Share & "Retire" & Tell with Dan Patrick and Dan Le Batard (and LeBron's Hands)

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I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

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Right after the sound.

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Good afternoon.

Look at that.

Restrained, classy, punctual,

flanneled,

journalist.

I used to be one of those.

I don't know how it happened that I became the third ranking journalist on this in terms of just journalism-ing

just

a guy wearing a clown nose alongside two members of a Mount Rushmore of Reporters.

Correct.

Yeah.

You sold your soul, Dan.

Sold your soul.

You know how Dan Patrick refers to our show, Pablo?

He says, you talking and somebody next to you dressed like a parrot.

Yeah.

It just screams out 60 minutes.

The voice, the voice emanating from the flannel.

Yeah, I don't get tired of it.

My Dan,

other Dan.

I don't know how I'm going to.

Wait a minute.

Which one is your Dan?

Hold on a minute.

What did you just do there?

I'm your Dan.

He's other Dan, but yes, his voice sounds like polished professional television.

It's infuriating.

Infuriating.

It's pipes.

They call them pipes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mine are rusty and filled with sewage.

His sound like a flute and angel singing.

Just don't let your wives answer the phone when I call.

Both sounded both like

a lullaby and a threat, both of them.

Hi.

Is Pablo there?

Pablo, who?

Look out, Liz.

Hi.

Hi, Valerie.

No, you better knock that shit off.

You better back up.

Valerie, I'm here too.

Are we recording?

I mean, we started.

Yeah, this is what journalism looks like.

Welcome.

Wow.

I wanted to start beyond the just truly mellifluous guttural noises of Dan Patrick.

Beyond even that, I did want to address my two dans.

What an honor.

What an honor to confuse the audience by me calling both of you by your first name without explaining your dynamic, which I think is a little bit obvious now, but for people who don't know like how you guys know each other, why you guys

like or dislike each other, can you explain?

Can one of the Dans please explain how it is that we're all here today and how you guys have gotten together?

Well, do you want the brief version?

I can do that.

But if

you want the novel, then your Dan can do that.

Go ahead, Dan.

Pablo gave us over an hour to chop this up.

So why don't you wax poetic?

I would say that Dan is one of the few people who I've become friends with late in adulthood.

I have not done that with a whole lot of people.

I admire him for a lot of reasons.

He's a little bit of a loner and does things his own way, gave us a lot of permission to do the things that we do, gambled on himself, did some things that I really admire.

And I've genuinely felt like I've gotten to know him a little more than most people because he's a bit guarded, not with his radio audience that gets the most intimate him, but a bit guarded.

And I feel like he's let me see a little more and I've appreciated the access to that vulnerability.

Dan Patrick is already, already making the face of someone who's like, are we about to do therapy with Lebittard again?

Is that what I wandered into?

What is it?

What is happening here?

No, I think it's having somebody that you can talk to.

I think Dan was going through a tough time.

His brother was sick.

Then his brother died.

I was going through health issues.

So I think we found it cathartic in a certain way.

And,

you know, we crossed paths, but

it's weird to have friends or become friends when you get older because I'm six months from being 70.

I'm not collecting friends.

I'm usually losing friends because they die.

We just kind of hit it off and

conversations have been rewarding.

I was going to jump in by just pointing out that I see you guys as having occupied during truly like peak ESPN, that broad arc of the company's history, two different sides of the company.

Dan Patrick, I grew up with watching on Sports Center, for those who are too young to remember what that was.

Televisions were a device that you could use to watch sports.

And there was Dan Patrick and the aforementioned vocal cords.

Then Levittard, I mean, I worked with you, obviously.

People know that part, the way in which your sweat and your sweat equity equity funded my entire enterprise here that's obvious but you guys were different sides of the thing but dan and i didn't know each other at espn i don't think we crossed paths at all at espn I didn't even know you were there at ESPN until Pablo just told me that you were at ESPN when I was there.

I may not have been.

I don't, our times might not have matched because when I think of Dan giving us permission, I think of him doing stuff on television on his own where his producers are are going into a confessional box and doing things during the breaks and doing things that I had not seen television people doing with a radio show.

And one of the many places that Dan and I connect is

He really respects radio, just really respects the intimacy, the connection to the audience, the idea that he has to remind his guys, even after 20 years, hey, we're a radio show.

Make sure that we're not talking over each other.

We're not a video product.

There are just a number of places where Dan lit candles along the way that allowed us to take some chances that weren't chances because he took them first.

Plagiarized Dan Patrick's show, I feel like.

That's another way of saying he lit candles for us along the path.

I wonder if Dan Patrick feels any of that part of it.

No, no, not at all.

Because people say, hey, McAfee's show looks just like yours.

And I go, Good.

Like, I couldn't care less.

I mean, if he wants to showcase his, his show that way, he's doing a TV show.

I'm still doing a radio show that's on TV, and it's different, and our approach is different.

I tell the guys that I work with, the Danettz, that just

you have to explain everything.

You can't expect somebody to know what you're talking about because it's visual, because it's not.

It's voyeuristic.

I wanted to create...

voyeuristic radio where you get to watch what we're doing.

And even during the commercial breaks, I have 13 cameras in there and I wanted you to be able to see,

you know, like this is one of those reality shows, Big Brother or whatever.

You're all living in a house for three hours.

And that interested me.

I just couldn't get anybody to buy into the concept.

So I kept waiting to get somebody and I finally got somebody at DirecTV, Chris Long, who said, I get it.

We'll just put in all these cameras in there and we'll just shoot everything.

And I said, exactly.

Like I've had the most fun.

I think when I did Sports Center with Keith Oberman, that was fun, but, you know, really challenging because you had to kind of make it greater the next night.

When I left ESPN, I said, I'm just going to do this in my own words, in my personality.

Because when I was at the mothership, it was an echo chamber.

They wouldn't let us have guests on who weren't ESPN related.

I wanted the audacity of me, I wanted to have Peter Gammons on.

And they were like, no, you can't.

He's not ESPN.

I go, but he's Peter Gammons.

And then I wanted to have Rick Riley on.

And they said, no,

you had to have people in-house.

And I just, I fought them on that.

And then when I got out, I just said, you know what?

We're just going to do it this way.

Let's just go to work and have fun.

And

been very fortunate to have the guys that work with me.

It's one of the reasons that I like this platform more than any of the others.

It's because the connection that he makes with his audience is real.

The connection is born of they feel like they know him beyond the television veneer of being a polished person on television.

When he shares with them a softness that doesn't get seen when he has to be professional anchor guy.

And that connection is something that you see in a fractured media today is more and more valuable because the audience comes with him, because they've been with him in a way that makes an allegiance that's even deeper than it would be to four letters.

It's not four letters.

It's a human being.

It's a human being who left four letters and now connects in his audience in a way that travels.

And it's the specificity of the medium that does that, the space to be, it's not 50 minutes competing with who can be more clever, me or Keith Oberman.

It's three hours a day, flaws and all.

Here's us making mistakes.

Here's us having the confidence to sink into the mistakes.

Here's the veneer of television taken off so that you can see something something more clearly, ironically enough, that isn't even meant to be seen.

All of this drives me to this point when I am hearing about Dan Patrick declaring, also, I'm going to retire soon.

So, where are we on that?

Where are we in the countdown clock?

Other Dan, can you catch everyone up on where that is?

I didn't realize it at the time, but I...

I had signed for four more years and I said that'll be my last contract.

Well, immediately people went to the end of the four years and like, so you're retiring in four years.

And I go,

yeah.

But it wasn't meant as an announcement other than, you know, I'm going to be here for four more years.

That'll be the last contract I sign.

And all of a sudden, then it became, I'm retiring.

And I said, in four years.

You know, I mean, it's not the rollout that you should have.

And I wish I could have taken it back and not said it that way, but I got two and a half more years before I retire.

But from this day, day-to-day show, that that's, but I, I'm, I made a promise.

I, I didn't want to be laughed at unless I was laughing at myself with you.

And I can tell where I'm slowing down a little bit, not as sharp on things.

And I just, I can't, I, I, I'm a perfectionist.

I can't put up with that.

I want people to notice the difference between

polished, professional, sculpted person on television who is slightly scripted and has room to be glib and clever, but what you get televised to you, even though you think like you might know Dan Patrick, is a stick figure.

It's one-dimensional.

It has the range that television can provide, but it's a confined range.

What he's talking about there is all sorts of humanity that you only get to see once he moves away from the confines of broadcasting into doing it his own way and doing like you, Pablo, now following his curiosities.

What's interesting to me?

Do I get to be the barometer on how this is successful?

Because I'm simply chasing things that are just interesting to me and showing my audience more of me than they ever got when I was on the biggest sports program there was.

But what other Dan just said, what Patrick just said, was

when people are laughing at me and I'm not with that,

there is something of an inflection point to acknowledge and address.

And Lebittard,

I suppose this is a convenient segue to me pointing out, no one's ever described you as a stick figure.

I'm a little too round to be a stick figure.

That's a fact joke.

That is wrong.

Thank you.

This is why, this is why you're a moral epicenter that speaks on behalf of the media and Pablo's a podcaster.

That's why.

That's right.

That's right.

But hold on, though.

The question of

for Lebitard, do you need to be laughing at yourself while others laugh at you?

Because no one leads the league in more, hey, shoot arrows at my flesh than Dan Lebetard in terms of make fun of me, his crew of people.

They are rude.

They are actively disruptive.

They get off on making fun of him.

And I just wonder for Lebetard, when did you make peace with the fact that it sounds like your threshold for what you need to also be laughing at is different from Patrick's?

Well, there are a couple of things here.

One, I didn't grow up with television.

I've been a fat kid all of my life.

And as soon as I got to pardon the interruption, they beat everyone to the joke with...

We know he's not wanted here.

They want Wilbon and Kornheiser.

So they beat everyone to the joke.

So whether I wanted it or not, that was the route that we were going.

But the other thing that's important, I've never gotten better at this part.

I have never, as a professional communicator, gotten better at the fact that when my tone goes bad, my message totally gets lost.

So, if I'm going to be obnoxious, if I'm going to be self-righteous, if I'm going to be strident, good to have the softener as a tool and a formula.

Let everyone make fun of you so that you don't come off as always thinking you're the smartest guy in the room, even though you often do think you're the smartest guy in the room.

And so, you let everyone else undercut you, and it becomes a design.

It's something I say around here.

This is not a problem that Dan has because he's got a very good control over his environment, but

I'm not in a position with this group of people that it serves me in any way to just be doing a show with Jeremy Tashay or Chris Whittingham or Mike Ryan, where we're always the ones talking and it sounds like a sermon or a lecture, as opposed to the guy in the parrot costume who's there to soften everything up so that I can be, you know, my natural organic asshole.

Organic is also not a word I think people often use to describe Levittar's asshole.

I feel like there's a lot of people who are not.

Actually, it's more organic than it's ever been.

Actually,

Dan and I connected over organic food when he was just eating mushrooms.

So more organic than you might imagine.

Wait, hold on, wait.

What was Dan Patrick's mushroom diet?

Like, what was that about?

Oh.

I had this inflammatory, an autoimmune, and we could not figure out how I got it, how to get rid of it.

Felt like you had the flu every day.

You weren't nauseous, but you were just beaten down.

And

my wife, God love her, she was like, Let's try this, let's try this, and let's try this.

And then all of a sudden, you know, she wanted to find, you know, one of those special health doctors.

And

he

said, How about you

have steamed vegetables and purified water every day?

I said,

for how long?

He goes, the foreseeable future.

And so I go,

okay.

So I said to my wife, all right, you wanted me to go to this doctor?

He said, we're having steamed vegetables, purified water every single meal.

Nothing, you couldn't waiver, no, no beer, no snacks, nothing, nothing.

So I did it for three months and Levittard saw me.

I had lost 20 pounds, but I still had this inflammation.

And we went out.

He brought his show to, I think, Gramercy

Theater and was going to do his show up there.

And we went to lunch and I had, I think I had mushroom soup and

water that had to be room temperature.

And

thank God, my wife got me a trip to Normandy.

for Christmas because I was doing this for three months.

I get a hold of the doctor and I said, hey, I'm going to France.

And he said, For how long?

I said, 10 days.

He said, Well, then enjoy France.

I never went back to steamed vegetables or purified water.

It was full speed ahead.

And,

but, yeah, all I did is lose weight.

But Dan saw me.

I was, I was kind of sickly.

I was going through some treatments at

a hospital for special surgery.

Once a month, I'd go in.

And

it was a 12-year period.

And

I was going to give up.

I'm thankful I had the job to go to.

I just, I didn't want to go to the job because it hurt.

I had a guy who had to follow me up the steps in case I fell back.

We moved all my clothes to the basement.

I couldn't climb steps.

I mean, it was really bad.

But I had the show to go to, and that was the most important part of all of it.

But I'm doing better.

I did stem cell, went to Panama, did stem cell, and maybe turning the corner here.

Pablo, people have no idea how tough this human being is.

I will not betray any confidence.

No, I won't betray any confidence.

Well, he doesn't share this part, and he shared more there than I've heard him share because he I've grown to learn that he is very good at stuffing down all of those feelings into the basement of his nether region.

And I do believe that part of our connection is at least in part, some small part, because I will get a crowbar in there and I will ask Dan questions to make him talk about that stuff.

But he doesn't want, he doesn't want, he doesn't want to do any of this.

He doesn't want to do that.

But only if I can help people.

My wife said, maybe you can help people.

And I said, okay, but it's like even now, like, I don't,

I don't want this to be a testimonial or something.

You know,

all I do is turn on a microphone.

You know, I'm lucky.

I get an opportunity.

I'm very, very, very, very lucky.

I get to do this.

So

we all go through shit.

Like Dan, when he lost his brother, and I, I, you know, I, I tough love it, man.

I'm like, damn it.

Make your brother proud.

Stop.

Stop.

Stop crying on air, Dan.

Stop crying on air.

You, you,

I want to ask Patrick if he had the same thought that I had, which is

I was astounded and worried and then ultimately unsurprised, despite my initial reactions, that Lebittard went and hosted his show the same day that he found out that Dave died.

Because what I'm doing here, by the way, I lured both of you in with talk of LeBron.

And now we're plumbing depths that I didn't necessarily intend on, but it's all in the context of when do people know when to hang it up?

When do you know when to stop going to work?

And Lebitard, his instinct was, I need to go right to work at the very bottom of my personal trajectory.

And I'm wondering if Dan Patrick saw that and had a thought that was anything like what I just described.

I needed to go to work.

I just couldn't sit home, even though I would have been by myself.

I had to go

and

just somehow plow through it.

I was just going to get through it.

It was three hours.

All right, let's go.

Stop being a wimp.

And I saw Dan,

it was defeating him.

And I kept thinking, think of your brother.

He doesn't want you to be this way.

Don't be this way.

And I kept reinforcing that to him because I could see where he was, he internalizes, holds on for dear life.

Here's my emotions.

They're right there.

You can see them.

And I was telling him to move past that.

Just make your brother proud that you move past it with respect to him because

he would hate to have that impact on you.

Hate.

We can joke and say, oh, I'm sure he'd love that you were crying over it.

No,

I was being sincere with him.

And I said, make him proud by showing him how strong you can be because you saw how strong he could be in the hospital.

Here specifically, you and I are built differently because I do remember those conversations and I remember there being some balm in the idea that you were mocking me inside of that and there could be laughter there.

But where you are seeing, because you come from television and you come from CNN, don't make yourself the story and ESPN's imprinting of don't make yourself the story, don't be different.

You're seeing weakness where I was seeing strength.

I did not see me breaking down in front of my audience as something that was blubbering weakness.

To me, it's like, no, this is what you get.

And you know this, Dan, you know this part?

Because when you came in sick, even though you weren't talking for the 12 years about how much pain you were in, you did share with your audience more than you ever would have on television.

Look, this is what I'm dealing with.

And this is why maybe I'm not as good good right now as i would like to be because i'm undergoing i don't want to make excuses because you're not going to make excuses but you told your audience on the front end look i'm going to show you this much i'm more comfortable showing my audience more and i don't think that's a weakness in me i think it's part of part of the whole thing well sharing your emotions on your show was not a weakness off the air It was consuming you.

That was the part where, and it's not a weakness.

It's just, it's not a strength.

The strength to be able to share with your audience how you truly feel, something I never thought that I would do, but I'm, it was empowering because now I got a connection with you, especially if you're listening in your car.

I'm just talking to you.

And maybe you've gone through this.

Maybe somebody else has gone through this.

Now you have more of a connection with me that I'm not that guy who was sitting on Sports Center and, you know, wearing a suit and tie.

Like this is,

he's talking to me.

And that's, that was the goal.

But I would never, ever say, you know, what you did on the air.

It was just every time I talked to you, it felt like it was holding you back.

Agreed, because I was broken and in some ways I'm not healed.

I'm healing, but not healed still.

And don't know that I'll ever be healed because the pain is a perpetual reminder.

But the place that you and I are probably most different, Dan, I think I can say this, is you're very much

move on.

Move on.

Like, I don't know that I've heard two words more from you than move on about you, about like,

you're like, stuff it down and move on.

Move on to the next thing.

Levantard, I have, I have Dan Patrick talking to you like he's a basketball coach.

I mean, he's really strong.

He's tough.

He's really, really tough.

I was not telling you any of the things Dan Patrick was telling you.

We don't have the same relationship in that way, but I also was somebody who just isn't that tough either.

But the thing that I'm getting to here in this conversation around retirement, the illusion of it, the desire for it, the countdown towards it in public, I'm trying to figure out of whether either of you motherfuckers is going to retire.

So far, this conversation has been one in which you express a justification for the emotional vulnerability that Dan Patrick will not permit privately.

He will permit it publicly.

He's also just kind of walked back his desire to even talk about the fact that he is, in fact, retiring, allegedly.

That was like the first thing he said.

And Levittard, him going to work on that very traumatic day, told me this guy's going to be hosting this show until the very end.

And I don't know whether either of you guys have credibility on the question of I actually want to stop working.

Well, I'm going to stop.

I'm going to stop after the Super Bowl in Atlanta.

That's it.

I'll do other things, but I have a broadcasting school at the Full Sale University, and there's some other things that I'm involved in.

But I, once again, I want to, I want to be great or the best that I can possibly be.

And I'll be 72,

almost 73 when I retire.

I just, I, I don't want, he's not as, you know, he's not as good, not as sharp, not as,

and, and I'd rather go out early than go out late.

Um, and I made a promise to my wife.

I mean, I was selfish for

we've been married 38 years.

You know, I've been in TV since I've known her.

And it was always about me, always about my career.

She raised kids, four kids.

I'm the one that, hey, I'm on TV.

Hey, I'm going to the NBA final.

I mean, all of those things.

And I, I told her that I'm going to retire so I can still, if I'm healthy enough, that we can actually do things.

And that's important.

That's the most important thing, having a couple of grandkids.

And I had to, I have to come to grips with that.

I haven't yet.

So if you hear me kind of

not being really declarative, you're right.

I have to convince, I have two and a half years to convince myself.

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So how do you guys feel about the fact that the entirety of our industry started, you know, getting invested in what turned out to be an alcohol advertisement.

Well,

everyone's on pens and needles across the country.

You ready to go, LeBron?

Where's the powder?

Left it at home.

LeBron, fans want to know where you're taking your talents this year.

What's your decision?

In this fall, man, this is tough.

In this fall,

I'm going to be taking my talents to Hennessy VSOP.

VSOP?

Well, when you sent me one of the storylines of what we were going to talk about.

Which we're finally getting to.

We've gotten to it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

But I went, there's no story there.

That's going to be something for Amazon, something for T-Mobile, something.

It was more cringeworthy than I thought it was going to be.

I had a friend who bought tickets to the last regular season game of the Lakers.

Oh, he actually, he was one of the, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and I kept saying, I said, don't do it.

Don't do it.

Well, what?

Kobe went out against the Utah Jazz and LeBron could go.

I go, I said, don't do it.

And then the announcement comes out and he goes, Yay, it's okay.

It's all right.

I didn't spend that much, but

I got good tickets for the Lakers and the Jazz.

And I go, okay, congratulations.

Start drinking Hennessy right now.

It is lame.

It's lame.

lame.

It's Michael Jordan wearing your dad's jeans and how it is that somebody becomes the oldest player in the league after 15, 20 years of real groundbreaking and pioneering.

The initial thing that they did was quaint, at least in part, because it could be flaws and all somebody trying to change the game.

This is the opposite of that.

This is taking those same feelings that you have spun on your finger forever, teasing it, and then monetizing it in a way that's commercially grotesque.

If I were the brand, I would be offended to be associated with what it is that they did there.

Commercially grotesque.

Oh, come on.

Like, it's just like, what are you doing?

Just, what are you doing?

You have been such a good caretaker for all the things over your 20 years.

At the end, the punctuation is going to be just sell out for dollars here and there.

Hold on, though.

I think the takeaway that I have here is that we're not close to the end.

Like, I think there was a framing of this because, of course, it was meant to sort of troll us into thinking it that we're at the end and he's gonna truly come full circle.

And that equity, his sweat equity, was going to be cashing on something meaningful and momentous on a day that happened to be Amazon Prime Day.

It's a total clear side note.

Instead, what he's like telling us is,

I'm not going anywhere.

And which is fine, but he doesn't, he doesn't have to tell us that.

I hope he continues to play the way he's played.

He's great content.

I just,

everybody criticized the initial decision.

It was handled poorly.

And then you're going to double down on it and bring it back as if we go, boy, man, I'd certainly love to see a modern day version of the decision, a second decision there.

If you're going to do it, then get Jim Gray.

I was going to say, my one critique is: I wanted Jim Gray to be back.

I don't think we've talked enough about Jim Gray as basically the avatar for us in that dynamic.

Levittard, I mean, you, this is your account, but Jim Gray being the guy to break the chapter of sports history open is endlessly funny to me.

I don't even know if you guys really know Jim Gray.

I don't.

I know of him, but it's just hilarious.

I've gotten to know Jim a little bit, a really unusual and diligent person who has carved out one of the most amazing broadcasting careers there has ever been on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

He's got a star.

Yes, he does.

And that was all his idea.

That thing that you say, both of you say, I think, was poorly handled, but I didn't think it was poorly handled.

I just thought it was groundbreaking and way ahead of its time.

Yes, it fooled with and toyed with sports fans' feelings.

That's the part about it that I think most people found offensive.

But the idea that it was all the brainchild of Jim Gray and that Jim Gray would have a connection point anywhere with LeBron James to make that happen doesn't even make sense.

Jim, I would consider a friend, and we've talked about this.

He went to Maverick, he went to LeBron's people and thought, you know, we can do this.

And you're right about it being groundbreaking.

The problem I had is ESPN wanted this to to be an hour-long show.

That was the problem.

And I thought it was poorly constructed because Jim is out there and talking to LeBron about the powder and you're biting your nails.

And like, that's not who Jim is.

Jim's not a, hey, chummy chummy small talk.

Jim gets right to the point when he asks questions, when he's doing interviews, it should have been,

let's make the decision.

Now let's, you know, deal with the fallout.

Like the show should have been, LeBron makes the decision.

Now we get reaction from South Beach.

Now we get reaction from Cleveland.

Now we get reaction from the commissioner of the NBA.

Other players, like I think they could have framed it in a way that they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish.

It was just, it was just drawn out.

And I felt bad for Jim because it lost its momentum.

Like they kept going,

okay, we're going to go to break.

And when we come back and then

they'd go to break and come back.

And then, well, when we come back, and I go, oh, my God.

Just tell us, please.

Now I don't care.

It is important to remember how much of a troll job the original decision was.

That is in keeping with the second decision that we just watched together.

I remember talking to Matt Rick Carter about this, and he said, we would not do that the same way if we had a second chance at it.

I did not necessarily foresee the second chance at it being a Hennessy ad, to your point, but it does remind me that when LeBron is being asked by Jim Gray, do you still bite your nails?

What I was doing in this video was really focusing on the hands that are in this commercial.

Do we have the?

Because on the left is what is presented as LeBron James's hands in the ad.

On the right is LeBron's actual hands.

And I'm just here to tell you that Pablo Torre finds out has completed an exclusive investigation, which we tell you those aren't LeBron's hands in the Hennessy ad.

LeBron definitely didn't do any of the things involving the close-up on his actual hands.

And the fingernails are just one clue.

The other part of it might be the fact that they don't look anything like each other.

Well,

how much work LeBron did is, I think, an active investigation here.

As the husband of a woman who used to be a hand model, I can tell you.

Oh, my God.

These things do happen.

And

my wife was a hand model while she was in college at NYU.

One of the great hand models.

She was the Giselle of hand models.

Oh, it was very put her through college.

She would see these ads where they would have the model, and then my wife would have to put her hands up holding the product.

Yeah, so I can't speak from experience that I married a model, just a hand model.

Who's gorgeous, by the way.

I mean, mean right exactly the risks also must be reckoned with the risks are incredible they get under underrated in the discussion on the hands but

this is what you're doing with our money and our journalism pablo you're exposing the hennessy ad fraud hands of lebron james this is what you're doing this isn't exactly you know kawaii and the clippers here

i mean look at this

what are they do they think we're fools we have on the left lebron james in quotes, shuffling a deck of cards.

And then on the right, you see the actual, you know, six foot eight, six foot nine specimen we've come to know about.

Hands that look like they've been dunking on rims and left in a bit of disarray from dunking on rims for a long time, as opposed to the left, the hands on the left, which may very well be the hands of a hand model because those are perfectly manicured.

They're perfect.

They're perfect.

They're smooth.

They are worthy of look i'm not here to play matchmaker but i imagine that's sue those are hands she approves of just as a matter of like a game recognizing game

manicure is really the key she said you know it's got to have the nails done and just just letting you know it's some of the uh tricks of the trade there with a hand model does your wife wear gloves around because she used to wear gloves no the investment um for a long time the moneymaker yes absolutely And then I started to make some real money at ESPN and I said, hun, you can quit your hand modeling career.

The thing about this commercial and the way that this all is connected to you guys and the story of you guys and your friendship is that.

We're finally getting around to this here.

This is, you know, hand crafted this segue.

Dan.

The irony of Dan Patrick lamenting that Jim Gray and ESPN teased something out when Dan Patrick might not know that all of Pablo's Kawhi reporting is like in the 45th minute of every episode because he's just sitting there yammering the entire time before he gets to the news.

Get to the point.

Foreplay is a very important tenet of modern journalism.

And neither of you old guys apparently respect.

what it is that we're doing here because the climax, I would argue, is in this sentiment.

Love of God.

It's in this sentiment.

We're living at a time where Tom Brady is the case study.

He is the one who's lit these candles, these lamps for other athletes to follow.

And all I'm here to say is, yes, there may be a day when LeBron James does the thing that Dan Patrick is clearly conflicted about, which is the retirement tour, in which he gets the rocking chair made of baseball bats or the various signed lithographs that Kobe Bryant got, and on and on and on.

We may get to the point where he actually stops playing basketball.

But what both of you guys are very clear about to me and what LeBron is very clear about to me watching this stupid ad is that you and he and they aren't going anywhere.

Tom Brady is more everywhere than he's ever been.

You think LeBron James is going to disappear?

LeBron James has channels.

Everything you described about what it is that you do, this thing that's everything and yet nothing, LeBron's going to be doing that in the way that Tom Brady's going to be doing that.

I subscribe to Tom Brady's newsletter.

Dan Patrick, you telling me you don't have designs on what that afterlife is going to look like?

It's, it's going to be, I'm not adding, I'm subtracting.

And, and you're right.

You know, Tom and LeBron have a lot of opportunities.

LeBron will probably end up owning a team.

Tom, you know, has a minority stake in broadcasting, and LeBron will be active.

I hope he is active with the game.

And, but I'm, no, I'm, I'm subtracting.

I, I'm not,

I don't want to be out there.

You know, when I was at ESPN, and that was in the mid-90s, we were everywhere.

We, we were.

We had, ESPN had exploded.

Sports Center exploded.

You know, I was told by SI they were going to name us the Sportsman of the Year

one year.

I mean, it was, it got crazy.

And,

you know, you just felt like, you know, I sold my soul here.

In retrospect, you look at it.

And, and I just, I hated the feeling.

We went from being that underdog, hey, kind of a fraternal channel that you turned on.

And then all of a sudden, you know, they had the Espies, not that we needed it, but we had the Espes.

And then, you know, I meet Samler and he puts me in a

movie and Darius Rucker and Hootie and the Blowfish put me in a video.

Like it became too much.

I didn't say no.

And

it was all there for the taking.

So, no, I know in my little world,

being overexposed too much,

certainly aware of that.

I always have that in my memory bank.

Pablo, though, the thing about Dan, right, when I tell you that he's unreasonably competitive,

when I think of Tom Brady and these conquerors that you're talking about, that aren't going to be able at 40 to just put away the competitive, because however competitive Dan is, and Dan is wildly competitive by the standards of our industry, that industry is a whole nother thing.

Like Peyton Manning is taking on a media company and he wants to compete against whatever it is that LeBron and Tom are doing just in media, just off to the side of media.

That's my point.

LeBron and Tom Brady are coming for you guys.

Yes, but I.

I can have me.

I'm not going to be here when they come for me.

I won't be here.

I'm fine with that.

And it's a young man's game.

Like, there are not many people who.

Is it though?

Is it though?

I don't know.

I see America as a place where the older generations, those who are excellent and those who are terrible, neither sides of that sort of spectrum of quality are giving it up.

And I am so glad that some are not.

I am very glad that you two particularly are not.

There are others where I'm like, Jesus Christ, they don't realize the game is over.

And I don't know if it's a young man's game.

I think we say that, Patrick, but I don't know if that's true.

And I think LeBron and Tom Brady are kind of proof of that in sports.

Yeah, but they're only 40.

They're in their 40s.

I'm going to be 70.

That's a

there's a lot of separation there of, hey, I'm just getting into this to hey, I'm just leaving this.

They're taking on things, they're excited.

I'm no, it's completely different.

I've, I've seen though, what I was going to say to you guys, though, about what has happened to me, I'm going to say over the last five years, uh, because you seem more convinced than I am, Pablo, that I'm never going to hang this up.

Correct.

But this is my take that you.

You had better hope so, given the collapsing media and how much your podcast costs.

You had better hope so.

I never stopped doing that.

Also that.

Also that.

As I've gotten into my 50s, I have seen less and less value.

And I've had this conversation with Dan because his daily standard is, I believe, so unreasonable and so unforgiving.

I've seen less and less value in being competitive at my age.

To me, I really have settled into a space where the mere getting to do it is the success.

I don't have to beat everyone.

I don't think that's how Dan comes to work still every day.

I think we're different that way.

This will sound really pretentious.

You know, Jordan would create rivals, but they weren't really rivals.

He'd make up stories.

Like, in my mind, I'm still competing with ESPN.

And they're not competing with me, but in my mind, I'm competing with them.

And other shows, whether it's McAfee, Colin Cowherd, or whatever, it's you want to be great.

And there's no report card you get.

It's just the feeling of, did we get the right person on?

Did we get information?

Are we breaking stories?

And that, that's really important.

It'd be easy to just sit here and go, who do we have on?

Oh, okay.

Albert Breer, the Monday morning quarterback's on.

Let's talk about a couple of things and then take a break and then come back and then

I don't want it to be formulaic,

but

I have to come in and be competitive.

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I want to pay you the compliment here.

The reason why I've come to really respect and enjoy Dan Patrick as well as Dan Lebetard is that you guys ask questions.

that many other people are afraid to ask of people who are powerful, influential, very famous, don't appreciate those questions.

You guys have done that in ways that have comforted me as I think about what is this whole entire business, a business where the athletes, and again, not to make this all about the athlete podcast, because I think we've reached a point, frankly, of diminishing returns, where so many people have gotten shows and microphones because of what they used to do that now where I think realizing what it is that you guys

were trained and learned how to do.

I think that's not the argument anymore.

It's simply that,

you know, when Tom Brady thinks he can do the job that broadcasters can do, and LeBron, of course, I believe will have designs on that as well.

Competitiveness is funny because you've done this for so long where literally

the guys you covered are trying to do the things that you do now because that's what media is.

It's why it's so so important in this country is that it's the thing.

The microphone is still the thing that everybody wants, even the guys you think would have no interest in it because they have won and done everything.

They actually want what you guys have built.

Well, the one thing that athletes can't replicate is

they're not curious enough.

They're not curious about the people they have on.

And I'm curious because I could never play at their level.

So my questions start out with with wonderment.

How does this happen?

Why does this happen?

Where, who, when?

And having been taught how to interview many, many years ago, still being curious is what it's all about.

But there is a competitiveness.

When I interview you, I'm going to win.

Like I got, I win by, and I remember Pete Sampras said to me,

you got to work harder if you're going to get better answers out of me.

And he was right.

I wasn't asking good questions.

And Pete was famously a difficult interview.

And I figured it out.

And if I step on your toes or it's a little uncomfortable, it's just part of the game.

I think it's important to establish that in none of this is the presumption that I know more about sports than the athletes.

It's the opposite.

It's the thing that you can't train and condition and coach into somebody, which is the lack of expertise, the lack of knowledge, forming a worldview that makes the angle that you take to these stories one that aligns with a public interest, which is where the journalism thing becomes not just a joke, but a real premise.

That's the great tug of war because they go into these interviews.

They don't want to give you stuff.

I mean, they're conditioned to not give you something.

How do I get in this interview and get out of this interview without saying something that's going to make a headline for all the wrong reasons?

So all of a sudden, your guard is up a little.

That's why I love talking to somebody and trying to have them forget that we're doing the interview.

Like the goal is that it's just a conversation.

And when you get that, that's when you get somebody telling you something.

And that's the fun part.

Or they don't even know they've told you something.

And it's not gotcha journalism as much as it is.

I'm going to study and I'm going to get ready and I'm going into battle and I'm going to lose more than I win, but you know, I'm sort of Braveheart, you know.

It doesn't end well all the time, but you know, you're going to know I was there.

Christ Almighty, he's Michael Jordan over here, he's Braveheart over there, but he doesn't mean to be pretentious, folks.

He goes into every interview.

But you know what?

But, but much like in Braveheart, at some point, you are going to see some guy's ass.

Yeah.

So, yeah,

there is just that as well.

And, and there he is right there.

Dan loving it.

There it is.

There it is.

There's his ass.

His organic, his organic ass.

Organic ass.

Bountiful.

Yeah.

You know, I got to rest my voice.

Just

might want to wrap this up.

He's got to go.

He's got to go, Pablo.

We're on Dan's time, not yours, Pablo Torres.

Wrap it up.

He says, I mean,

I did do three hours today

Just saying, but I don't know how many hours.

No, no, Dan, you and me, you and me, the dinosaurs, still three hours a day.

Pablo strolling in with his parasol.

Three times a week, I'll see you guys.

And I'll ask Dan and Dan to do one of the episodes for me.

Oh, you got to be exhausted.

Who canceled today, by the way, that you had to rope us in?

What deep dive?

Is this the Knicks?

The Knicks Brunson contracts?

James Harrison.

Is there something in there with Jalen Brunson?

Well, look, how he arrived at the Knicks, this is where I will have to defer to the reporting I may or may not do on this.

Certainly was interesting, right?

Like, okay,

that's a pretty good deal for the Knicks.

Has some, whatever.

Anyway, I don't want to get ahead of myself in terms of that.

That's a tease, though.

That's a tease.

It's a bit of a tease.

Yeah, I'm showing a little ankle with you.

I always show a little bit more ankle than I should with you.

But by the way, subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

I got in so much trouble because I told you that.

Holy shit.

The number of people in New York City who come up to me on the street now and are like, please don't do the Jalen Brunson story that you told Dan Patrick you were going to do.

And I'm like,

now

when I said, oh, you're working on anything else?

And all of a sudden you gave it to me.

I was like, yes.

That was that.

Braveheart.

I lost.

Braveheart got my ass.

I did get you.

I was like, man, you're on a roll.

Hey, you've done a great job.

There were a number of headlines that came out of a tossed off comment to you because I thought you're my friend and we're riffing.

And instead, suddenly are hearing, people are hearing the saber rattling of the next great investigation.

And I'm like, Jesus Christ.

The call that he got the next morning from me, Dan Patrick, screaming into the phone, why are you giving Dan Patrick the good shit?

Do you know how much we're paying everybody for the good shit?

That's right.

Because as we start at the top of this show, Dan Patrick, now we can understand him as Braveheart.

And in the meantime, you guys think this is foreplay.

I climaxed like 20 minutes for the love of God, Paul.

That was great.

Oh, Jesus.

He's a professional.

The man's an icon and a pillar of professionalism.

He doesn't do crude sex jokes.

This is awkward.

I'm uncomfortable.

So am I.

I'm gonna go take a

power.

Yes, I am.

Yeah, I'm the one that has the voice.

Oh, hi, there it is.

I'm sorry.

Did you climax?

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.

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