm sure he's got similar stories like this, but these people tend to be tougher than us in general about criticism.

So whatever friendships I have with Pat Riley and Jimmy Johnson and Stan Van Gundy begins with me criticizing them, them being really mad at me, letting me have it, and me taking the letting me have it and over time repairing whatever needs to be repaired because I'm either fairer or more human or receptive.

And so I'm not, you know, a caricature media monster.

Those three relationships I'm thinking of, all three of them started with withering criticism.

None of those people liked.

yeah amen uh to to to

to that and luckily for people having thick skin in public life and we had to develop it because we came to public life after the people pablo that you're asking us about criticizing mine was probably one of my most notable one was probably um

more difficult because it goes back to childhood.

I grew up watching

and being on a playground and then watching my brother play against Isaiah Thomas at 13 and 14 and 15 years old.

And then writing about the bad boy pistons against the Chicago Bulls and criticism that then

fractured and then changed and then, you know, reorganized, reworked a relationship into being grown men.

that probably resented certain things that were said and happened in the 1980s.

Look, but I tell you what,

you can look at sometimes how these things fester and don't necessarily evolve as much as you want them to.

But I look at that one because it was complicated.

And Isaiah Thomas is somebody I talk to all the time now, all the time.

But there were times, I'm sure, when it was like, wait a minute, I knew this guy growing up.

He went to rival Baptist.

No, but Isaiah is complicated.

You're going through, wait a minute, criticizing him when you're the black guy, criticizing the black guy, and he's in the middle of all the Chicago things that you're in the middle of.

His hometown, my hometown, you know,

rival schools, Catholic high schools.

When Isaiah's school went away, sadly, a couple of years ago, I knew a lot of people who went to his high school.

The first person I called was him.

Just say,

I know how much this means to you.

I am sorry today.

And so ultimately, you put relationships, I'm not going to say back together, but Dan knows the complicated nature of those kinds of relationships.

And particularly,

I brought it up.

So that one, but yes, there are relationships plural like that.

I had one that doesn't count at all relative to Dan's with Pat Riley.

And it just speaks to the greatness of Pat Riley that he probably doesn't even remember it.

It doesn't even matter to him.

But Pat Riley, you know, when I see him, there's, I'm able to have warm conversations.

And I'm just thinking, my God,

when he refused to put Rolando Blackman in the game, Dan,

I didn't let that go for years.

John Starks.

That's John Starks.

That's the Knicks.

John Starks, two for 18.

Yes, John Starks.

It just

speaks to how large

those

guys were and are.

And Pat Riley, singularly to me,

how large a person he was and how tough a skin he had.

That he doesn't, I guarantee you,

it's not even a footnote

in his sort of professional life, even with journalists.

It doesn't register to him.

I can't believe it ever did.

Have you guys lost friends or subjects that you thought you had a relationship with because of something that happened at the job?

Because of you choosing, I got to be media person, journalist person over a guy who's going to say the thing that you want.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a longer answer in documentary form that I will tell at some point

with Ricky Williams about a complicated situation that has a lot of details in it that are rich and interesting, that really push the boundaries.

When I say at the beginning of this that Wilbon has navigated these friendships well, you will find no places publicly where Wilbon is

compromised by any kind of journalism integrity thing

because he's too close to somebody.

There are no stories like that.

People will question how close he is to Michael Jordan,

how many years he has spent

being not very critical of Michael Jordan, even though there aren't very many reasons to be able to be able to be able to be able to do that.

Hold on, Mike, how have you not brokered the peace between Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley yet?

How has that not been your job?

How have have you not succeeded at that yet?

That has been my job, and that's all I'll say about it.

That has been my job.

All right, that's the other documentary we're going to have to work on.

That one will sell because that friendship used to be a very special friendship, and it doesn't seem to be anymore.

Yeah, that's that's very true.

And it has, Pablo, it has been my job.

It has been my assigned job.

The thing I think about is

the toughness of skin that you got to have to live in public.

And Dan was referencing it that like, we talked to former athletes now, retired guys, Mike, and they're like, you guys are

like, you guys can't take the criticism.

Well, they say that about current athletes more than anybody else.

We've heard that because they've all got podcasts and they're all able to level that criticism personally without it being felt.

All roads.

All roads.

Yeah.

Well, the way I've got to be honest, though, Mike,

you said

the word podcasts with such a disgust a couple of times on this television farm.

It's almost like a curse word.

Me and Paul.

It felt like me and Paul.

I'm not even understanding what happened to me, but the way that you said podcasts felt racist to me.

I'm not saying it's an accurate criticism.

I'm just saying the way that you said it was.

It was a hard P.

It was a hard P.

Like every black person besides me doesn't have a podcast, too.

No, I like

it with you guys.

And I am honored, honored.

to have been on your podcast, on multiple podcasts with both of you.

And Dan, I think the two discussions, the most revealing discussions I've had in my life are with you and Mr.

Axelrod for your podcasts.

Within a month of each other, God, has it been three years ago now?

Yeah, it's been about that.

It was nice to see you.

I think it's not the last time I saw you because I saw you recently in New York for the for the finals.

But what I remember about that time in keeping with what it is I was saying about him being very bad at receiving affection, Wilbon, this actually happened on South Beach Sessions, probably.

You'll appreciate this.

Wilbon's in the middle of telling a story about seeing his late father for the last time.

And he tears up.

And as he's tearing up, he says to me, This is something that happens to me after I've flown sometimes.

It doesn't have anything to do with the emotions of talking about my father's death.

I am not crying because it hurts to be in pain about the death of my father.

I'm crying because the flights do this to my eyes sometimes.

They do.

They still do.

They still do.

No, so podcast is not a dirty word to me.

I'm the only person in media who doesn't have one.

I'm never going to have one.

There was a time in which I wanted to do everything or anything that was hard to prove I could do it.

I'm past that point now.

I want to watch Law and Order Reruns, anything by Dick Wolf, who should have hired me a long time ago as a consultant.

And I want to watch the Cubs and the Bulls and the Bears and the Blackhawks.

And that's what I want to do and play golf.

That's it.

That's all I got.

I like it.

Sounds pretty good.

You want Law and Order Sports Columnists Unit.

I don't want to have to die.

on it and i don't want to have to cast stephen a as a villain at the top of this show

Sorry to interrupt.

I'm going to need to see some ID.

ID.

Now.

Of course.

You don't want to fire a gun like Stephen A on General Hospital?

No.

No.

No, I don't want to do any of that.

But all of my best friends have podcasts.

Oh, God.

Now it's racist.

Now it's racist.

Some of my best friends are podcasts.

Some of my best friends have podcasts.

Now apologize to the people who talk about launch angle, Mike.

That's why I really brought you on here.

Apologize to people who believe in exit velocity.

We can curse, right?

We can curse on this podcast.

Yes, yes.

Let me lean into the...

Oh, I have to lean back now.

Here we go.

No, it's not going to be very brief.

I'm not going to go far.

Them.

That's it.

Because they've ruined.

I'll go one day.

We get it.

We get it, Mike.

They've ruined everything.

Wait, wait.

Wait, what would a podcast be without some mention of race?

So I'm going to go there now.

You guys tempted me.

You dragged me.

And now I'm going to go there.

And I wrote a column.

One of the last columns I wrote was about this.

I remember this column.

I remember arguing with people about this.

You know what I'm going to say?

I do.

Black people don't ever talk about sports leading off with points per possession or launch angle.

White people talk about sports that way because they're excluded from the conversation in every other meaningful way.

Mike.

They're excluded from sports.

Mike, look.

So therefore, they've invented, I'm only half joking, maybe not even half, about 20%.

They've invented a way to get back to reclaim sports by getting into V-Lo.

Anybody who starts a baseball discussion with VLO should be shot in the

head.

Mike, do you realize you were so close?

You were so close to inventing a joke per take statistic.

You were like, 20% of this is a joke.

I'm like, Mike, you're so close.

You're so close close to the advanced statistic.

I went to law and order opening scene.

Bam,

Mike Wilbon, Dan Lebetard.

I say this unironically.

Two of the weirdest and greatest people I've ever met.

Thank you for doing this.

Bablo, thank you.

Dan, thank you.

Love you, buddy.

Love you guys both.

Love you both.

Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Aberoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by NGW Post, Theme Song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.