Hour 2: Zaslow's Football Fetish (feat. Rachel Nichols)

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And it's February 15th, 2026 at 1159 PM Eastern.

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Speaker 9 This is the Dan Labatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.

Speaker 10 That's right.

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Speaker 13 Congratulations, though, because he's had some heartbreakers.

Speaker 13 Half a yard, some ridiculousness has crushed his parlays. I wanted to ask the group here, because of endings and getting endings right, whether it's Tua or Chris Paul.

Speaker 13 Chris Paul has had a truly majestic career of excellence, playing at a time where he didn't get on the banana boat with Carmelo, or he did get on the banana boat, but he didn't go the places that Wade and Bosch and LeBron took the league.

Speaker 13 But a truly excellent player, an all-timer by any definition, one of the greatest we've ever seen. And now the reporting on him

Speaker 13 feels lonely, like feels like Chris Paul has been wandering the earth the last few years without a recognizing of his greatness in a proper way.

Speaker 13 And then he gets to the Clippers and tries to hold people accountable and nobody comes to his parties.

Speaker 13 And the reporting on this, what's happening here with the reporting on this as you read between the lines, I mean, because this is not the ending that Chris Paul's excellence deserves.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and I don't even think it's the ending that the Clippers wanted out of this. Everyone kind of feels badly, I think, of the situation, but it was a great piece of journalism by Ramona Schelberg.

Speaker 15 She really dug deep, talked to people behind the the scenes, and gave us some great blow-by-blow perspectives of things as they happened, including Chris Paul on the plane grabbing Brooke Lopez to come prove whatever point he was trying to make about like, oh no, I didn't mean it like that.

Speaker 15 So

Speaker 15 I think whenever you read these deep dives, you can kind of tell based on the storytelling. who was the person or which side was the one that was more giving with information.

Speaker 15 And in this one, it it was clearly Chris Paul side but the irony is I walked away reading and be like oh my god like Chris Paul really doesn't take a hint right it doesn't come across as complimentary to Chris Paul as I think he would have liked it to be based on the things that were said in it my favorite story like I said is him getting we talked about this where he got into an argument with Jeff Van Gundy about did you change the the the coverage or not and he said i didn't change the coverage i merely suggested a change of coverage and they're like well you change the coverage whatever And so he literally goes and grabs Kawhi Leonard and like one other guy, John Collins, I want to say, as character witnesses.

Speaker 15 Guys, did I change the coverage? Did I change the coverage? And they're like, no, he just suggested a change of the coverage. And I'm like, Chris, that's the point.

Speaker 15 The point that you're sitting here being the locker room lawyer and getting character witnesses or whatever, that's exactly what they're talking about.

Speaker 15 It's the semantics of whether you actually changed the coverage or merely suggested a change of coverage is what they're talking about.

Speaker 15 It's just like, we don't need you to be a lawyer here and with the legal terms and the greater.

Speaker 16 That's what he's always been.

Speaker 15 Yes, yes, Dan, but I think they had an expectation and they talked to him about it

Speaker 15 within the, like before they signed him. And they reiterate several times now, Chris, this is the kind of role we want you to be.
And he's like, yeah, I'm totally cool.

Speaker 15 And then like, of course, he couldn't help himself and he became himself again.

Speaker 17 I think the thing that when you're a tree shaker, you're always going to be a tree shaker. And that's what makes Chris Paul great, right?

Speaker 17 And yeah, he agreed to having a reserve role on the court, but you're never going to be able to take the Chris Paul out of Chris Paul.

Speaker 17 And that's sort of silly that the Clippers, who are a downright, disturbingly embarrassing team in terms of team culture over time, would poo-poo, would dismiss, would besmirch Chris Paul trying to increase, uplift the culture of the place by, I don't know, throwing a party, trying to get the group chat all together, throwing another party.

Speaker 17 How dare Chris Paul try to to bring the team together?

Speaker 15 So we talked about this on Basketball Illuminati, the episode is out this week, about specifically that. And I think that the part that you can't look past is he has the behavior of an asshole.

Speaker 15 So like throwing a party, we all know like a real asshole that you don't get along with. Would that person throwing a party making? You know what? He means well.
I'm going to go.

Speaker 15 No, you'd be like, the hell out of here. Mike, what are you doing tonight? Read the room.
Mike, what are you doing tonight?

Speaker 18 I'm going home.

Speaker 15 Oh, so you're not coming to the holiday party?

Speaker 19 No, I'm going to college station early in the morning.

Speaker 16 This is my last show of the year.

Speaker 5 Dan, if I threw a party, you'd go, right?

Speaker 13 You're not coming to the holiday party? Because you're going to go be with that cult, that cult,

Speaker 13 those people at Texas AM?

Speaker 19 It's a weird way to frame a business trip.

Speaker 18 Holidays, fun.

Speaker 18 Holidays as a dad?

Speaker 20 Tough.

Speaker 18 Travel, gifts, matching pajamas. Don't get me started on matching pajamas.
It's hot in Miami. My wife says, why don't you want to do this with us? My daughter's crying.

Speaker 3 Anyways, school parties, hosting a family.

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Speaker 3 Don Lebatard.

Speaker 16 Amino Hassan.

Speaker 21 Stugats. Amino Hassan.
This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

Speaker 13 I'm surprised to see Chris Paul go out this way, and I'm surprised to mean that anybody would expect Chris Paul to be anything other than formed superstar.

Speaker 13 The Van Gundies say the hardest thing in sports to coach is the aging superstar, requesting self-awareness of Chris Paul at this point in his career when he's always thought he's leader guy.

Speaker 13 And I'll bring everybody together. I've got 20 years of proof on my resume that says I'm a formed leader.

Speaker 16 Wait a second.

Speaker 19 You made the point about an asshole throwing a party and your first question was to me?

Speaker 15 Oh, that was a coincidence. I just thought of a party like, hey, what are you going to be doing tonight?

Speaker 15 Dan, here's the problem. You can be a leader, but it has to be within the kind of like, again, the auspices of what we're doing here, right?

Speaker 15 And when we talk about that staff, the very veteran staff of coaches, right? Ty Lewis won a championship. He's a great coach, right?

Speaker 15 Jeff Van Gundy, one of the greatest coaches the league has probably seen, right? Larry Drew, former head coach. Brian Schwat, former head coach.

Speaker 15 So they don't need you to do things that are deviating from what they're doing. A great example of this is Eudonis Haslam.
Eudonis Haslam, tough guy. Eudonis has him.
confrontation, right?

Speaker 15 Not afraid of confrontation, holds people accountable. But Udonis never said, yeah, I know that's what Spo and

Speaker 16 Quinn and all those players have.

Speaker 13 I'll do my own. Half the player that Chris Paul is, doesn't have the experiences that a bunch of other organizations have.

Speaker 10 Okay, Chris Paul,

Speaker 3 I'll get another one. I'll get another one.

Speaker 13 And Carmelo Anthony refuses to come off the bench because he's not going to be somebody who should be able to do it.

Speaker 16 That's not what we're talking about here.

Speaker 13 Chris Paul is an aging superstar. He's five years past where Carlos.

Speaker 15 Carmelo, I need to stop you because you're talking about Carmelo. And Carmelo was playing and expected to be a starter.
Chris Paul, when he was signed with the Clippers, they were abundantly clear.

Speaker 15 Now, Chris, you're probably not going to play a whole lot. I'm not talking about minutes.
I'm talking about games. You're not going to play that much.

Speaker 15 We want you here to be a steady force, be a locker room voice, a leader, all these things.

Speaker 10 A locker room voice.

Speaker 15 Krista. A locker room voice that is not in contrary to what the coaches are talking about.

Speaker 17 But what if they're wrong?

Speaker 15 Then that's a different story. But you can't have a situation where you got a guy who's actively basically subverting everything we talk about.
Hey guys, let's go left. I think we should go right.

Speaker 15 Hey guys, let's go up. I think we should go down.
Like whenever you do all that stuff, I don't give a damn what your resume is.

Speaker 15 I don't give a especially when you are if he was the star player if it was quiet leonard doing this then that's a different story right you were signed to be the 15th man the 15th man even if you're right keep your opinions to yourself or at best try to

Speaker 15 reach common ground with the coaches so that when we're communicating to the team we're all locked step i told a story about Boris Diao on the Basketball Illuminati podcast about him being exactly like that.

Speaker 15 Like just a kind of a contrarian, but also right a whole lot of time because he's a basketball genius.

Speaker 15 But the reason why we have schemes and we have systems and ways of doing things is not because this is what's going to make the basketball genius the best.

Speaker 15 It's because not everyone on the roster is a basketball genius. And so if we have one dude saying, let's do it in this different way, you got guys like, wait, wait, are we doing it this way?

Speaker 15 Are we doing it that way? And that's the kind of discord that a team cannot.

Speaker 15 cannot abide by even if they're as awful as the Clippers have been this year.

Speaker 17 I totally disagree though that this reporting makes Chris Paul look bad. To me, I think it makes the Clippers look really, really bad and really out of touch.

Speaker 17 If you think you can quell and silence Chris Paul ever, despite you're the 15th man off the bench, I mean, what are we doing here? That is just delusion.

Speaker 15 I think, again, one is when that's the framework of which, why are you even here? I think that changes things.

Speaker 15 And two, I could think of a lot of great players who did, like, and were accomplished and everything and they went along with it.

Speaker 15 They did not buck against this. And the biggest thing for me in the story is multiple times they made it clear to him, dude, you got to chill.
Like that's not your role right here.

Speaker 15 And including there's one time where he's like, yeah, can I address the team and apologize to the team? My bad, guys. I was out of line.
It's like it was being told to you.

Speaker 15 So at some point, and I'm big on this from just a regular, whatever type of business you do. When someone makes mistakes, you don't say, get his ass out of here.

Speaker 15 You have a conversation, you have multiple conversations. Hey, man, like, you keep doing this thing.
It really is an issue. I need you to really cut back on it.

Speaker 15 At some point, when they don't, what do you do?

Speaker 15 What's your next step? Do you just let him keep doing what he's doing?

Speaker 17 So, my question is: why wasn't there a problem in San Antonio? He started all these games. They welcomed him back.
He would have been there again.

Speaker 17 San Antonio is a consummate, professional, well-run organization, and yet, Chris Paul, not a peep about him being a problem Oklahoma City Thunder he ends up going there has this great relationship with Shea Shea becomes an MVP it really is like the beginning of the again another well-run organization to me it's like well if Chris Paul is in diversion to you as an organization then you need to take a look in the mirror at what you're doing that might not be working so two things number one

Speaker 15 Both of those organizations, both of those teams, what do they have? A shit ton of young guys.

Speaker 15 Not guys who have won championships, not old vets, not guys who have been around the NBA block millions of times. These are all guys who are like, Chris Paul is teaching me about the game.

Speaker 15 I never knew these things. That's a big difference when you talk about that energy coming into a locker room.

Speaker 13 Nicholas Batum is not over there saying, I can learn some things from the old fella.

Speaker 15 Also, also, again, coaches, younger coaches, right? Mitch Johnson for most of last year because Pop was sick, right? Mark Dagnall at the beginning of his NBA career. So I'm a young coach.

Speaker 15 I'm a sponge. Give me more.

Speaker 15 Ty Lou is not looking for like guidance from a guy like he knows what he's doing right and Jeff Van Gundy even more so.

Speaker 15 The second thing and this is really important to notice and this is this is something I think people in league circles know but I don't know if the common fan knows.

Speaker 15 He was so great for San Antonio, right? Why isn't he there right now?

Speaker 17 He wanted to come back to LA.

Speaker 15 He was so great for Oklahoma City, right? Why wasn't he there at more than a year?

Speaker 17 Trying to get the bag somewhere else. Goes to Phoenix.

Speaker 15 We can play this game for why did he leave Phoenix?

Speaker 17 Now you're starting why'd he leave Houston?

Speaker 15 Why did he leave the Clipper? Like this is who he is guys. Dry heat.
Like Jeremy started

Speaker 15 Jeremy started with this is like this is what were they expecting and I'm like yeah on some level yes but like on some level you expect someone to take inventory of like hey man I don't have it here comes a word again the leeway that I once had to act like an asshole all the time and wear people out when I'm the 15th man.

Speaker 15 I can do it when I'm an all-star. I can do it even when I'm the aging vet who's come here to teach Victor Wemenyama and them boys how to play.
I can't do it from this seat right here.

Speaker 15 And like, that's why I'm saying, Dan, when you compare to Carmelo, Carmelo is still like a year removed from being an all-star. Like, Carmelo is still a guy who thought I could play.

Speaker 13 You're telling me that you think that Chris Paul, Hall of Famer, should have some sort of self-awareness that I would not think he would ever have after a lifetime of overcoming eyes.

Speaker 13 Being the tiniest of players and being someone who can always disprove everyone, you think he's going to have an awareness of, oh, the Clippers have this right. Not me.
Not me who's a Hall of Famer.

Speaker 13 The Clippers are doing things correctly. When I got Strip Club James and Kawhi, who never wants to play out here, they're the ones who are doing it.

Speaker 17 In the middle of a scandal about caps aversion as well.

Speaker 15 But Chris Paul has no bearing on any of those things. That's the point.

Speaker 13 But self-awareness is the one. He's showing up.
He's throwing parties that no one's attending. That no one on his team is attending.

Speaker 15 If I'm an asshole to everybody, right? Like Like, he had, not nobody. Some people showed up.
Some staffers, a couple of players. But the idea was it wasn't like 100% attendance.

Speaker 15 That should tell you something. It's like, remember the movie Draft Day? The guy had a birthday party and nobody showed up? Like, that tells you something about.
You guys are like, oh, how dare them?

Speaker 17 Like, you think. It tells me something about the Clippers, really.

Speaker 3 I feel like that's the thing.

Speaker 16 But hold on, hold on.

Speaker 15 So we can make this about the Clippers because they've been a brand of ineptitude, right? Been known for ineptitude. Even though last year, they had a really good season.

Speaker 15 They had one of the best defenses. They pushed the nuggets to seven games.
All those things.

Speaker 15 We could throw that out and say, overall, the Clippers have been kind of a little bit of a laugh or stuff, right?

Speaker 15 If we look at those individual players, are we saying now that, like, hey, this, like, what's his name? Zubash, you're sus. Are we saying Bones Highland?

Speaker 17 Definitely Bones Highland sus.

Speaker 15 I'm just saying to you like this. They have a roster of players that have been around the league and have been successful in this league, whether it's individually or on the highest level of winning.

Speaker 15 At what point do we take a look at the guy who was known for his whole career being kind of an irritating asshole?

Speaker 15 That, hey, the reason it didn't show isn't because of a lifetime of us being an in-ept franchise, but it's because you're a jerk and I don't like being around you.

Speaker 17 Well, but the thing that I don't get is if his wisdom was so poor, then why? I mean, obviously Victor Woman Yama is a huge piece of San Antonio's success, as is Shay in Oklahoma City.

Speaker 17 But if his wisdom was so bad and they were soaking it up, then you would think that they wouldn't improve or they would at least stagnate.

Speaker 15 Well, it's not that the wisdom is poor or bad. Again, I'm going back to it's incongruent sometimes.
There's so there's many ways to skin a cat, right?

Speaker 15 You could say, Oh, I'm gonna do it this way, and you do this way, and it's not like this way is the best way, or this way is the worst way to do it. It's just these are different ways.

Speaker 15 But when you're in a team environment, and we've got a system of doing things, we want to do it this way.

Speaker 15 Coaches will say this all the time: if I draw up a play or drop a scheme and a scheme don't work, that's my fault. If we don't follow the scheme, then whose fault is it? Like, so that's the thing.

Speaker 15 They want you to do it that way just so that we can be consistent in the way we approach it.

Speaker 1 Are there that many ways to skin a cat?

Speaker 13 Why are we skinning cats? Why are we skinning cats?

Speaker 5 So it dates back to 1670. Wow,

Speaker 5 the English naturalist John Ray provided the earliest written version in his collection of English proverbs. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Speaker 5 But it also says there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging so apparently

Speaker 5 apparently there's there's more than one way to skin a cat was to be sort of an equal opportunist animal abuser yo speaking speaking of dogs

Speaker 15 i got a thing about people bringing dogs on vacation

Speaker 15 or on trips i should say rachel nichols next

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Speaker 4 See official rules at program website.

Speaker 3 Don Lebatard.

Speaker 19 You're getting started on the breakfast flan.

Speaker 15 Oh man, I've been singing a song to myself all morning long.

Speaker 2 Breakfast flant.

Speaker 15 No, no, no. Stugats.

Speaker 3 Have you never heard the breakfast flant song?

Speaker 10 I hit me by that.

Speaker 15 Okay. I wish I had some breakfast flant.

Speaker 15 Breakfast flant.

Speaker 15 Where can I find a breakfast like that?

Speaker 9 This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

Speaker 13 She's an Emmy Award-winning journalist, longtime NBA reporter, host analyst, all the smoke, Fox Sports, Sports Illustrated, too many things to mention.

Speaker 13 A resume that has climbed all over all sorts of obstacles, none bigger than the one I have in front of her today. She is not the size of Victor Wembanyama.

Speaker 13 They are making players too big for the sideline reporter. It has become a thing.
It's embarrassing. She looks like David Sampson everywhere she goes around Wemby and others.
Seven foot six.

Speaker 13 What are you shaking your head about, Amin?

Speaker 15 She was never. She's always been way too short.
So like they could make them eight feet tall. It's not going to matter.
They all look the same.

Speaker 13 No, but they are now officially too tall for her to get the microphone in a place where the audio can be good.

Speaker 15 No, she's got a box that she travels with.

Speaker 22 She has a little... I do not.

Speaker 22 There's no box.

Speaker 22 There's no crate. There's no box.
There's no crate. I do have a trick, but with Wemby, he's even too tall to make it work.

Speaker 22 First of all, Amin's favorite magic trick with me is when he gets to be around other people, he suddenly, in the middle of an arena, a street corner, he'll be like, Take your shoes off, take your shoes off.

Speaker 22 This is a weird thing for one friend to say to another, Why, Amin, do you ask me to take my shoes off in public places?

Speaker 15 Because her height drops from whatever short she is to a lot short, to Brad Williams.

Speaker 13 You accused her of using a crate?

Speaker 15 I've seen the crate. I've seen the crate.
Not every time, but I've seen the crate.

Speaker 22 Maybe once, maybe seven or eight times, but only when we were setting up for like a bigger thing.

Speaker 22 Yes, I wear a very large platform kind of heel situation when I'm in basketball because I'm five foot four, as that picture you guys just threw up showed. Webby is seven foot six, though.

Speaker 22 And my trick with players like Shaq, when he was in Miami, would be if you are a foot or more taller than me and we're doing a sideline interview, I would make the guys come to the scorer's table and they would sort of sit lean on the scorer's table and I would stand.

Speaker 22 So there's a bunch of pictures of like LeBron and me in Miami or a couple other places where like the player is sitting on the scorer's table and I'm standing and that's how you can do an interview where you can look each other at least somewhat in the eye.

Speaker 5 Rachel you can't do that. I don't know what to do with Bleminyama.
This is incredible news.

Speaker 5 Columb Ware has made life very, very difficult on me. I look shorter than I ever have and you just made things a lot better.

Speaker 13 You're going to wear

Speaker 13 are you going to wear shoes like De Niro and Al Pacino do in the movies where they're wearing like these five Robert Downey Jr.

Speaker 22 have you you seen what he wears?

Speaker 13 I have not. The famous photo I've seen is De Niro and Pacino walking around on like stilts for shoes.

Speaker 22 Go go look at Google Google Robert Downey Jr.'s feet, and I don't mean that in the way that Zaslo might mean.

Speaker 9 I just mean...

Speaker 14 Whoa, I thought Brad Williams caught the boar astray this segment.

Speaker 13 She just accused you of a foot fetish.

Speaker 7 I mean, she's not wrong, but I don't know that like that's ever been disclosed before. How does she know that?

Speaker 17 Unlike the fact that your number one one thing we should know about you is that you don't want to be a cuck. Yeah.

Speaker 10 It's true.

Speaker 15 We do know that.

Speaker 22 Big J journalism.

Speaker 10 How does she know this about you?

Speaker 13 How does she know from looking at you, she can tell you have a foot fetish? Yeah.

Speaker 7 Explain yourself, Rachel.

Speaker 22 I want you to explain yourself. I heard some contradictory things in the last couple of segments.
Do you or do you not have a journalism degree?

Speaker 22 Because you applied you did, and then it was sort of glossed over.

Speaker 16 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 7 yes yes absolutely of course yes from where university of florida santa fe that's not true mike you're confusing rachel let's just give her the important information a lot of people confuse florida with santa fai you went to santa fee community no i did not rachel we're getting bogged down here you went to santa feed next fine next question

Speaker 22 all right robert downey jr speed Has anyone found them yet?

Speaker 13 They're looking for it. You just threw it at the video department.
They can be slow. They're looking for it.

Speaker 22 All right.

Speaker 22 I'm just telling you, the platforms are real um but yeah that's what you have to do if you're a sideline reporter you have to improvise sometimes because some of us are small and as amin likes to tell people i am uh her she's kissed guys

Speaker 22 and uh you know uh you gotta you gotta have your tricks i don't know what to do with wemby though you guys saw the photo i i it is difficult it is a difficult thing to figure out how to get him in the same frame as me or even hold the microphone up that high rachel i'm i'm looking i want you guys to think about two feet above your head rachel i'm looking at robert Downey Jr., his platform shoes, and I mean, they're rather large.

Speaker 22 Thank you. Thank you.
I knew you'd find them. Of all the people, I knew you'd find the feet first.

Speaker 13 He's a journalist. I wanted to include you on the conversation we were having before you came on here.

Speaker 13 I feel bad that Chris Paul is getting this as punctuation.

Speaker 13 I think, as the most popular clipper ever, the one who helped restore the franchise to something of relevance, I think that he thought he was going to get the big tour at the end, and now it's just the punctuation of Zubach is at the holiday party rummaging through the pretzels and there's no one else there like what it's it makes me super sad to see this go going out this way

Speaker 22 first of all the pretzels are super good over there so don't feel too sad because that is the main claim to fame i don't their main claim to fame on the clippers right now is that the pretzels are really good if you go to the arena the pretzels are excellent And I don't know what that says about the rest of the team, that that's the most exciting thing we can say right now.

Speaker 22 You have an organization under investigation. You have an owner being sued externally.
And it sounds like possibly, you know, that there's more coming.

Speaker 22 You have a losing team. You have a franchise star that

Speaker 22 is there, not that often. And you now have this Chris Paul situation.
You got to celebrate the pretzels. I would have expected differently.

Speaker 22 Everybody who says, oh, they know what they were going to get with Chris Paul. I think sometimes the reality is is different from the expectation.

Speaker 22 Even if you've had a player before, having a guy at the end of the bench who's trying to stick his nose into what the coaches are doing or is critical of other players is a lot different than having your lead point guard on the floor and i think that's what they didn't quite expect um but i also think it could have been handled differently i don't i don't understand

Speaker 22 a situation where it was better to have this PR nightmare in a season of other PR nightmares than it was to get a few more wins in a season where it's not really going to matter that much anyway.

Speaker 13 But you know the real stuff about what people think about people behind the scenes. Chris Paul has always been viewed as a bit of a politician.

Speaker 13 So you bring him into the organization and he starts telling people, this is how I would do it.

Speaker 13 How surprised are you allowed to be by him not having self-awareness when everyone in the league who knows anything about Chris Paul knows that he thinks he's a superstar because he always has been.

Speaker 22 Not just thinks he's a superstar, but knows all the details of how to do something the right way.

Speaker 22 And by the way, he often does, and that's part of what's annoying also, is not just that he's so sort of forceful in his opinion about every little thing you might be doing.

Speaker 22 It's also annoying sometimes that he's right, right? That's what gets on players as well. But here's the thing I would say about Chris Fall, and this is where the Clippers made the biggest mistake.

Speaker 22 It wasn't bringing him in. It wasn't how they handled it.
You know that line in The Princess Bride where it's like, never get in a land war with a Sicilian? Is that what they say, right?

Speaker 13 I know it, but Chris Cody might need some elaboration.

Speaker 22 Why? Because he's 12? What? You haven't seen The Princess Bride?

Speaker 13 I don't know what you're talking about. I'm sorry to reveal to everybody, Rachel, that I don't know what you're you're mentioning.

Speaker 14 You don't know the Princess.

Speaker 14 I don't like.

Speaker 22 The way Rob Reiner would be ashamed of you.

Speaker 14 Go home, watch the Princess Bryn.

Speaker 13 I don't need that today. That's one of the things that I'm saying.

Speaker 9 No, you should feel that.

Speaker 5 You see how to pretend that.

Speaker 22 You should feel that.

Speaker 22 That is troubling. There is a line where he's like, am I guys shipping? Am I right? Is it never getting a land war with the Sicilian?

Speaker 15 Within Asia is with the land.

Speaker 22 In Asia? Never getting a land war in Asia?

Speaker 13 That was good confidence. Good conviction there.

Speaker 16 I mean, good.

Speaker 13 That was strong. Strong confidence.

Speaker 15 Don't deflect.

Speaker 10 I'm not defensive about not watching the Princess Ryan.

Speaker 16 How did we know that Zoom?

Speaker 14 You should be.

Speaker 22 You should be defensive about that. That's where the young Cred Savage got his start.
Okay. Anyway, my point is that I would never get in the PR war with Chris Paul, ever.
Because here's the thing.

Speaker 22 The minute they had that meeting, did Chris Paul wait until the next morning to start putting out his side? No. 2.33 in the morning, we got, they sent me home, right? That was the message we got.

Speaker 22 The Clippers did something to to him. Then who's the loudest voice in NBA circles right now in terms of news? The biggest news megaphone right now is Shams over at ESPN.

Speaker 22 There is a phone call made to someone from someone that got the message to Shams. And this was the quote.
It was, he was holding teammates and coaches accountable and they didn't like it.

Speaker 22 That was the sentence. Not he was being a dick, not he was embarrassing people in front of a locker room.

Speaker 22 By the way, I'm not saying he did any of these things, but you could use the same action and describe it in two different ways.

Speaker 22 Man, Chris Paul really putting his nose in other people's business and being critical of players and like being a pain in the ass on the coach's side.

Speaker 22 Or the story could be Chris Paul is holding people accountable. Guess whose version got out? Right away.
Chris Paul holding people accountable. That's why he got sent home by the Clippers.

Speaker 22 I wouldn't get into the PR battle with this man to save my life. And I don't think the Clippers have recovered from that one sentence.

Speaker 22 And I think a lot of the people who come here here in Los Angeles to see the Clippers play, yes, the pretzels are very good, but they were coming for Chris Paul's farewell tour.

Speaker 22 And now I think they're going to sell less tickets just around the whole country and certainly here without Chris on the floor.

Speaker 22 I would not get into a PR war with Chris Paul or a land war with an Asian or a movie war with Dan Levittard, apparently, because he hasn't seen any of the good ones.

Speaker 15 You should absolutely get in a movie war with Dan Levittard because he's going to lose every single time. Him and Zazzler, they're terrible.

Speaker 3 I'm a great movie guy.

Speaker 7 How dare you?

Speaker 15 Does sports movies?

Speaker 17 Rachel, you mentioned, and so did Dan, like everybody around the league thinks or knows that Chris Paul is an asshole or a dickhead or whatever, but he's also known as a winner and how much you can skew the same action into two different

Speaker 17 narratives. Like from what you know, what is the real story? Is he a winner? Is he a consummate pro?

Speaker 17 Or is he an asshole that gets on everybody's nerves and he gets kicked out the door every place he goes? Yes.

Speaker 22 Well, look, he is definitely a winner. There's no doubt about that.
I know he hasn't won a title, but there's a lot of people in NBA history who haven't won a title.

Speaker 22 If you look at all of the other things he has done, he is definitely, he's a first ballot Hall of Famer. Also, he can be a pain in the ass.
By the way, Kobe Bryant is someone who was celebrated.

Speaker 22 Michael Jordan, what did everybody think about after they watched that documentary? Man, that guy was an asshole. Isn't that great? Right?

Speaker 22 I mean, how much of an ass did Jordan come off of in that documentary? And everybody thought it was the best thing they had ever heard. When you are a winner, you can be the biggest dick in the world.

Speaker 22 If it is getting results, if you are doing it in a way that makes other people, you know, amused and oh man, do you see how he tore that guy apart?

Speaker 22 It's when you're at the end of the bench, at the end of your career, on a losing team with guys who maybe have heard your act before and don't really want to hear it anymore. That's when it's harder.

Speaker 22 So both things are true. It's a great question.
Both things are true. But it just really depends on where and when you are of how people feel about those things being true.

Speaker 8 Rachel, is it fair for Heat fans like myself to be frustrated with Adam Silver seemingly unwilling to do something in regards to the Terry Rozier Miami Heat situation?

Speaker 22 No, I mean, look, I was in the room with Adam, was it yesterday or two days ago, when somebody asked him, Tim Reynolds from the AP asked him about the Terry Rozier situation.

Speaker 22 And he basically gave a version of, hey, what are you going to do right now?

Speaker 22 I think the NBA is a little stuck because Rozier hasn't been found guilty yet from this federal investigation.

Speaker 22 It does feel to me that you could compensate the heat in some way for this time going by, whether it's the way the salary cap relief is, even if they have to keep paying him.

Speaker 22 It's the way what counts and what doesn't count. Obviously, whether this draft it conveys or not is going to be an issue, but it's

Speaker 22 if I'm a heat fan, I would want more familiarity.

Speaker 7 I just feel like the commissioner is throwing his hands up.

Speaker 3 She's like, there's no precedent, so I don't know what to do.

Speaker 14 It's

Speaker 22 literally what they are doing, but there isn't. And I think doing nothing is always easier, right?

Speaker 22 Yeah. Isn't it? Yep.

Speaker 13 I want to play for you or show you a controversy that you're in the middle of here with Asia Wilson and Bam Autobio. Now, you didn't ask this question of either of them.

Speaker 13 Zaszlo got Zaszlo's telling us that Bam and Asia are being too sensitive. I mean, can you offer the context, please, to this story? Because you were defending Rachel very, very fervently.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so Rachel, I mean, Rachel can speak for herself, obviously, but she's.

Speaker 14 Fair enough, I like it.

Speaker 22 I mean, help me out.

Speaker 15 Okay, she's interviewing Shea Gildis Alexander. Shea Gildis Alexander plays for the Thunder, and obviously, Sam Presty is not only very shrewd or whatever, but also they have 8 billion picks forever.

Speaker 15 So, Rachel makes a joke about,

Speaker 15 you know, do you think Sam Presty has already scouted

Speaker 15 the future child of Asia Wilson and Bam Autobio? And I guess Asia and Bam felt a certain type of way about that. Does that

Speaker 15 cover it?

Speaker 22 Yeah. But I mean, by the way, it wasn't even my joke.
I don't want to take credit for it. It was already going around the internet.

Speaker 22 And so we thought it would be funny to ask Shay, oh, by the way, with a long interview about other things also. But at the very end, it's sort of a fun throwaway, like, did you see this?

Speaker 22 And we showed the, because I don't take credit for other people's jokes, Dan Lebetard.

Speaker 22 Did you see that this sort of, you know, things go making its way around the internet?

Speaker 13 Why did you say my first and last name there?

Speaker 10 Hurling accusations.

Speaker 16 He's right.

Speaker 13 Why both my first and last name there as if I was somebody who did that?

Speaker 15 Because if she said then, they might think Danny Benitez.

Speaker 19 No, that Zaz went to Santa Fe, though. That's the most important one.

Speaker 22 My point is, I was like, oh, this is a funny thing that's out there that you might have already seen. What has been your reaction, right?

Speaker 22 And apparently, you know, it's one of these things that got aggregated differently than it was quite asked and then got, you know, misconstrued and all of those things.

Speaker 22 I didn't really dive in on it afterward because I do, I just felt like there was a lot going on over the weekend while this was

Speaker 22 being commented on that was pretty serious.

Speaker 22 And it was actually happening pretty simultaneously. And I felt like while there were kids being shot at, I wasn't going to start getting into parsing, you know, this is funny.
This isn't funny.

Speaker 22 Can you guys take a joke?

Speaker 22 Like, obviously, if somebody's upset about a joke that, by the way, someone else on the internet told that we helped, you know, sort of get more into the zeitgeist, so I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 22 I definitely don't ever want to upset anyone over something small, but also I'm not sure.

Speaker 22 I'm not sure given the larger scope, it was the thing that I really wanted to dive in and argue about because it's just joking about GM being a really good scout.

Speaker 22 And oh my God, he's already scouting people's babies. I already lived that they don't exist.
I covered tennis, Dan, you may remember.

Speaker 22 And when Andre Agassi and Steph Scraf got married, it's not like there wasn't a million jokes about their kids and what kind of players they were going to to be.

Speaker 13 That was a shitty That was a shitty apology to them. I'm sorry there were important things going on in the world like super insincere apology.
You're not actually sorry.

Speaker 22 Am I I'm sorry. Was this supposed to be an apology?

Speaker 13 That was also so that sorry there was also insincere. You did say I didn't want to get into a back and forth with them publicly.

Speaker 22 That's why we didn't talk about it.

Speaker 17 She didn't want to clap back. She wasn't going to bow down.

Speaker 13 No, she said right now she wanted to clap back, but unfortunate things were happening in the country.

Speaker 22 She wanted to clap back. I'm explaining why I didn't get into it at the time i'm happy to get into it now i am always like legit 100

Speaker 22 if i say or do something that upsets someone else even if i'm right they're wrong if they're right i'm wrong i am sorry i don't want to go through my day and upset someone that sucks who wants to be that person amen well maybe some people in that room but i don't i don't want to be that person and so i am a hundred percent sincerely sorry if i and when i make someone upset and in this case it appears from the internet that Bam and/or Asia was upset.

Speaker 22 I am legitimately with no reservations. Sorry about that.
I don't want that to happen. I don't know Asia that well, but I like her.
I know Bam pretty well from covering him. I know his family.

Speaker 22 It is not something I would want to do.

Speaker 3 Dan, you know about that clapback?

Speaker 13 Better, better apology there, Rachel. More sincere there at the end.

Speaker 22 But I have a question for you guys.

Speaker 22 Do you think that something like that, hey, Steffi Graff and Andre Agassiz are are gonna have a kid. Do you think do you think someone's already gonna sign them up for world team tennis?

Speaker 22 Or do you think?

Speaker 22 I don't know, I'm trying to think of other couples that have had celebrity couples.

Speaker 13 Do I think that Bam and Asia would make Olympic babies?

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 17 Play the David Sampson clip.

Speaker 13 See you later, Rachel. Good talking to you.

Speaker 14 How'd she know about the feet?

Speaker 16 It is weird.

Speaker 10 It is weird.