You're listening to DraftKings Network.

This is the Dan Leviton Show with the Stugatz Podcast.

I.

Spent yesterday, late last night and early this morning, trying to see if I can find somewhere in Hollywood. A leather jacket and water skis. So that symbolically, our show could be jumping the shark when it goes to Hollywood the way that a lot of shows throughout television history have jumped the shark when they go to Hollywood. We are here, though, Mike Ryan and I, leaking an assortment of confidence is we think we have a savior. We have asked our star intern, Mike Shearer, to produce content for us today. And he has come with both two stats of the day and a declaration.

A declaration about what?

About the Miami Heat.

I mean, this is essentially a local hour, so that makes me very happy. The undefeated Miami Heat.

Yes, the Undefeated Miami Heat. I have a declaration to make one game into the season.

Okay.

What do you want? After they beat the Detroit Pistons by a single point at home.

Yes, I have a declaration. What do you want first? Do you want the declaration?

I want the declaration.

I think we should tease the declaration in order to save the hour in order to... I couldn't find the water skis or the leather jacket.

Not finding a leather jacket on the sunset strip is a bit of an upset.

It was late. It was the problem. I thought I had the idea late. We'll get to the stats of the day in a second as well. But I did want to talk about something from Wednesday Night, which was the debut of a human being that I have never seen before in my life. Not a basketball player, just somebody the size of Wembanyama, the dimensions of Wendyama, who moves like that, who is still a child, he is going to ostensibly still grow. He is not yet a man. If he is a man, he's a very young man. But I'm not even talking about basketball growth or physical growth. I'm talking about there are going to be some problems at the beginning, but I really don't have, after a lifetime of watching sports, any way of describing what it is that I'm seeing as if I've seen it before. I don't know how to explain to somebody what that is playing basketball.

There's a couple of great things about him playing. One of them is that he is an instantaneous screenshot-sharer. So many people in my life are just taking screenshots of moments on the court and sending them with no commentary. Just look at this. Look at him being guarded. I think I sent one to you guys.

I think I sent a photo of Aaron Judge and Jose Altoivay standing at second base.

Yes, a lot of them are accompanied by that photo. But I think I sent one to you, which was him in the preseason game against the Heat being guarded by Duncan Robinson, who is 6'7. And Duncan Robinson looked like my son when we play one-on-one against each other in.

The backyard. To me, I don't know if it's the most stunning thing, looking at somebody playing with NBA players and feeling like it's a dad playing with kids is not something I even felt with Shaq. No.

And then there was the moment in the preseason game when he stripped the ball from someone who was driving. He was guarding someone at the top of the key. Somebody was driving to his right, and he just reached back and stripped the ball. And in the screenshot, he has one foot basically at the three-point line and one foot at the free throw line. And his arm is reaching out. He's Mr. Fantastic.

The length of the arm seems like he has two arms on each shoulder.

Yeah. It's also providing a lot of trouble when it comes to keeping the ball.

You're such a hater.

I am. Well, you guys are just breathless over this, and I understand. He's very tall. So is Maynooth, Bowl. Come on. So is Bowl, Bowl.

My concerns for him have always been the health. And okay, one game in. I'm not saying he's not good. I'm saying that he turned the ball over a lot in Europe, and he turned the ball over a lot in his debut. My concern is you say he hasn't grown into a man. What you mean is he's not filled out yet. When that guy fills out, maybe he changes his game a little. I know his agent was really hesitant to put on weight, and then he put on 15 pounds once he got into the Strength and Conditioning Program of the Spurs. But in that game, I also saw him getting pushed around by Grant Williams.

Are you not going to find him for the Flemenis throat?

He's trying to wrestle through it.

And we didHollywood, I have all these immunity shots and they're very acidic.

There we go. And we didn't travel. We travel with a tiny box of sounds here. You have no idea how much all of this costs to come out here. I love these things, babe. And we didn't travel with a cough button or anything that would.

Prevent-what's in that one? What's in that shot you just took? Turmeric? Sure, turmeric. Probiotics. You got to start the day with some turmeric.

Yeah, not enough ginger.

It's really $5. It's really disturbing to me that Mike Ryan has arrived at such a cynical spot in the atmosphere. I agree. He can't enjoy the discovery of we've never seen a human being who looks this way and moves this way.

Right, but that's intellectually lazy. Yes, I get it. He's big.

But wait, this is what I'm- Be big.

And excellent like Miles Garrett.

Why not enjoy this? He doesn't affect your.

Team at all. Because everyone else is enjoying it.

Too much. That's what we're complaining about. You're just being a hater for no reason.

Well, no, because I watched European basketball, and I'm like, yes, he deserves to be the number one pick, but also he's not Michael Jordan.

Is that the bar? Yeah. You can't root for someone unless he's Michael Jordan.

That's where the bar is when it comes to social discourse.

That's insane. Thatthat this is- He's going to be good, provided that his footstay is together. But just as a fan of athletics, as a fan of the NBA, don't you just want to enjoy watching this creature play basketball?

I do, because guys like Grant Williams can body them up and bully them. I mean, where else can you see that?

That's what big baby, Davis said. He said he would just back him down in the chest because he's still not full grown and he's slight.

I'm actually- We've seen plenty of that, by the way. Throughout the preseason on the international level, we've seen six foot two guys put a hip into him.

I think foul trouble can be a problem. They seem to protect him somewhat on Wednesday night, already giving him some star treatment. I'm more interested when it comes to Mike Ryan in just this piece of him that has died that when presented with something in sports that everyone is awed, confused by, he immediately goes to the projection of how it will fail as it's played one professional basketball game. And furthermore, in the preseason, what you saw at the end of preseason, which is not something you see, he blocks a Clay Thompson shot, which those aren't really blockable. He doesn't get blocked very often, then dunks, and then Andrew Wiggins at 6'8 comes into the key, and he blocks that. And Andrew Wiggins doesn't get blocked a whole lot with that move and then makes a three at the other end of the court. I don't understand why you would be rooting against that, why you would be root to be right that he should get hurt or create a lot of turnovers or get into foul trouble so you can be the best thing, which is to be right. I'm not.

Rooting for an injury. I'm just saying, look.

Out for that. Oh, my God. I'm not rooting for the injury. One of the screenshots that went around the other day was Wiggins taking a shot and Wembanyama blocking with his entire hand. The ball, Wiggins is tall. The ball was on a very high arc because Wiggins was trying to get it over Whenba Nyama, and he blocked it with his entire hand. And the ball was probably, I don't know, 14 or 15 feet off the ground. I texted to my friend Justin, and his response was, It looks like God is just out of frame handing him the ball.

You're all rooting for Wemby? You're rooting for him? Yes. Why? He doesn't need your help. It's a cheat code. Why don't you root for the.

Six-foot-two guy? Since when is him needing our help?

But it's just everyone's on Team Wemby. He does not need any additional boost. He's great. He's like a 2k creative player.

I'm not doing it.

For his ego. The Sliders are already in.

His favor. I'm doing it because I'm a fan of sports and athletics and competition.

So me a fan.

Of the guy, Garden. I'm also a fan of that guy. What is wrong.

With you? Because I'm rooting for him to get shut down because it's a great game of basketball. You can't just throw in at eight feet tall and think.

You can run this game. He could ruin it. He could. No, he can't. Yes.

He can run it. I'm fighting for the integrity of the league and all these people, the Udonis-Haslims of the world.

That are sweating out. A guy who needs your help.

Udonis-haslim. They weren't touched by God out of the crib. This guy's got to turn the ball over a lot and maybe get a list rank injury, and then you're going to all come say, Well, you know what? Mike, maybe you had a point in saying he's not the greatest player.

I just love to hear that you're a Grant Williams fan now.

That's great news. I was rooting hard. I can't believe it. I was rooting for Grant Williams. I was like, Yeah, get a hip into him. Grant, that's how we... Welcome to the NBA, kid.

How can you be anti-aw and wonder? How can you be someone who is worried about him ruining basketball before he's done anything to ruin basketball?

Maybe this is you being myopic. I'm done with the awe and wonder. I saw it two years ago, the awe and wonder, and I saw it in Euro basketball. I also saw it lose in Euro basketball, predominantly because he took a lot of bad shots and he's a turnover machine.

He's young.

Yes, he's got to get good coaching. And provided that he says he's healthy, he's going to ruin the game of basketball for everyone.

That part actually, Mike. That part.

Actually-that's what's coming out of me. It's like, why are you rooting for the game to be destroyed by this one individual.

So you don't ever want anyone who's really great at basketball to join the NBA because it might ruin basketball?

Provided they're under seven and a half feet.

Yes, I'm fine with it. So would you like there to be a weight limit in football?

Yes.

And you would like.

There to be- I don't want an eight-foot-.

-would you like pitchers in Major League Baseball to have a speed limit on how fast they.

Can throw? No, no, no, no, no. If it's six foot two and they.

Throw- What about Randy Johnson? Would you have outlawed Randy Johnson?

Randy Johnson is right there on the French.

You are against breaking human limits. It's what you're.

Coming- He wants it, cheating. It's cheating. It's not cheating. They're race horses. He wants to weigh them down with sandbags so they can't run fast.

It's cheating. You don't watch Yokech and are like, That's cheating. No. It's cheating. If no one else can do it-.

Because he's so good.

They're not.

Playing by the same rules. It's not fair. Well, if it can't be stopped, Mike wants to eradicate it.

Right, like the touch push.

Change the rules. I'm with you on that one.

How happy are they that Brock Purdy got hurt on that play? They're just.

Circulating that. I think the correct take is the one that this show has esposed, which is they should just do it on every play. They should just march down the field three yards at a time. I think that is going to be outlawed, and I think it should. It used to... It used to be a rule, remember? We're old enough to remember when you couldn't shove a guy from behind. And now, like that Travis, Kelsey touched on the other day, he caught the ball and just stood there. And then all his teammates ran up and just shoved him into the end zone. That seems like rugby to me. That doesn't seem like football.

What they should do with the touch push is every snap should be on one. You can't fake snap and try to get people offside. Interesting. I think that that's the rule because then it allows for these linebackers to projectile missile themselves over the line and try to sunset flip and power bomb Fred Warner. Yeah, power bomb the opposing quarterback, which is the only way that you can truly stop it.

There was some great sound. I told Mike the other day I stood next to Goddard, the tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles, and I just can't believe how- Yeah, just the next- -Crow-magnon, he was at a party somewhere. It's a long story. It's not an interesting story.

It seems like an.

Interesting story. It's not an interesting story, but he was-.

The other day?

Christian Wilkins was Mike for sound, and he is saying no. You hear him say no at the beginning of the tush-push. And then Goddard comes in from the back and pushes it and was like, No, my ass. Saying out loud, No, my ass. Heard him say no.

It's funny because I had a breakfast with Zach Erch the other day. I don't want to get into it. It's not a good story.

Don't live a tard.

We got a Freeney Hardaway.

Who is a Freeney? Who is a Freeney Hardaway?

I was trying to read fast. You, D, was on the team. Luke Jackson, Bobby Jones, The Matrix, Sean Marion, Stugats. Zoh, Shaq, Smush, Parker, Chris Quinn, D-Wade, Jason Williams, Darrell Wright.

I mean, stacked roster.

This is the Dan Levator Show with the Stugats.

What's wrong with being on Team Lemp- Because of USA. It's just gingoism?

It's just-Come on. He doesn't need your help.

Because USA.

It is not exactly rooting for the underdog.

That's.

What we love about sports is we root for the underdog, and you need to throw your support behind a guy that looks like no one else and has advantages that no one else has ever had.

I wish you had said because USA.

He did say that. I did. This is all content, though. Mike Ryan, yes, we're already doing show, and Mike sure does not know it. But Mike Ryan doesn't want to live in a world where Jose Al-Tuvé is someone we root against because he's a cheater. And when Banyama gets to be rooted for.

How great is that, though? Jose Al-Tuvay doing that at that size. That's what makes sports.

I agree. They're not mutually exclusive.

Yeah, but you're also saying, Well, what Whenbunyama is doing at that size is also equally incredible. I'm saying it's a little overrated because he's turning the.

Ball over. But it is-.

And he's missing.

All those shots. It is as impressive when he is doing things that a guy who is Jose El Teuve's size is supposed.

To do. Yeah, but Jose El Teuve is not turning the ball over five times. This is what I'm telling you. That's a good point. Stop being so breathless.

He's actually right about this. Never once in Jose El Teuve's careers he had average five turnovers in the game.

Turnovers in basketball, that's correct. We'll get to your stats of the day in.

A- Just a bunch of frontrunners.

-in a second. He likes to zig when others are zagging. Apparently. We will also get to your declaration in a second about the Miami Heat. But I wanted to ask you about something both silly and that some people like Don LaGreca and New York are taking very, very seriously, which is the contivance of Chris, Mad Dog, Russo saying before game six and seven of the NLCS that he would retire on the spot if the Philies did not win that series. Honestly, given what happened around here this week where I needed the Philies to also win that series, so we wouldn't have, for example, a show where Lucy appeared from California and from Miami in a single show because it nuked three different things that we had planned. I was disappointed, I guess, that such a hacky bit, a hacky bit was not... It didn't need to be honored, but it was just saying something for the sake of saying something and then being rewarded for the sake of saying something.

How are we still falling for this as a culture, this thing? How are we still caring about what anyone in sports media says they will do if thing X happens? This is bananas to me. It's the oldest. It's like every year, some guy somewhere says, if the Bulls lose to the Colts, I'll eat my hat. And then they lose. And then all the Colts fans go, You've got to eat your hat now. And then there's a big drum roll, and then he cuts up a hat into pieces and takes a bite of it. That's great.

That's a great bit. We had Brendan Tobin locally that had to eat an actual crow. And it's like you have to go to the black market to get a crow. It is not a bird that is for sale.

We're talking about Mad Dog Russo, though. He's been doing this for a hundred years, and it's still made news. It's amazing.

Well, don't you just hate it when people who think they know the game are so confident in a result that they cast aside any possibility that they might be wrong about one of the most random sports.

Castellano showed up to game seven in a Jordan jersey. Yeah. He went, Oh, for 23. I think the... I'm not even making that hump. I'm pretty sure that the number was 23.

It's probably not the sport that you want to wear a Jordan jersey in considering his success in that sport.

I want to say that what's being referred to here is the fact that we did a segment last week where we talked about how great the Philies were and how great the Philies fans were that we had to not air.

Well, it's going to be a YouTube exclusive just so that we can sit in the shame of the stupidity of not just getting that wrong, but then seeing how quickly Philly fans actually turned on.

That team. So turned as only Philadelphia can.

Which was the wildest thing to me as you're talking while the Philly set, I think, up to zero.

Yeah, after winning 10-nothing in the game, too.

Yeah, okay, because baseball and that doesn't happen.

Harper and Castellano hit eight home runs in three games.

Yeah. No, it seems sustainable to me from the far.

They were a much better team.

Also, what seemed sustainable was the goodwill of the Philadelphia sports.

Van.

Which is why I told you, what.

Are you doing? This isn't going away. We can count on this. The bummer of it is, and this does, I will say right now, lead into my stat of the day if you want to get that ready.

It is true, I think. I don't know what you're going to say here, but I was super bum that all of the best teams lost in baseball. I did not.

Love that. This is what, as a baseball fan, as maybe the only actual baseball fan associated with Meadowlark Media, it is a huge bummer that this particular season ended in this particular way because there were eight really great stories. And the Rangers are half of one of those great stories. The Diamondbacks are not one of those great stories, simply, they're over the regular season, at least. And we lost out on... There are 12 world series that I could have created out of the playoff teams that would have been more enjoyable and more fun and more interesting than the one we got. And that sucks because it was the best baseball regular season in a very long time for a number of reasons. And at the end, we're just limping to the finish line with two teams that no one cares about.

But I thought what you guys, in part, loved about baseball was that these random things could happen in this postseason. And I don't know much about these two teams, but what I do know is the Rangers Blue 33 saves during the course of the regular season. Has a team ever made the playoffs with that number? And also, Suzuki drops that ball for the Cubs. It essentially knocks out the Cubs from the playoffs. The Diamondbacks aren't in the postseason. If Suzuki catches that ball. That's pretty cool.

Let's go to the start of the day.

Start of the day. Start of the day. In this year's start of the day. Start of the day. Startsat of the Day is.

Brought to you by Venmo, Your money, your move.

Some facts about the Arizona Diamondbacks. The last place Red Sox this year. Negative four run differential. The fourth place disaster season, Mets, negative 12 run differential. The World Series-bound Diamond-backs, negative 15 run differential. Worse over the course of the regular season than two teams who are in trouble. The more salient point, and this was pointed out to me by my friend, Brandon. Mccarthy? Mccarthy, yes, thank you. I think.

That's a look at me, Louis, too. Can you play both.

Sounds over each other? Well, I did it for him. He tried to say just my friend, Brandon.

What am I supposed to say? If I had said Brandon, McCarthy, would you have still hit that? And if I had not said anything, you would have said- You could have.

Just said your friend. That's true.

Boston. You could have just said you were having dinner instead of having dinner with Dan Renner.

Boston Red Sox won 78 games this year and fired their GM. The San Francisco Giants won 79 games, fired their manager. The Yankees won 82 games and are essentially tearing everything down, or at least examining their entire organization top to bottom, scouting, drafting everything. The Padres won 82 games, fired their manager, and are thought of as a complete mess. The Miami Marlins won 84 games and fired their GM. Arizona won 84 games and are going to the World Series.

That should be a cool story, though, Mike. When you say I hate when people say, and I know you love baseball, but that nobody cares about the teams in the World Series. I suspect ratings won't be great, but that is a pretty cool story in Arizona. I'm sure the people of Arizona who care about that baseball team would be offended by your suggestion that nobody cares about that story.

The people in Arizona who care about the Diamondbacks can be counted on the fingers that are in this room, A. And B, they made an announcement at the beginning of one of the games of the NLCS. I saw a tweet from the official Diamondbacks Twitter, I think, that said, The game tonight is officially sold out. This is an NLCS game. Do you think that the Philly's NLCS games, it was down to the wire eight hours before the game? Are we going to sell out every ticket? No, nor would that have been true in Chicago or in Los Angeles or in any of the other cities. Maybe, I guess, the Marlands. The Marlands, what just happened?

It was a cameraman trying to him going off.

It happens. The Marlands might have had to send.

That tweet out. He was whazing home because of all this baseball talk.

He called the Noover.

What everyone is doing right now, listening to Arizona and Rangers talk.

But you say that the ratings aren't going to be good. I think it's going to end up being the lowest rated World Series. These are just two teams that don't excite anybody. Now look, as an optimist, there is something cool about The Diving Back story. Corbin, Carroll is going to be around for a very long time.

He looks like Gairdner Minshu. How is Gairdner, Minshu, a dominating baseball?

He's Gairdner, Minshu, but he's like 5'9 or something. And he's really fast and he's really fun to watch play. He had a big game in the game seven. There are good... Zach Gallin is an interesting story because he's an ace who throws 94 instead of 110. It's not that there aren't interesting stories. The Rangers are a good story. The Rangers were a middling team that no one cared about. And then they decided to just spend a ton of money and get a bunch of good players. And it worked, and that's great. I mean, they de Grom didn't drop at four games for them or whatever. They made it all the way to the World Series. It's not that there aren't interesting stories there. It's just that the teams themselves don't make anyone's motor turn on.

If I haven't made everyone or we haven't made everyone go away with baseball, I think the way to salvage this is by talking hockey. I think the way to do this because Mike Ryan has complained about fan with. We are all inundated with sports at all times. And yet hockey had the great idea as the NBA is opening with four teams and two games to just swamp us with a overload of stimuli, frozen frenzy. They just say, All the teams are playing and we're going to turn it into the red zone, and a difficult broadcasting assignment to just slalom. To do that for the first time and slalom between all of the teams playing at the same time.

With John Butchagras, I thought he did a great job. I do want to give the NHL some credit. Moreover, I want to give the players some credit because we did a couple of segments on how disappointed we were about them banning Pride Tape. The players, including led by Connor McDavid, who doesn't say much of anything, came out in such strong opposition and started putting Pride Tape on their sticks anyway in the face of this ban, and the NHL changed their position on it. It's a pretty cool story in a very unsuspecting sport, especially from an unassuming superstar.

Yeah, that was cool. Also, I just like the way the Pride Tape looks on the stick. It looks super. It looks really cool. It looks very cool. I don't know anything about hockey, so this is the extent of my hockey contribution.

Well, the whole aim for Frozen Frenzy, if you watch the broadcast with John Bouchagras and Kevin Weeks. It's like, Here's the record for goals in a day. We're going for 104. And so you're watching the entire broadcast.

That's fun. Yeah. Did they.

Make it? No, I don't think so. I just went on living my life.

He was at Jumbos Clown Room is where he was.

It's not for air. I like that you're still saying, I just went on living my life, but you're no longer doing the Russell Brand accent from the movie.

No, I've canceled doing the accent.

Smart.

Where's the heap declaration?

It's coming next.

Don Levitard. All these high paid analysts. I don't want to mention names. Tnt, ESPMs. Oh, yeah, they're not going to make it. Even if they win in... If they lose it.

In Miami- I need to calm you down. That's right.

If they lose in Miami, they don't got a chance in Boston. They are going to have their ass. You know what? In Boston. Stugats. They were wrong. Are they going to lose their job? No. Are they going to get a cutting paid? No. What are they going to do? Keep predicting. What is the obvious? They're going to say, Oh, the Nuggets are going to win. Oh, Denver, the Attitude. And you know what? The Heat are going to win it all. This is the Dan Levator Show with the Stoogads.

Are we getting to the declaration anytime soon? Did you not.

Realize.

That? I'm ready, Brad. Let me see if I have any production elements for.

The declaration. I think you should just give me the fanfare after I make it.

Okay.

And you'll know when to do it.

Did we travel with the fanfare?

Yeah, I got the fanfare.

All right. After much waiting, after being in a situation where we felt like the show was jumping the shark, but clearly, Mike. Sure, with Barajah's talk and Diamondback's talk has saved the show. You're welcome. Everything is okay now, but we don't even need this declaration.

It's a bonus. I've already saved the show by talking about baseball and saying that I like Pride Tate on hockey sticks. But if you want more, if you want a safety net for additional saving of the show, I've got.

It for you. Yes, let's do that. But no fanfare. We did not travel. We'll have something for the backend, but nothing for the frontend. I got.

A fanfare and I got, My God.

Oh, my God. All right. So a declaration. This is an important declaration because the Miami Heat have started want to know. And you were the most right about, this is fair to say, correct? To Mike Ryan? Mike, sure, was the most right about the Miami Heat than anyone in the national media.

Yes. And it bothered me because it took a lot of the joy out of beating the Boston Celtics away from me because you don't want a Celtic super fan to be meeting you with. I told you so in that.

But I did, in fact, tell you so. In fact, I told you so in January or February.

Yeah, when it looked like they weren't going to make the playoffs, potentially.

It should also be noted that I watched conservatively 60 more Heat Games than you did last year. Yeah. I would say, right?

I would agree that you know more about the Miami Heat than I do. I concede that. I didn't like the team.

I didn't like them. You actively did not like them.

I did not like watching them.

Play last year. How do you think he felt about the first game for Kyle Lowry? 32 minutes, no points, just around and around there banging into people. How do you feel he felt.

About that? He should think I felt about Hyme Hawkins.

All right. Here's my declaration. Are you ready? Is everyone ready? Wednesday night, Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons at home. Let me give you some stats. The Pistons were 41 of 92 from the floor. The Heat were 37 of 92 from the floor. The Pistons hit 11 threes. The Heat hit eight. Pistons had 56 rebounds. The Heat had 48 rebounds. The Pistons had 28 assists. The Heat had 22. Butler was 6 of 18 from the floor. Hero was 7 of 24. How did the Heat win? Free throws. They hit 21 free throws. The Pistons hit nine. Here is my declaration. The Miami Heat are winning the NBA Finals this year. We are back, baby. We are back. They are in midseason form.

It's like Mike Tomlin is.

Coaching them. Yes. Listen, that is incredibly astute by you because I watched this team. I hate to watch this team as I did last year and the year before, and I have the same exact feeling as when I watched The Stealers, which is we cannot let them get away with this. How can they keep getting away with this? How can they keep getting away with this? It is free. And by the way, last thing, they had 11 steals in the Pistons had three. This is how they win. This is what I said last year. I'll say it again.

How many were from.

Haime Haqaz? I didn't look. But they had they win by winning the Steels battle and the goddamn free throw battle, and they win at home over with the Pistons by one. And I lost my mind. I could not even enjoy the Celtics coming back in the fourth quarter against the Knicks to win their opener because I was too focused on the free throw disparity of the Heat Pistons game.

What did you make of Mark Bartol's scene's assault on Heat culture?

I don't know what.

You're talking about. Bradley Beale wanted to be with Miami, and according to Bradley Beale's representatives, Pat Riley said, All right, let me check with the owner. And he never heard back.

Here's what I would.

Say about that. By the way, I have information on that. I don't know what's been reported about that, but the Heat would have you know that Bradley Beale... What actually happened there, according to them, is that Bradley Beale wouldn't waive his no-trade clause.

That's important. Also, according to Pat Riley, a couple of days ago, they never entertained trading Tyler Hero.

Interesting.

So we should definitely believe them.

But as the world's foremost expert on the Miami Heat, let me say this for the record. If the Heat had gotten Bradley Beale, it would have worked out well for the Heat. Because the Heat did not get Bradley Beale, it will work out well for the Heat. There's nothing anyone can do to stop this freight train from riding into the NBA Finals.

I want people to understand how exasperating and haunted your phantom is in this particular realm because I was going to argue that Mike. Sure was in the no lose position of if he feared the heat the entire time and was out in front of everybody on fearing heat the entire time, that he would get to be right. It's your head bets. When you bet against your teams, at least you get something. You get money if you bet against your teams. However, he got no joy from being right because the way they lost, the way the Celtics lost, allowed us to laugh at him so much that it is a particularly tortuous thing. Mike Ryan, you know this. I didn't get to laugh to Mike. No, but what do you mean you.

Didn't get to laugh? I got to laugh at boss. And I listened to Boston Radio. What I wanted was for Mike, sure, to give me some of that. And I didn't get it from the person that I wanted it the most because he's just out here watching more heat games than me. It's not fair.

No, we're all in a no-win situation here because when I'm saying the truth, which is they're going to the finals and they're going to beat the Celtics. In fact, I actually said out loud to someone you know, who I won't name because I don't want to be look at me Louised. I said, The funniest way that this could happen and the way it probably will happen is that the Celtics go down 3-0, come back to tie it 3-3, and then lose game seven at home. That is indeed what happened, if you remember correctly. And so when I say that, I'm miserable because he beat the Celtics. You don't get the joy of rubbing it in my face. We all lose.

Somehow we all lose. It did nothing for me. I'd rather probably been in the lottery for Whenbanyama than what ended up happening, which is just a totally forgotten NBA final.

Let me ask you this, though, going back to your Whenbanyama take, if he were on the heat, would you be saying the same thing? Oh, my God.

I love him. I love him. Can you imagine? Can you imagine him and our Strength and Conditioning program? You infuse that body with culture.

How about a little delayed, Mike? Mike, sure. How about a little delayed you give Mike Ryan and the Heat fan base what it is it has been craving for a long time. You go to bed the night of game seven. Jason Tatom.

Gets hurt. You'd probably go to bed early because that game was in hand.

Yeah. Jason Tatom gets hurt early.

Tried it off in the.

Third quarter. But you go to bed, like this... I mean, talk about manifesting something, Mike. Mike, sure, was fearing for months that all of that would happen. And then it happened in the most heartbreaking way to his team against a team that he hates more than any team in his history as an adult or a child other than the Yankees. That night when you go to bed, when the television gets turned off, surely you did not watch any highlights. No. What was that night like for you?

You know what it's like? It's a dull ache. It's not a sharp pain because a sharp pain is Aaron Boon hitting the home run off Tim Wakefield in 2003 to win the ALCS. That's a sharp pain. That's your in it. You're in it, you believe you believe you believe you're stabbed in the throat. It's a dull sadness. You're just like Eeyore. You just pat around your house and food has no taste. And your wife says, Let's watch an episode of that show we like. And you're like, Fine. And then you watch it.

And you feel nothing. You're not really watching. You're distracted by your pain.

Yeah, it's just anedonia. It's just.

Like nothing. And you're on the West Coast, so you can't actually go to bed.

Yeah, it's like 7:48 and you're tired, but you can't go to sleep yet. It's a sad thickness of the soul. Thank you.

You're welcome. That was good. That was helpful.

I want to give you more. So what was the next morning like? Did you sleep well when you woke up? What was the group chat like? When you woke up in the.

Morning- I knew that's where you were going with this.

Who.

Was the saddest? Let me explain. If I haven't explained this to you already about the group chat, about any Boston group chat, I wish Charlotte were here because she could back me up on this. If you haven't watched the game, you can tell what happened by how many texts you see on the group chat. If there are 71 texts on the group chat, you lost. If there are two or one or something, you've won because no one from Boston happily texts you only misery text, right? So you can literally tell with a hundred % accuracy. If I look at the group text and there's one text, it means the Celtics won. And also that text is not about the Celtics. It's a clip of Bill Belichick saying something funny from a press conference a day ago. But the next morning after game seven was the only time in history no text. Really? Yeah, because everyone was just too anadonic and miserable to actually say anything. It was just all like, perfunctory.

That's great. Have you spoken to Michael Malley since?

I speak to Michael Malley a lot. Go ahead. He was very sad. Yeah, that's great. He's a Boston sports fan and they lost game seven to the Heat. He was sad.

That's awesome. Who on the Heat does he hate the most?

I don't know. It's got.

To be Jimmy. It's Jimmy Universal.

No, it's Tyler. It's probably Hero.

But Hero is never playing against you guys in.

The postseason. What do you want me to say? No, he doesn't. He hates Jimmy. Fine, he hates Jimmy Moore. He hates Jimmy more. Yeah, okay. That's good.

Didn't you vow not to watch many of those games because you knew what was.

Going to happen? Yes, I did. I stuck to that for... I'm trying to remember now. I think game two and.

Game four. You wanted to come back. At one point, you wanted to come back to the group text and just have them tell you what happened. And you were actively avoiding watching a thing that you knew was going to happen that felt like haunting.

Yes. This is the true sicko in me. I had this thought, let me open this up to the floor. And I don't know, you probably have a different perspective on this. I feel very frequently, and this is coming from a guy whose teams have won a startling number of championships in the last 20 years, four World Series, six Super Bowels, a Stanley Cup, and an NBA title in your adult lifetime, I should add. Yeah. I think sometimes I would prefer it if I were simply Rob Lowe it with every sport, if I were just a fan of the League, and I didn't have to ride the daily roller coaster of Fandom. And it's gotten in my advanced age- Aren't the.

Highs worth it?

The highs are amazing.

Especially with the Red Sox in '04. It's like all that.

Investment is paid off. That I wouldn't trade for anything. Absolutely. And the 28-3 Super Bowl. That's what I'm saying. I'm speaking from the perch of someone who's had it better than anyone. Yet, Wednesday night, they go down six to the Knicks on opening day in the fourth quarter, thanks to some terrible... Emmanuel quickly steals an inbounds pass after a made three, and then they hit another three, and Jaley Brown fouls the three-point shooter. I'm like, Igive, I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want to care about this. In game one? Yes, in game one of 82, before they lose to the heat in the playoffs, I have that feeling. And sometimes I think it would be better just to root for the league. Do you ever feel that?

Well, you sound- Football.

-so long. It took twenty-plus sexual assaults for.

Me to get there, though. Fair enough.

You sound like an addict.

Yeah, yes. When you feel something that deeply, and again, I don't want to indicate in any way that I'm not grateful for what sports has given me and Fandom has given me. It's given me, my son for a while, had more parades than years lived in his life. It was a crazy run. And yet still, and this is what's maddening about sports Fandom, your team loses a lot more than they win. And by lose, I mean, they don't win the championship, and that's pain. And I sometimes wonder whether the pain is worth it. You want.

More pain? Tell me more about Michael Malley. How much does he hate Carter for Hagee?

I am not a hockey fan. They really hate the Panthers.

Yeah, and me.

Don't let me tard. You are.

Very comfortable talking about how you met your wife, how much you love her, how important she is to you. That's the reason that I asked the question. I've always admired that about you, that you have no problems whatsoever professing your love. Well, the thing is, I have a.

New wife now.

Me and Bianca didn't make it.

So.

I moved on. We moved on. It was for the better of.

Both of us. Still guts. Things just got a little awkward there, so let me be the first on this show to congratulate you on the new wife, Vince. Congratulations on feeling whole, feeling complete. Let's talk tailgating. Yeah.

Don't feel.

Awkward, buddy. I don't.

I mean, Dan does. I mean, Dan is going to sit with.

Them forever. I appreciate you soothing me in this regard, but I already feel terribly awkward. Then my teammate comes to my defense with not a question. Congratulations. But just a healthy congratulations and the further pointing out of that awkwardness because he's always good for me in those spots. I'm also thinking of divorce, Vince, after many, many years, 18 years with a partner who does things like that to you.

This is the Dan Levator Show with the Stugat.

You're saying- He's not the first one to- -you're saying that two famous people have a phony relationship just for publicity? That would be a first. That would not be something that Hollywood has ever experienced before. And how dare you? You cannot just throw around an.

Accusation like that. I think you're involved, too. You guys ended the strike so he could go to SNL on his by-week, and they could be photographed leaving the.

Rap party. You will not catch me saying anything bad about Taylor Swift, not because I'm scared of her fans, but because she rules. She's great.

And I love her. She's great. I was saying that not since I was a kid and the response of Michael Jackson wasn't around. And even then, I don't think I've ever seen something quite like this. Michael Jackson could have released a movie in movie theaters, and it wouldn't have done what Ares tour did. Even when you adjust for inflation, it's insane. I've never seen anything.

This. And it's fans from... I went to that concert here at SoFi.

Yeah, I hear it's amazing.

It's incredible. Everybody says it's incredible.

It's incredible. I'll never see an event produced as well from beginning to end as that, ever. It was a.

Flawless- We had to hear our two. It was incredible.

Speaking of which, let's start there. As we conclude our week in Hollywood. And you hear Mike Shore rave about Taylor Swift. Mike, Ryan, and I in experiencing these last two weeks and trying to take a swing that is different because after 20 years doing the same thing, you can speak to this, in writer's rooms that have expired after five or six or seven years, we've been doing the same thing. I've been treating for nearly 20 years, and I want to have a different experience with it. But I want to have a different experience with it that feels good. And the last two weeks have been... Over the last two years, there have been so many changes to our environment and small things that affect product that it makes me feel sometimes untethered. But I have not gotten better at the idea of treating experiments like this gently, where if it's not going the way that you want it to, if it's not as perfectly produced as a Taylor Swift concert, then you start feeling bad about what it is that you have done. And then the audience lets you hear it on what it is that you've done, and that's not great for confidence.

And all of that stuff is not stuff that has ever existed in my career. A lack of confidence combined with the reminder that you don't sound as good as you are when you're also going emotionally through a time that has no precedent for you and you're in a dark place, stumbling around in a fog, I don't know how to do all of that stuff and find the joy in it when there is stuff that feels like failure all around the joy, what should.

Be the joy. You're saying the process feels like you're failing actively when you're in it?

Well, what I'm saying is the audience believes, wherever it is that it is, critical that it cares about this more than I do or we do. And it doesn't. It can't care about this. It can't care about it.

The second that they do, it's probably time.

But it also feels like that caring about it is a quicksand if you're not doing it well, because it's a quicksand and it gets dark very quickly creatively when you're not feeling your best while creating. And then what you're producing you know doesn't live up to the standards that you have set for yourself. It's Honest to God as a psychological experiment, it reminds me of my entire life of the feeling of not being enough for my parents because I was always trying to do more and trying to be better so that I could be good enough. It taps into some childhood for me, and all of it feels unpleasant.

Well, you sure don't want to talk about the heat again?

Well, you still haven't heard our two from Thursday, which we've been... We should probably set this up for Mike Shore without ruining it because he has not.

Yet heard- He would change his answer right now because this is a campaign.

Well, just for the audience, in our two yesterday on Thursday, I just broke down talking about some stuff that has happened in my life recently that I have kept quiet, that is just some of the stuff that has happened in my life recently. It's not all of it, and it's just heavy that has been hard to navigate. Independent of this, we were ridiculously talking about Marvin Jones and the idea of whether you can dedicate yourself obsessively, compulsively, with balance to two different things that require all of your attention: a business and your family. Can you do both things? How do you do both things when your family is in peril?

And a couple of bullet points at the Baker Act appearing for his father's health and safety.

It's always Marvin Jones that brings this out on people.

Yeah, midlife crises, the pandemic.

Let me say this, though. Brain cancer. Without having heard hour or two from yesterday, let me say this. I came into the world of your show and you, as a fan, as a person who had been... I moved to LA. I started listening to sports talk radio as you do. It was Colin Cowherd. It was I found your show and was like, this is interesting and new and different. And part of what I liked about it was that it was a lived-in universe. There was clearly a bunch of people who had spent a lot of time together in the best way you were doing the show for you. You weren't pandering in the way that sports talk radio people usually pander, which is creating absurd arguments, inviting people to call in just so you could yell at them, saying outrageous things just to say them. And part of the joy of it was hearing a gong sound followed by Poppy saying, You don't get the show. You were wearing that as a badge of honor. We are talking about what we think is interesting. We have our own universe, our own lived-in jokes and recurring bits.

Get on board or don't, but we're not going to change. So I would say to you, whether it's the stuff you've been doing out here for the last couple of weeks, or whether it's whatever the new version of the show is in the new studio that you're doing back in Miami, that the way that you are reacting to it is purely based on whether you think what you are doing is good. The audience is secondary. And I don't mean that they don't matter, and I don't mean that you don't have to take their viewpoint into account, but you made your bones on creating something that you liked that you were just making and then throwing out in the world and saying, Here you go. Take it or it.

I feel more indebted to those people now because they gave us permission.

To do all of this. That's the thing, right? You feel indebted to them and you feel a sense of responsibility to them because they joined you on that journey, but you didn't create it for them. You didn't say, I'm going to go out and try to please these people. You said to yourselves, we are going to make ourselves laugh and create a world that we want to live in. And we are doing it with the confidence that if we do that and it's authentic and real, people will sense that and they will come along for the ride and join us. And that is exactly what happened. So to whatever extent you are second-guessing yourselves or feeling like things are different or whatever, my guess is that it's an internal question and not an.

External question. It is. I'm just speaking for myself here, but there was a distinct correlation between me feeling good about the show and it being a good show back in the day. Now I feel less confident in some of the shows that we put out. So just generally, it feels different for me because my instinct had never really let me down on that. If I'm unsure if something is good, then I think the audience is also going to be unsure if something is good.

Quite possibly. But the second part of this is that you are doing a thing that is daily and is multiple hours per day. At the end of Larry Sanders, the best show about a show I think ever made, there's a moment where Larry's girlfriend is a is complaining to him because he did something obnoxious and stupid to her. And this is the very last episode in my memory. And they're arguing for a second, and he stops and he goes, I'm sorry. I'm a late-night talk show host. I'm all. And it's like, that's the statement that explains the entire show, right? Is this job is a job that requires you to daily make an hour of something that you put out into the world, and that it has to be funny and interesting and compelling and this and that. You guys have been doing that, but it's four hours a day, and you've been doing it for 20 something years. There's no way that you're not going to be driven a little insane by the grind of what it is that you do. And so you have to think of this like tissue. You pull one out of the box and you use it and you throw it away.

And it's not possible that every one of those tissues is of the same quality. There's going to be some that are good and hold up under, I guess in this analogy, the mucus that you blow into it.

How do I navigate the host using tissues to wipe away tears and mucus that have been.

Born out of a segment? So without having heard an hour or two Marvin Jones discussion- I.

Can't wait to.

Hear your appraisal. I can't wait to listen to it. But what I would say is that another thing that people love about the show is it runs the gamut from the dumbest you've ever heard to the most important and serious. This is what I wrote about the show for Slate all those years ago. I said, how is it possible that this same program contains Bowmany Jones talking about redlining and real estate and the history of racism in the real estate industry, and also whatever stupid crap you did on the day, the discussion of the soup that was thrown at... Who was it?

J. R.

Smith. J. R.

Smith, right. Was it a bread bowl? Was it not?

Yeah. How is it.

That- I think it was tortilla soup.

I think it was.

We knew that day was a good show, by the way. We tend to know when... I'm curious as a creator on the confidence stuff. When Mike says if he knows it's a good show, then it's probably a good show. My guess is that you're never wrong about this. If you know something is good that you've made.

It's good. I'll tell you a story. In season three of the show, Parks and Recreation, we had to make that entire season in the dark. This is now a thing that happens a lot. But in the old days, it was weird. Normally, the show was beginning to air as you're writing it for the rest of the season. But that season we got moved to midseason. We made 16 episodes in a row without any of the marrying. And I remember talking to Amy Polar. Go ahead.

I mean, contextually.

I mean, we.

Did the most hang on every word.

I remember talking to her about the finale because I was editing the finale. And I was like, it turned out great. And she was like, Really? And I said, Yeah. And I was like, Look, I don't know what's going to happen. We thought we were going to get canceled. When we were moved to midseason, that's usually back then a signal you're getting canceled. And I said, look, this might be the end for us. This might be the last season.

People don't remember how uneasy it was around Parks and Rec because if you watch back season one, it starts slow and probably doesn't get renewed if it wasn't for the talent that was attached to it. Yeah.

And after season three, we almost got canceled. And season four, season five, we almost got canceled all the time. But I remember saying to her, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that this is a good season of television. I knew it in my gut. I would have bet every dollar I had that the show was going to be thought of as good. But again, that was 16 half-hours. Sixteen half-hours. You guys make that much content in a week. And so the idea that every single thing can be good is patently absurd. And if I were in your shoes, I would have let go of that idea a very long time ago. The standard.

Is the standard, Mike.

I understand. And it's good to have that standard because that's probably what drives you to make everything good. But I think I would also.

Be- It drives us to a couple of things.

Way to here, Robert, too.

But I think I would have given up long ago on the A... I think my standard for what is good would have been over the course of this three-week run, how did we cover the baseball playoffs? How did we cover this era, this story over many weeks? Did we do a generally good job? I think would be the standard for me instead of, was this 12-minute and 22-second segment in hour two of the Wednesday show of the two weeks were in L. A. Was that good?

You're talking specifically about the climate change stat.

I'm.

Talking about any section of.

The show. We're having trouble making one of the funniest men in the universe funny on a segment about the world is ending.

You did invite him on to talk about the least funny thing in the world.

He wants to talk.

About it. I know, the challenge. The standard is the standard.