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

Transcript

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Speaker 24 I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities.

Speaker 24 Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 23 Them.

Speaker 24 Right after this ad.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I'm sitting in my house in Scottsdale. In the middle of PTI negotiations that are heating up.
No,

Speaker 23 don't be bashful, big boy. Don't be bashful.
Oh, boy. There's no middle of anything that I know of.
What do you mean there's no middle of anything that you know of?

Speaker 23 That contract expires next month, and they lose in Wilbon and Coronizer. You know that? Maybe I might just go to Chicago and do something wild-card.
I don't know.

Speaker 23 Well, our air conditioning was down, and you have not prepared me for this. Uh, but I am delighted to see our old friend Mike Wilbon, uh, El Padrino, the godfather.
Uh, it is nice to see you.

Speaker 23 El Padringo, wow, thank you, Dan. Wait a minute, I think you changed that word.
What El Padrino is what I called you. I don't know.
Padrino, I thought you said padringo. I was like, oh,

Speaker 23 you came very close to saying like

Speaker 23 in Spanish

Speaker 23 That's dangerous.

Speaker 24 More or less racist, actually. That might have been both at the same time.

Speaker 23 Good to see you guys both. Likewise.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 co-hosting PTI together when Tony Kornheiser was out. And now I'm the guy who only fills in when Wilbon is out.

Speaker 24 And I want to get a sense of what your actual dynamic is because you guys, Padrino aside,

Speaker 24 it's weird.

Speaker 24 I don't quite know if Wilbon actually totally likes you, Dan.

Speaker 23 Honestly. Love him.
Love him.

Speaker 23 Absolutely love him. I love Dan Lebatard.
Let it be on the record. Well, I wonder why it is that Pablo comes by this confusion.

Speaker 23 I think it has something to do. Eric Rydholm, the producer, pardon the interruption, has apologized about this to me in the past.

Speaker 23 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 and Kornheiser.

Speaker 23 So I'm going to make him right off the bat the hateable Dan Lebetard. There are enough people, and Dan's alluding to these, who know that when I went for decades to Miami,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 You know, my mom was alive at the time, and Dan and his mom were just

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 20 years of history that have nothing to do with PTI.

Speaker 23 So I think I can well chronicle my love for Lebatar.

Speaker 24 So I just need to clarify here, and I should clarify this this week especially, I think, that while we are over here striving to create the weird new future of sports journalism,

Speaker 24 I also have a deep, deep affection for the past and for the even weirder coaching tree from which I have sprung.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 They are two incredible journalists who met while working for Ben Bradley's Washington Post.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 23 Tony and Mike, congratulations on 20 years of PTI. And Pablo, I hope you're proud of these guys for staying together so long.

Speaker 24 I know I am.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 If I was lucky, there'd be a good basketball game on. If I wasn't, it would be you guys.

Speaker 24 And as my colleague and now boss, Dan Levittard, knows better than anyone, summertime is PTI substitute host season.

Speaker 24 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

Speaker 24 from episode one.

Speaker 25 I was Tony Kornhart for 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.

Speaker 25 I think it's Pablo Torrey just found out or Pablo Torrey knows this.

Speaker 25 Or maybe it's Pablo Torrey has gout.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 23 How about this?

Speaker 25 Squeeze this with Pablo Torrey, huh?

Speaker 23 Squeeze this.

Speaker 25 I like it.

Speaker 23 Good luck, Pablo.

Speaker 24 But speaking of eating it, while I always co-host with Cornheiser, I do remember Lebatard, before he self-deported from ESPN, most often working with Wilbon.

Speaker 24 And Wilbon is, in some key ways, extraordinarily different from me. He's more opinionated in general.
He hates analytics as a concept.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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

Speaker 24 doing stuff like this.

Speaker 23 Pardon interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. Tony, so tired from doing Monday night football, so please say hello to Dandy Dan.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,

Speaker 23 bam, bam, bam, bam.

Speaker 23 Why did we do this? You know, I think I tore this jacket. I think you tore a pectoral muscle.
This rigid torn more.

Speaker 24 And I thought to myself, one day I want to sit in that chair. One day I want to work for that.

Speaker 23 That jacket, Mike, I think I have this right. I don't know if you guys have moved.

Speaker 23 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 really scheduled when those guys would go away and make me cover like a really dry time.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 That's the only way something would get from Macy's into my closet.

Speaker 23 He really drilled me with that wardrobe elitism. There was no smile.
No smile in his life. No chance that would happen.

Speaker 23 Briefly, wardrobe shame me.

Speaker 23 I volunteered that I

Speaker 23 love it.

Speaker 23 And by the way, see, that's Pal Pabo. That's what Dan would do.
He would offer himself up

Speaker 23 for the show

Speaker 23 for the greater good for Tony and me to do stuff like that. That's a perfect way.
It's natural. And Reinhold didn't even have to write it.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I don't consume anything you guys consume. I don't consume podcasts.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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 work and you're a columnist.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Two very different creatures, two persnickety creatures, one a good deal more persnickety than the other.

Speaker 24 Let's rank the persnicketiness for those who are not familiar with the family tree.

Speaker 23 Okay, but okay, which way do you want to go here?

Speaker 23 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?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I don't know sports radio. I don't need any more information.
I know it all. No,

Speaker 23 no, that last part was not said. I don't consume anything, anybody, because I don't give a shit.

Speaker 23 I don't.

Speaker 23 But I do think I know more than 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.

Speaker 23 So Dan is on to something there.

Speaker 23 The late part is right. I'm usually intentionally or cavalierly

Speaker 23 somewhere between 30 seconds to seven or eight minutes late. I don't give a shit about that either.

Speaker 24 I like how the podcast Mike Wilbon would host if he gave a shit about podcasts would be titled Mike Wilbon Already Found Out.

Speaker 23 No,

Speaker 23 no, no. Mike Wilbon doesn't give a shit.
It would be more accurate.

Speaker 23 I don't give a shit. Mike, Mike Wilbon doesn't give a shit about your podcast.

Speaker 23 Mike Wilbon.

Speaker 23 There we go.

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Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 And even to me, he's like, I'm not, I can't. No, I'm not doing that.

Speaker 23 Well, that's, I mean, that's

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Didn't speak to the Washington Post beat writer for a year.

Speaker 23 Well,

Speaker 23 when I got to the post a couple of summers earlier than that, I don't think Tony spoke to me for a year.

Speaker 23 I say this with the most respect, and I think you guys can vouch for this. I love Tony, but he's crazy.

Speaker 23 Yeah, I can vouch.

Speaker 24 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

Speaker 23 won't do it.

Speaker 24 To Dan's phraseology, he is the hardest nut to crack. And it only makes me want it more.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 But I've asked Tony over the years and then stopped asking because he didn't want to do it. I think that

Speaker 23 we're the last of the people who did daily stuff the way we did it.

Speaker 23 And when you do daily stuff the way 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 there's 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 re he just doesn't want to do it wait so mike so mike you don't you don't you don't get the uh i imagine that you're not so hardened that you uh 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 it felt good.

Speaker 23 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,

Speaker 23 because I don't allow myself to examine it.

Speaker 23 I don't consume it that way. I know when there's been a particularly good one.

Speaker 24 That's it. How do you measure it? How do you know?

Speaker 23 How do you do it again tomorrow?

Speaker 24 How do you know when it's a particularly good one, Mike?

Speaker 23 It's just my sense of what's good and what's not. That's it.
Well, but when he says that, though, Pablo, that's sharpened over years.

Speaker 23 When he says my sense of what's good, a columnist's gift is knowing for his audience what's good. Like,

Speaker 23 it's one of the strengths that's what these people sharpen. It's why they put us on television, honestly.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 1997-98 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 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?

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I mean that you were all at

Speaker 23 a Sugar Ray Leonard fight, if you go back when I was young, or then a Mike Tyson fight.

Speaker 23 And so you could all read the way 26 people wrote about Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield's ear and spitting it out.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 You had a sense of all of that for decades on everything.

Speaker 23 You had it on Carl Lewis and whether he hated Ben Johnson, even though he ultimately won the race.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 i'm sitting there with 25 other dudes writing about holy field's ear rolling across the 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

Speaker 23 story? Could you do this one better? Could you tell it in 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?

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 45.

Speaker 23 I have later in life

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 writing stories, I wanted to beat Mitch Album at whatever the things were that got you awards when you were the best sports writer in America for telling the best stories.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 i didn't give a about zagging

Speaker 23 i wanted i wanted to read everybody's

Speaker 24 i cannot relate less to just loving zigs.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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,

Speaker 23 mine stacks up here. Mine stacks up against just about anybody doing.

Speaker 24 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?

Speaker 23 I love the deadline stuff and comparing who had balls, whose nerves were shot. The night, I'm going to go back to the Holyfield Tyson ear thing, because I was at, that's a real thing for me.

Speaker 23 When Holyfield jumped and you 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.

Speaker 23 You had to see a replay. I remember thinking when I, when

Speaker 23 in three seconds, when I figured out what happened,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Editor of the New Yorker now, Said, I remember saying to him, mouthing to him, column.

Speaker 23 That's it. That's it.
Because if you couldn't do that, I didn't respect you.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 And I, then I had you. So I ask you all these years later, Wilbon, who wrote the best story off of Holy Field Tyson? Because I think you're bringing it up because you know that you did.

Speaker 23 You know that you read 26 stories. And on that day, you kicked Remnick's ass.

Speaker 23 No, I like what I did that night, but I do go, I did respect the people, the giants who covered Ali.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 There's no higher praise that phone calls 47 years ago. Because

Speaker 23 he was at those things and he covered those things and those people, those things that mattered to me. David David Halberstam covered those things.
He covered Vietnam, but he also covered Ali Foreman.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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?

Speaker 23 That's the highest compliment it it's it's it's a great compliment it's also

Speaker 24 it's 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 i i that that that's praise too hot that's a that's a bridge too far no it's not mike i dude hold on i don't know if i've told mike this but i was at sports illustrated they would assign me to like you know the regionals of the nca tournament and i'd show up at various sites around the country one of the sites they assigned me to was, of course, Washington, D.C.

Speaker 24 at some point, like a sub-regional. And it was a sort of thing where I wander through the press box.

Speaker 24 I wander through the media area where it's just like, you know, media guides and plates with gross rotting food. And there,

Speaker 24 typing by himself is Mike Wilbon.

Speaker 24 And I did not go up to Mike Wilbon.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 23 And I was like, look what I saw.

Speaker 23 Look what I saw.

Speaker 24 I was paparazziing Mike Wilbon when I was a reporter.

Speaker 23 Like, that's what it was like to me. Did you count enough for that to have been 2006 when George Mason

Speaker 23 was making the Cinderella run? Might have been.

Speaker 24 Might have been that.

Speaker 23 You could feel, you remember the creepiness, 1890?

Speaker 23 He mentioned being in Washington, D.C. And that would have been like the only time I was in D.C.
because I was on the road. I went to where the stories were.
I didn't wait for them to come to me.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I didn't wait for them to come to me. Do you remember that, Dan? You remember that those days?

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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...

Speaker 23 I appreciate it to a level that you two don't understand or I'm not letting you you understand. But no, no, because that's not, you know, I tell Matthew,

Speaker 23 you know, I've hugged Matthew a million times in my life, a million.

Speaker 23 I was 27 years old when my dad died of cancer at 60. I never hugged him.
Never.

Speaker 23 Let me try it again. Never.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 So, you know, the world has changed. Men are allowed to

Speaker 23 express things that they didn't.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 23 That's how the world has changed. It's gone from watching the games to watching clips.
We evolve from something.

Speaker 23 You have not evolved here. You have not even.

Speaker 23 Look at Mr. Beast out of here hugging his dad.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I didn't ask about that.

Speaker 23 I asked you about receiving affection, not giving it. I don't, no, I don't receive it.

Speaker 23 That's not how I was.

Speaker 23 You know, that's not how I, and you know what? You know what, Dan?

Speaker 23 It's great because obviously our work comes through

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I mean, maybe a little, but overwhelmingly, I wouldn't change the way I was brought up. And there are certain touches of that.

Speaker 23 that I still include in the rearing of my 17-year-old who just has to shake his head and go, Jesus Jesus Christ, how did I get stuck with the old dad? You, you got stuck.

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Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 And I tell my son, and there's no reaction from him because 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.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 He'd arrived at his dreams. That's true.
Dan knows how often we talked about it.

Speaker 23 We did. We talked about it in person.

Speaker 23 And I tried to convince him of the same thing,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 I would trade all of it in for that. And it's the only thing I would trade.

Speaker 24 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 you didn't know i didn't know anything at 32

Speaker 23 nothing

Speaker 23 i knew how to get on a plane and go find a column i didn't know anything that's so funny

Speaker 23 that's all we knew mike that's all we knew that i'd say that's all the three of us knew at 32.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 yeah i yeah and yes i i i i think we were and so then to depart from that took i won't say unselfishness it took a certain determination and that's 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

Speaker 23 NBA cities.

Speaker 24 Mike, Mike, it's talking to Kornheiser because look, I have the weird position of like, I'm the other woman sometimes where I'm like, you know, filling in for you, and I get to hear about you from your spouse, Tony.

Speaker 24 And he still is saying,

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 23 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

Speaker 23 other meaningful touchstones.

Speaker 23 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 game we i did not move on from that willingly i loved it by the way by the way i still love it to to 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 two in the morning.

Speaker 23 He's sitting at Prime 112 at 15 years old at 2 in the morning, you know, with

Speaker 23 whatever players from other sports are around.

Speaker 23 And that's what I wanted to introduce him to so he could at least feel it.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 24 A true celebrity athlete in a way that became personal.

Speaker 24 And if you're going to talk about navigating 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,

Speaker 24 that is something that you're navigating suddenly.

Speaker 23 Wilbon'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

Speaker 23 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?

Speaker 23 Michael, I got to think that most of your friends are either in writing or in basketball.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 And then the television happened and it segued, and they got a kick out of it too.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Charles Barkley.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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 one of Magic Johnson that's game-worn,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 These were people.

Speaker 23 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,

Speaker 23 there's one that,

Speaker 23 you know,

Speaker 23 people would say if there's there's fame, it trumps all of that.

Speaker 23 I 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.

Speaker 23 Shook hands and he said, David Halberstam, nice to meet you.

Speaker 23 And that's as close as I'm going to come to peeing on myself. Okay.

Speaker 23 But the others are more famous for most people.

Speaker 23 And Dan has these. Don't let him.
No, I have a few, but no, I have a few, but no, but see, mine are different, right? I have a few. Mine are different, though.

Speaker 23 A, I gravitate toward the weirdos, the people who others might see as weird. So the John Amichis, the Ricky Williams,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 and you really immerse yourself in someone's life, talk to the people who love them, get to know them, are curious about them.

Speaker 23 and 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

Speaker 23 and

Speaker 23 when i said to julius irving when he was the doctor winning a championship you know mike web of the washington post he said sit down here how's my friend anthony is in kornheiser and it's like that was intoxic another fake doctor yeah it was yeah yeah didn't need a coat though um

Speaker 23 that you know that was intoxicating to have reggie jackson and julius irving

Speaker 23 like

Speaker 23 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 know about really was what is the most

Speaker 24 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

Speaker 24 let you know about it. Do you remember something?

Speaker 23 The funny thing about what you're saying is that I can now look at relationships, and this will not surprise Michael at all.

Speaker 23 I'm sure he's got similar stories like this, but these people tend to be tougher than us in general about criticism.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Yeah, amen. Uh, to to to

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Mine was probably one of my most notable one was probably

Speaker 23 more difficult because it goes back to childhood. I grew up watching

Speaker 23 and being on a playground and then watching my brother play against Isaiah Thomas at 13 and 14 and 15 years old.

Speaker 23 And then writing about the bad boy pistons against the Chicago Bulls and criticism that then

Speaker 23 fractured and then changed and then.

Speaker 23 you know, reorganized, reworked a relationship into being grown men

Speaker 23 that probably resented certain things that were said and happened in the 1980s. Look, but I tell you what,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 No, but Isaiah is complicated.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 His hometown, my hometown, you know,

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Just say,

Speaker 23 I know how much this means to you.

Speaker 23 I am sorry today.

Speaker 23 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,

Speaker 23 I brought it up. So that one, but yes, there are relationships plural like that.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 But Pat Riley, you know, when I see him, I'm able to have warm conversations. And I'm just thinking, my God,

Speaker 23 when he refused to put Rolando Blackman in the game, Dan,

Speaker 23 I didn't let that go for years.

Speaker 24 John Starks. That's John Starks.
That's the Knicks.

Speaker 23 Jon Starks, two for 18.

Speaker 24 Yes, John Starks. And just choking.

Speaker 23 It speaks to how large

Speaker 23 those

Speaker 23 guys were were and are. And Pat Riley, singularly to me,

Speaker 23 how large a person he was and how tough a skin he had.

Speaker 23 That he doesn't, I guarantee you,

Speaker 23 it's not even a footnote

Speaker 23 in his sort of professional life, even with journalists.

Speaker 23 It doesn't register to him. I can't believe it ever did.

Speaker 24 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 guy who's going to say the thing that you want.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 23 I have a longer answer in documentary form that I will tell at some point

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 When I say at the beginning of this that Wilbon has navigated these friendships well, you will find no places publicly where Wilbon is

Speaker 23 compromised by any kind of journalism integrity thing

Speaker 23 because he's too close to somebody. There are no stories like that.
People will question how close he is to Michael Jordan,

Speaker 23 how many years he has spent being not very critical of Michael Jordan, even though there aren't very many reasons.

Speaker 24 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 you not succeeded at that yet?

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 It has been my assigned job.

Speaker 24 The thing I think about is

Speaker 24 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

Speaker 24 like, You guys can take the criticism.

Speaker 23 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 all roads.

Speaker 23 All roads. Yeah.
Well, the way I've got to be honest, though, Mike, you said, you said the word podcasts with such a disgust a couple of times on this social farm. I'm not stupid.

Speaker 23 It's almost like a curse word.

Speaker 23 Me and Paul.

Speaker 23 It felt like me and Paul.

Speaker 23 I'm not even understanding what happened to me, but the way that you said podcast felt racist to me.

Speaker 23 I'm not saying it's an accurate criticism. I'm just saying the way that you said it.

Speaker 23 It was a hard P. It was a hard P.

Speaker 23 Like every black person besides me doesn't have a podcast, too.

Speaker 23 No, I like

Speaker 23 it with you guys. And I am honored, honored to have been on your podcast, on multiple podcasts with both of you.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 Within a month of each other, God, has it been three years ago now? Yeah, it's been about that.

Speaker 23 It was nice to see you. I think it's not the last time I saw you because I saw you recently in New New York for the finals.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 And that's what I want to do and play golf. That's it.
That's all I got.

Speaker 23 I like it. Sounds pretty good.

Speaker 24 You want Law and Order Sports Columnists Unit.

Speaker 23 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 shelf.

Speaker 23 Sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 26 I'm going to need to see some ID.

Speaker 23 ID.

Speaker 26 Now.

Speaker 20 Of course.

Speaker 24 You don't want to fire a gun like Stephen A on General hospital?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 23 No, I don't want to do any of that. But all of my best friends have podcasts.

Speaker 24 Oh, God. Now it's racist.

Speaker 23 Now it's racist. Some of my best friends are.
Some of my best friends have podcasts.

Speaker 24 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.

Speaker 23 We can curse, right?

Speaker 23 We can curse on this podcast.

Speaker 23 Yes, yes. Let me lean into the

Speaker 23 break. No, it's not going to be very brief.
I'm not going to go far.

Speaker 23 Them.

Speaker 23 That's it.

Speaker 23 Because they've ruined.

Speaker 23 I'll go one day. We get it.

Speaker 24 We get it, Mike.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 You guys tempted me you've you dragged me and now i'm gonna go there no 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 you know what i'm gonna say i do

Speaker 23 Black people don't ever talk about sports leading off with points per possession or launch angle.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 23 So therefore, they've invented, I'm only half joking, maybe not even half, about 20%.

Speaker 23 They've invented a way to get back to reclaim sports by getting into VLO.

Speaker 23 Anybody who starts a baseball discussion with VLO should be shot in the

Speaker 23 head.

Speaker 23 Mike, do you realize you're so close?

Speaker 24 You were so close to inventing a joke per per take statistic.

Speaker 23 You were like, 20% of this is a joke. I'm like, Mike, you're so close.
You're so close to the advanced statistic. I went to law and order opening scene.
Bam.

Speaker 24 Mike, Wilbon, Dan Lebetard,

Speaker 24 I say this unironically. Two of the weirdest and greatest people I've ever met.

Speaker 23 Thank you for doing this.

Speaker 23 Pablo, thank you. Dan, thank you.
Love you, buddy. Love you guys both.
Love you both.

Speaker 24 Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Aberoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daewig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello.

Speaker 24 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.