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This is The Dan Levator Show with the Stu Guts podcast.

I have to tell you guys, I feel like my two families are meeting each other with Amin from Oddball and Gojo from My. It's like, I had a secret family, and neither one knew, and now they're like, meet and we're in the same room, and I'm like, no. So, guys, totally cool, but that's is.

This, like, the scene in Crazy Stupid Love where Steve Carell finds out that Ryan Gosling is dating his daughter?

Yes.

Where do I fit in into this mix? You're Steve Carell on the outside. Wow. The shame that just swept right over Charlote's face. I feel like the outsider at my own Thanksgiving party. Yes.

No, but it's actually a lovely thing. But I do feel I'm like you're in the same room. It's like, this is my two separate zoom boxes in one actual room.

Well, it is kind of funny seeing it come together that way, because, Dan, you're the person in this room that I know by far the least, even though my exposure to you has been probably the most of anyone, content wise in this room. So it is Love odball, though. Every day but Monday. Every day.

What is the awkwardness that it's not awkwardness that you're feeling. Right. You just love that this person that you do odball with every day except Monday and Mike Golick Jr. Who you do an entirely different set of things with. You're just happy that they're in the same room staring at each other.

Yeah. And that we're getting the mix of both is fun to me.

So Charlote exists in this very Greg Cody esque space, right, where on Oddball, she's this character, and she doesn't know how to count, and her geography sucks, and history is also a little shaky and all that, but genuinely makes people happy.

Right.

And then I see her on Gojo show. First of all, her picture quality is miles better. I'm like, what's happening here? It's the same camera, the same laptop. I haven't changed a thing, but somehow the picture quality is better. And then she's, like, serious and making points, and I'm like, Wait a second. It's like when you hear Greg Cody on the Tony Cornhizer Show, like, oh, this is a respected journalist.

He's got range. You're stunned that he's got range?

I contain multitudes.

Why do we get the clown, right?

I make points every once in a.

It'S an interesting sliver of everybody that you do get there, but I don't know. For me, it's kind of interesting. Charlote, the point you brought up about just considering all of this because it is kind of representative Dan, of the thing that you've been trying to build this entire time, which is all of these people, from all of these different spaces that feel like they've got to be one thing there that get to come to wherever you're at and be whatever version of themselves they want to be and maybe don't get to be in all those spaces. So maybe that's kind of what Charlote's getting at.

Yeah.

Is that wrong? You know what's funny in society? When you have a person who is a different person in different settings, that's viewed as a negative, right? Yeah. This is not a genuine person, but.

I kind of like it, man.

I like being someone different in different settings all the time. It's refreshing. It stimulates different parts of my brain. And I wonder if that's something is that changing at all, or am I still on an island here?

To the degree that any of what we do has a formula or creating environments, because I do think that on top of writing, if I'm talking about something that I'm proud of, it's creating environments where people could be their maximum selves. And on our show, I feel like people don't ever know what's a bit or what's not a bit, because everyone on the show is a version of themselves. Instead of at seven, it's at ten. Like, there is authenticity in everything that's happening there. But it sounds like that you're typecasting Charlote, you're limiting her, that Mike is offering her the floor to be a version of herself that has slightly more range than the one that she has on Odball, where she has to put the OD in Odball and you're there to provide the ball.

I learned it from watching you. I wanted to.

Well, when you got comfortable with your previously racist Antonio Banderas or borderline racist Antonio Banderas impersonation, I regret giving you the fuel that you have now created from this character. I have my remorse about this.

I don't like this word borderline.

You want it to just be flatly and absolutely borderline gives you an out.

Border is very triggering.

Oh, no, it's getting worse. Yes, you're getting even closer.

The line is where we feel alive.

Something that I wanted to ask you guys that we have not gotten to this week, because I imagine basketball has personalities like this. But over the weekend, when I saw that Cleveland and San Francisco got into a brawl on the sidelines. Whenever I see football brawls, whether it's Talib fighting on the field with somebody, I get a little scared of my television because I know the amount of menace and violence that those guys have to crawl over to get to where they are. So when there are people in that sport who are also feared by the people in that sport, I marvel at it. And so when I'm watching the Browns and the 49 ers on the sideline, and then I see Trent Williams come over, who calls himself he's got a documentary on Amazon, I believe that's called Silverback. He calls himself Silverback when I see these violent men are fighting, and then he makes his way into the fray, and clearly everyone's like, okay, everyone on both sides is like, okay, whatever we're doing needs to stop now. That is not something that I'm used to seeing in football at all. When one guy gets there and everyone's.

A little bit afraid, it is the feeling that everybody who plays that sport wants to be immediately feared by everybody. When your presence is out there because there weren't other similar bodies like, you always get Dominique calling them square bodies. Trent is the final boss of square bodies. And he walks out there, and it is immediately everyone recognizes we hear business decisions all the time. They did the value prop in their head, and they go, nope, those hands aren't worth it. Like football, so much of it behind the scenes in practice. And I remember this came up actually years ago when the Dolphins were on Hard Knocks, and Mike Pouncey was the center, and it was him and Richie Incognito. And there was one particular clip from practice where they showed two guys were starting to get into it with Mike Pouncy, and he goes, we're not going.

To do all this football.

You want to fight, we'll do it in the locker room. After this, you got to do the calculus on every playoff. Is that guy the kind kind of wild that's actually going to want to escalate this? Because there's a football fight, we can go out there and push each other and jack Guy up under the face mask, and then there's the dude. And I'd imagine for some people, Trent falls into that category, whereas those are a real set of problems that I am not accounting for even in this sport.

I cannot imagine what it feels like to be that person, to know that you have that power. When you walk into when you decide something is either over or something is about to start, it is your decision. What does that feel like?

Here's my question, right? Is it like this in football? Like, in basketball, there's these guys that the common public does not know, but inside, everyone knows, don't mess with that dude. Do they have that in football? Who are some of those?

I remember a story while you guys were talking, darryl Gardner physically looked he was like 5% body fat. He was a defensive tackle for the Dolphins, and he was, like 320 pounds. He became a weightlifter, a professional bodybuilder, but people feared him. But one time he got into a fight with OJ. McDuffie, who was very small, 120 pounds lighter. But people knew not to trifle with OJ. McDuffie, because when they got into a fight, OJ. McDuffie went to his car and got his gun. And that's one of the things that's in play here, that you're talking about, the guy that you don't want to mess with, but Trent Williams is. I don't think that's what people are fearing with Trent Williams. They're simply fearing the size of Trent Williams.

So let me give you an example from basketball, jerry Stackhouse, who's now, I believe the head coach at Vanderbilt, but Jerry Stackhouse, long NBA career, good player. I don't think the common fan who was very familiar with Jerry Stackhouse would think, oh, this is a guy that nobody wants to mess with. And then there's a story and I wish I could remember the kid's name. He was a rookie and he was talking trash to Jerry Stackhouse. And at one point Jerry said, after the game, I'm going to whoop your ass. And he's like, I'm not going to do anything here. And so game ends. Jerry calmly goes back. He doesn't like, run through the tummy.

He did this several times. He goes to the only time he did something like this, goes to his locker room, right?

Goes to the locker room, showers, changes, puts on suit, the earring, everything. Meets with the media post game. What happened? Oh, well, answers all the questions. Okay, we done. All right, cool. Takes the suit off, puts on his practice gear, and then goes and waits by the bus for the guy. And they had to talk him down because Jerry was going to beat shit out of this guy. And they told the kid during the game like, don't talk to Jerry like that because he's not. And it's not the rage of just like, okay, when the game's over, I will see you down by the busses.

It's like putting a g cal invite for a fight.

Yeah, exactly. Pretty much.

Straight up.

Pretty much.

But it's like it's schoolyard stuff because all this are guys who grew up actually fighting. There's a lot of people that grew up, like, being physical, being big guys, doing all that. And to the point about Trent, I always said in football, there's so many different body types. There are deterrence, which are the big guys, like offensive and defensive lineman. That's a deterrent. Every bar I ever walked into when I was 300 pounds, no one wanted to fight me. I'm not a good fighter. I've never been a fight in my life. But size wise, I'm a deterrent in the animal kingdom. Whereas you look at big skill guys, tight ends, linebackers, that's an invitation for some guy who's feeling froggy that day, who feels like, oh, I'm going to go and show off here because that guy's not that big. That's the one. The lights go out.

Why did you charlote give him a pity so he's just such a sweet soul.

They don't know that though. That's the whole point.

That's the idea.

That's why he's got the sleeve, right? Like all these things enhance, right?

Oh, that's why I said I lifted weights and got tatoos for years. So that when I want to talk about Glee or wax poetic about Taylor Swift, some macho like meathead can't say to me, because I'm everything you're trying to be right now. I'm the reason you're mainlining creatine before you go work your office job and then having your cousin tattoo you in your basement so you can project the kind of masculinity that I have here as an armor. So I can just tell you why I think Death by a Thousand Cuts is the best Taylor Swift song.

First of all, it is. Second of all, that might be the best thing I have ever heard you say, or maybe just the best thing I've ever heard anyone say.

Wow.

Good.

They bring our families together.

Thanksgiving 2023.

Don LeBatard we like to call this one a chorus of Owen Wilson Ready stugats.

Wow. This is The Dan Levatar Show with The Stukats.

Charlote Wilder, Amin Al Hassan and a half nude Mike Golick Jr. Who looks, if you're watching on YouTube, like he's winning the pooing right now. It looks like he is on the Iowa State football team and doesn't have any pants on while he is doing this. I'm glad we're here because I wanted to talk to him about how little fans understand about the size of the human beings who are playing the sports that we watch. I know Amin is going to be able to help me here when we talk about basketball because I've watched basketball with my wife close to courtside, and I try to explain to her that the small guys there are all my height, that I'm 64. And she doesn't believe it because of the proportion differences of what it is that you're looking at. And I thought about this on Sunday night, brian Dayball is chewing out Tyrod Taylor and should have been chewing him out. And Tyrod Taylor comes over to where Dayball is. Tyrod Taylor I've always thought of as really small little guy, but he's dwarfing Brian Dayball when he stands next to him, even though Tyrod Taylor is only six one.

Can you sort of quantify for me how little understanding people have of how giant the human beings are who are playing football? Because when I stand next to Lane Johnson or John Runyon, once upon a time, these are human beings. That me at my size six, 4250, I would have no chance to move them because their mass is so large that I don't believe that people who are watching the sport understand what they're watching in terms of size and strength.

So the biggest version of size and strength at a place that made me realize I was a college senior, I had just finished my season and I went up my buddy Kyle Rudolph was a rookie that year with the Minnesota Vikings. He was their second round pick at tight end. It was their last game of the season. And so me and one of my buddies went up there to watch, because it's not just the size and it's not just the speed. It's that both can live in the same house pretty comfortably. Everson Griffin, who was a great defensive end at USC, played in the NFL for a long time, was running down on kickoff as, like, the R Four you think of, like that wedgebuster spot. But he was the first guy down on kickoff every single time. A guy who, if you were to put him next to me, even as a 300 pounder in the prime of my life, looked bigger because physically, his body comp was in such a different place. And I watched him run a four four down the field in full pads and airlift other grown men off of their feet in a given time.

Seeing that in person crystallized for me just how different the jump is, even from college, this world where you're around big, impressive, super physical athletes to that guys like that. Guys like Quentin Nelson, who's the star left guard from the Indianapolis Colts. Him and Mike McGlinchy, who plays for the Broncos. Quentin's like, six, 5320 and has borderline six pack ABS. And Mike McGlinchy. Six, 8315 pounds. Same thing chiseled out of marble. I walked into the weight once at Notre Dame when they were both there, after I was done playing. So the same locker room I had been in the same weight room, I had been in the same sport I had played, and Quentin and I, in theory, played the same position. And I walked in, I was like, if these guys hadn't met me before, they would kick my ass and throw me out of here. Like I was just some random kid from campus that had wandered in because size. Wise even in the same sport. We were just in such different stratospheres that I looked and wondered how I had ever played at that level. The same game that these guys were playing.

So it's amazing the things that guys walk out of the hospital with in these sports.

The thing that you mentioned is it's not the size. The size you get used to after a while. It's the speed. It's the idea that we've been conditioned our entire lives that something that large doesn't move fast, and then you see it move. So for me, it's shaq. I told the Shaq story a million times, but just Shaq. First of all, most basketball players, what people say when they see them up close is they're always shocked how slender they look, right? They look big on TV. But in real life, because they're so tall, you walk away feeling very slender. Even a guy like Charles Oakley looks slim compared to what you think he looks like, but then you see them move. So Shaq is one of those guys where he doesn't look slender. He looks every bit as large of a human being as you think he is.

I've told you before, by the way, every time someone comes away from meeting Shaq, knowing who Shaq is, knowing that when you think Shaq, you think size, everyone still says, after meeting Shaq, he's so big, it's the first thing you think about him. People don't understand not just the height.

The surface area, doesn't matter what direction he's facing. If he's standing between you and you will not see the object, you just won't see it. Right. But then you get into a situation where he's here and then he has to be. Can't I can't express how shocking it is. It is shocking how fast he moves, how explosive is I got old, broken down Shaq. I can't imagine what Orlando or early Lakers Shaq was like where he was just almost flying around. But I think as I talked this out in my brain, Dan, I think that's the thing with all the athletes. It's the quickness. That's the thing that blows your mind. Because I remember watching, like, Eric Bledsoe dribble down the court, and he looked like everyone else was in slow motion and he was sped up. And that's the thing that I don't think ever translates on TV. Like, have you seen Alan iverson live? You begin to understand, like, oh, that's why no one can guard him. You can't even see him. He just looks like Sonic the Hedgehog.

Well, I think what you said, Dan, about the proportions, it's all relative. So what we're seeing when you watch sports, you are seeing big guys go up against big guys, run quickly against other guys who are also running quickly, and you become inured to it. And being there in person, the flatness of a television somehow takes away part of the breathtaking physical ability that you're watching. When I first started covering sports and I went to my first to cover the first NBA game, I couldn't talk about anything else for like a week after, I was like, these guys are so big. And everyone was like, right, they play in the NBA. And then when I was covering college football, like, anytime I was at an Alabama game and I stood as close as I could to the O linemen, who were warming up to try to take a selfie to be like, for scale. And it doesn't work. But I'm like, no, I need some physical way to explain to people the physicality of these people.

I'll take it a step further. You talk about the athletes, the playing surface. You know how many people I know play pickup ball, say, hey, we're going to play on an NBA court today?

People have no idea how far the three point line is. They don't have any idea.

Dan, forget about the three point line just running from one end to the other end. Because Newsflash, the Lifetime Fitness Court that you play at is not a regulation length. That is a long ass distance to go from three point line to three point line on an NBA court, let alone baseline to baseline. Same thing with a football field. I saw this clip from a couple of weeks ago, guy at a Colorado game, and he was supposed to sprint in 100 yards and after yard, like twelve, he pulled the muscle and then he had to hobble the rest of the way. These inventions of these playing services are immense, man. And we don't respect it because all of these people are huge giants that also are faster than anything we've ever seen.

It's why and Charlote mentioned her college football tour and everyone here has been down in some form or in some job courtside or on the sideline of a game. As soon as you start working in the media, you should be required if you're going to cover football, go stand on the sideline and watch a game. I got done playing and two months later went back as a fan for my first Notre Dame game. And I was on the sideline and two guys got cleaned off onto the sideline, like tackled out of bounds 4ft from me. And I looked at my budy and I went, how the hell did we do this? It's so insanely fast and violent when you're removed from the perspective of being in the lines that it gives you that whole new appreciation for every play what is happening in a way that's totally outside most of our physical ability.

1000% one of the early profiles I did was going to Julian Edelman was putting on a football clinic for women at Gillette Stadium and I was like, let's go see what this is. It actually ended up being sort of great. But anyway and I was sitting with him, there was some downtime and he kept rubbing his arm and it was on a Monday and they'd played the day before and I was like, Are you okay? He was like, yeah. I mean, it's like getting into a car crash every Sunday.

But you've said this a bunch of times. That's what it sounds like. It sounds like a car accident.

That well, it's one thing for Golick to be saying this, no offense, because he's saying he's walking into a weight room and the people are physically something else than what he even imagined as someone who came from this world. But I stood on a sideline with Ricky Williams who says that to be a warrior you almost have to not consider consequences in order to even sign up for it. But he stood on the sideline the same way ten years afterward and had the same commentary that you did, which is, how did I do this? That's crazy what those human beings are doing out there. But the reason I bring it up, all of these size and dimension things, I mean, is because even all of that said, even with the understanding that the court and the field seem large to us but the athleticism on it is making a basketball court and a football court be too confining for the athleticism that is out there because they make those things look smaller than they are. Wembanyama when I'm watching him, the only comps I have, I go past LeBron to Shaq in Orlando when he dribbled the length of the court, because what I'm looking at looks like it was delivered from space.

I have no reference point for how does that move like that when it's seven foot five and nobody wants to take a jump shot when it's approaching because it's larger physically than anything those guys have seen.

And then this is the most primitive version of it that's the scary. Like this is Wembanyama with zero work done on him. Give it three years. Remember what Yanis looked like when he was a rookie versus Yanis when he won Most Improved? I won't even get to MVP. It's muscles on muscles and incredible strength from this twig. And that's where Wembanyama is right now. He's at the beginning of this journey. He's 19 years old, he is real thin. But right now, the gift that he has, he has two gifts that are immediately noticeable. One is the quickness, right? The ability to close space with his actual speed, and the other is his length. So guys are used to playing basketball. I catch, I'm at the three point line, the defender is there. That is more than enough time for me to get this shot off. And they're finding out against that dude. No, it's not, because he doesn't have to get to here to contest. He can stop over there and just go and he's already there. The play that I think everyone saw, it went viral was him dunking on Thomas Bryan of the Miami Heat.

And Thomas Bryan turns around and looks like he looks terrified. He looks like an alien just landed and started laser beaming everyone right now. Here's the crazy part that I did not realize. Shout out to Dragonfly Jones, who pointed it out. He dunked it from outside the restricted area. Not he took off from outside the restricted area. He never broke the plane of the restricted area and just reached from outside it into it's.

Cartoon.

Inspector Gadget. It's space jam. It's the scene in Space Jam where they're all holding Michael Jordan back and his arm just extends and it dunks it.

Anyway, when I extended my arm to try to get to Victor's, victor, my close personal friend to Wembanyama's chin, I couldn't even reach his chin at the draft, so it's staggering.

He should have been holding the mic. Well, there you go.

Thanks. In hindsight.

Wow, what a Monday morning quarterback.

Even Monday morning, it's a month later.

Quarterback Don Levitard.

He said while you were off there, while the connection was bad, he had mentioned that you have lost a lot of weight and that he admires that. What got into you? Why did you decide? I thought we enjoyed being about the oh, it's flurring again. Okay. The connection is bad again, unfortunately.

Back to Magnus.

Okay, back to Magnus.

For Magnus. And this is going about as well.

As it could go.

Thank you, Billy, again for laughing in my face. Still got yes, we can hear you.

Hello.

Yes, sir. Action.

Hello? Action man, I'm really sorry. This is literally the worst way to ever do this. This is burning my heart that this is happening. But if you could hear me, just understand. I'm sorry. This is the Don Levitar show with the stukats. Show me 93 other people better than Russell Westbrook in NBA. I'll wait, you got two people on the list that ain't played one NBA Minute. How the are they better than Russ? Who is that? Who to who? To Wimby and scoop. Oh, better than Russ. They got Russ 94, dog. Oh, they had what's name? At 47? Wimby at 47. Are you shitting me?

Crazy. That's crazy.

Come on, man. Let's stop madness. So his summer league in his preseason was better than Russ career? His career like, get the out of here, man. Like, you idiots over there doing this bullshit, man. Like, no, show your face, man. Y'all want to put this bullshit out here? Show your face.

I was going to credit Gilbert's World, which makes no sense. It's gil's arena is the name of the podcast with Gilbert Arenas, and he's got an assortment of characters, because I would not have thought to put Rashad Mccantz and Kenyon Martin on a podcast together, but it's fun. And Kenyan Martin is unhinged about a top 100 list. I think I saw, and I'm going to assume that Mitchell Robinson was joking. He came in at number 100 on the list and then said immediately, I'm him. I'm going to guess he was joking there. That was the laugh of Mike Golick Jr. He's here with Charlote Wilder and Amin El Hassan. But I wanted to talk to Amin and Charlote about the list specifically and to Mike about why it is we get so enraged by lists. But why is Kenyan Martin that mad about Russell Westbrook being left off of that list?

Amin because that was what that list was designed to do. It's designed to make people interact and get angry and create content out of it. I take people behind the scenes on this NBA rank, which is, I believe what they're quoting there, was legitimately created because there's a dead point in the calendar where there's no content, there's no trades. Usually there's no free agent signings. We need to talk about something. Let's rank all the NBA players. It is nothing more than the listicle to end all listicles just for the content's sake and the way it works, at least at ESPN. I don't know how it works at the different outlets, but your writers and everyone sent a link, and it basically does a series of bajillion one on one things. Would you rather have Scoot Henderson or Victor Romanyama? Would you rather have or, you know, Rudy Gobert? And you answer, well, this guy that. Guy, this guy, this guy. And then after that, the algorithm pulls out and basically says, based on all of these answers from all these people, this is how they rank out. It's not like people are saying, yeah, I'd rather have Scoot than Russell Westbrook.

It's just that's how it went from asking this question over and over again. So Kenyan's upset because and I remember this, this was the same way when Kobe was ranked low on this. Oh, how could you say these guys are better than Kobe? First of all, Kobe's coming back from an Achilles injury, and these guys are going to play, and he's going to miss most of the year. That's what this thing is about, is who would you rather have? Pretty much. So there is a level of from players of it's irreverent. How dare you say that Russell Westbrook isn't as good as a rookie?

I do think, though, that then it reminds me of the GM survey, which we talked about on on Ball, which you can catch on the DraftKings network at 530 every day but Monday where.

And Saturday and Sunday. So not every day.

Days of rest day.

Please don't lie to us.

Not like college game day is like, well, you don't have to not Sunday.

Through Thursday, not on Saturday. No, but because the way that you're describing that specifically, would you rather have this person over? This person, to me, that isn't necessarily who is the best player. To me, that is who would you rather have on your team right now? And I think that's why you end up with stuff like Wembin Yama at what, 46 and Russ at 93. Because it's like the GM survey where they say, if you could build your franchise around any player, who would it be? And you get like an Anthony Edwards there. And it's like over steph. And it's because of the age, it's because of the potential that they're factoring in. Wem Mignala hasn't played an NBA game yet, a real one. And so I think that it's not actually the best players. It's actually the most promising guys, right.

It's not meant to be the best. That's the thing. It's not meant to do anything other than exactly we're doing it right now.

These lists are designed to gaslight all of us. Because in any given sport like this happens with me, with the NFL top 100 list every year. Zach Martin, who was my former teammate at Notre Dame, who's been a lineman for the Dallas Cowboys, is going to retire and be one of the three best players to ever play his position in the history of the sport. That's not my opinion. That's just a reality. He's an instant walk in hall of Famer. And in every year I watched him rank down in, like, the feels like gaslighting. Because the lists are designed to attack the one or two convictions I have with a big sample size and a bunch more opinions to make me feel like I don't know what I'm talking about, when on one or two things, I know what I'm talking about. And I'm so sure of it that I'm going to war against this list every year it comes out, even though I know it's designed to do this.

To my brain at least, though, in the case of offensive guard play, most people watching have no level of expertise on how it is to examine what that person is. Russell Westbrook when it comes to a basketball list, the resume is not up for dispute. But, I mean, if we were to be picking a team today, everyone listening to this would take Wembanyama over Russell Westbrook because we're talking about a future against a past.

Right.

And one of the things that I wanted to ask you about when it comes to player with a past, I think the Van Gundy's had both said that the toughest thing in sports to coach is an aging superstar. So in Miami, we're on that GM list. I think Eric Spolstra was voted best coach, best adjustments, best leader of men, like four different categories in coaching. Eric Spolstra got and when Kyle Lowry got to camp, kyle Lowry says, I expect to be the starting point guard. And Eric Spolstra said, I haven't put him at starting point guard yet. Can you explain to me or the audience how difficult it must be to coach a Russell Westbrook who has overcome ODS all his life, and the last thing to go is the confidence that he sees in the mirror that he's going to always expect to be a superstar. And I don't know how impossible he would be to coach if he still thinks he's one of the best players in the game. And it's only politics or something else that's keeping him from being as great as he's always been, because I don't think self awareness serves them.

And I don't think, generally speaking, I don't think self awareness about where your weaknesses are is something that serves people who are really great at what they do.

I think luckily for Tyleu, the economics dictated it. Right. Russell Westbrook, you're one of the best players in the game, but you're here on an exception. You're not here earning 30 or 40. So the money dictates not only the money, but like how your free agency, Russell Westbrook, can say, hey, I didn't want to go anywhere else. I like being here. I like playing here. That's why I didn't even entertain going anywhere else. But the reality is, if the Houston Rockets said, hey, the deal that we were going to give to Fred Van Bleep, we'll give it to you, Russ. I think you would have taken that at that level. I think the money is something of a metric, not of how good you are, but where your place is in the league right now. You have to accept this is what your role is going to be. And so there's an acceptance there that maybe Kyle Lowry, who came on a three year, $90 million deal this is the last year of his deal, isn't ready to accept that yet. But we know once he becomes a free agent at the end of the season, wherever he ends up, he's going to be that guy was like, hey, a good vet in the locker room, a guy who can come in and run my second unit, but he's not a starting caliber point guard, I don't think, at this point.

But as you pointed out, particularly for a Kyle Lowry, even more so than a Russell Westbrook, I think the lack of self awareness is completely necessary. Because again, going back to a conversation we had about the size of these guys, kyle Lowry, while he is a chunky boy, as they say, he is not that much taller than me. I think he's my height. So in order for someone my height who isn't gifted with a 38 inch vertical or this explosive first step to survive, you have to have a lack of self awareness, because if you were self aware, you'd be like, what am I doing here? I don't belong here. And so that's the kind of weird balancing act that a guy like him has to have. And when you're Eric Spulcer, your balancing act is, how do I keep his spirit and his confidence high, not undercut him completely, while still maintaining what I believe to be true, which is you serve us best in this role, not that one.

It's also so specific to the player. I mean, we saw what happened with the Sixers and James Harden, who was, quote, asked to sacrifice, and then he holds it over everybody's head for the whole season, and he's an aging superstar who can't seem to accept that. And I think that if you want to have longevity past that point where everyone's like, oh, he's him. To quote Mitch Robinson, then you have to be able to make some concessions while still thinking you're the greatest, which is kind of a mind, kind of a very difficult thing to have both of those things in your head at the same time.

Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, dirk Novitsky, dwayne Wade, after pain, lots of pain, got him to that place. Carmelo Anthony, after lots of pain, got him to that place. Vince Carter, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen. It's happened. It's happened. But we also know the other side of that coin. Kobe Bryant didn't want to do it and ended up playing on Bad Laker teams for the rest of his career because he could not accept, hey, in order for us to move forward, I have to be a lesser remember I don't know if you remember this. When Wade was before he left, I was the one saying, wade's got to take a step back, and you guys will it was that playoff series where they were down three in charlote and the purple shirt game, I think. And SPO draws up the game winning play or they're down two, they draws up the game winning play for Wade to shoot the three. And I'm like, he hasn't hit a three since December. Like, what are we doing here? And, yeah, he hit the shot and they won the game. But the reality is the Heat had reached a place where we can either fulfill Dwayne Wade's vision of himself as I'm the star, I do all the things, whatever, and he'll put up the numbers and he'll look good.

We won't be that good, or he can accept, hey, there's got to be a changing of the guard. And you have to help usher this thing in as Kg and Tim Duncan and some of these other guys did, and we can become a greater version of ourselves. And they couldn't. And he left. And then when he came back, he was the version that they need.

Humbled by the experience of bouncing around the league a little bit. Charlote, what was the very tangible, obvious, empirical gleam in your eye when the name Jeff Van Gundy was mentioned?

Oh, my dude. Jeff Van Gundy was just hired as a senior consultant for the Celtics, which I was very excited about because the Celtics but he's also going to be spending time in Maine with their G League affiliate. And a lot of my family is in Maine, and I think it might have been the first time I've ever read the word Maine in an article. It was a very exciting moment for me.

You know what they're called?

The Red Claws.

The Red Claws. That's right. Because lobsters.

Lobsters.

They're like lobsters up there.

And I also think about Jeff Van Gundy holding onto Alonzo morning's leg.

That was the gleam.

It was not main.

That was the gleam.

It was the leg. It's holding on.

I don't think enough is discussed about that. Where did that come when did that come into your life? Because you must have been very young when that happened. When it actually happened, do you remember it or do you remember video afterward?

I remember video afterwards. I remember being so shocked that this had happened that someone's like, oh, well, you know, Jeff Van Gundy, Alonzo Mourning, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, I don't. And they show me the video, and I watched it again yesterday, and it's insane. Jeff Van Gundy, he comes storming out, his hair's all ruffled, and then he's just on the ground holding onto some guy's leg.

The idiocy of fandom. I was a Nick fan at the time, and when it happened, I defended Jeff Van Gundy. I was like, yes, he's tough.

One of the great things that came from that was Jamal Mashburn. I just remember this distinctly after the game saying Jamal Mashburn, for some reason, was on his side on the floor and seeing the size of morning's calves when Van Gundy was holding on to them. Mashburn was quoted as saying, I thought there was a horse on the court.