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

Can rockstar sportswriters be friends with superstar athletes? How do you measure a good episode of sports TV? And what's so great about being an old dad? Plus: playing the human jukebox, brokering the Jordan-Barkley peace, writing about Holyfield's ear on deadline... and the word "podcast" as a racial slur. Further content: • "Ear Today, Gone Tomorrow" (1997) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1997/06/29/ear-today-gone-tomorrow/3f93d30d-2606-4adc-aeb4-1bf26c9b9bb9/ • "Mission Impossible: African-Americans & Analytics" (2016) https://andscape.com/features/mission-impossible-african-americans-analytics/ • South Beach Sessions: Michael Wilbon (2023)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdUV2FxatwQ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 0:32Pablo Torre?

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• 1:16Pablo Torre?

  from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at apollo.io. That's apollo.io. I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale, exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly because today, we're going to find out what this sound is. [BLEEP] them.

• 1:57Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 2:05Pablo Torre?

  I wanted this to be a surprise and instead I got Levitard on one side. I got Mike Wilbon on the other and Dan has some tiny fans in front of him and I don't understand what's happening.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  Why does, why do you have headphones? I don't have headphones. I can't have better equipment than you either because you were sitting in a trillion dollar studio because I've been to that studio. I'm sitting in my [bleep] house in Scottsdale.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  In the middle of PTI negotiations that are heating up.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Don't be, don't be bashful, big boy. Don't be bashful.

• 2:36Pablo Torre?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  There's no middle of anything that I know of.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  What do you mean, there's no middle of anything that you know of?

• 2:41Speaker 02

  That's what I told you.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  That contract expires next month and they're losing Wilbon and Kornheiser. You know that.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Maybe, [bleep] I might just go to Chicago and do something wild card. I don't know.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Well, our air conditioning was down and you have not prepared me for this, but I am delighted to see our old friend, Mike Wilbon, El Padrino, the Godfather. It is nice to see him.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Oh, Padrino, wow. Thank you, Dan.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, I think you changed that word. What did I, Padrino is what I called you. I don't know.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Padrino, I thought you said Pradringo. I was like, oh, [bleep].

• 3:11Speaker 03

  You came very close to saying like [bleep] in Spanish. There was very dangerous.

• 3:16Pablo Torre?

  More or less racist, actually. That might've been both at the same time.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Good to see you guys both.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Likewise.

• 3:22Pablo Torre?

  This is something that I am doing for a number of reasons. One of which is that as part of the PTI cinematic universe, I saw you growing up,

• 3:34Pablo Torre?

  co-hosting PTI together when Tony Kornheiser was out and now I'm the guy who only fills in when Wilbon is out. And I want to get a sense of what your actual dynamic is because you guys, Padrino aside, it's weird. It's, I, I don't quite know if Wilbon actually totally likes you, Dan. Honestly?

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Love him. Love him. Absolutely love him. I love Dan Lebatard. Let it be on the record.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Well, I wonder why it is that Pablo comes by this confusion.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  I think it has something to do, Eric Ridehome, the producer of Pardon the Interruption, has apologized about this to me in the past. He said he went too hard at the beginning trying to beat the audience to the joke of nobody wants Lebatard here. They want Wilbon and Kornheiser, so I'm gonna make him right off the bat the hateable Dan Lebatard.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  There are enough people, and Dan's a little in need to know, who know that when I went for decades to Miami, there were brunches, dinners, attempts to strong-arm Lebatard into buying 4,000 bottles of wine at Prime 112 for miles, Miami Heat games going back to Shaq and Wade. So we're talking about the aughts. You know, my mom was alive at the time and Dan and his mom were just unbelievably great to my mom, who lived in South Florida at the time in terms of all kinds of stuff, even at Gaines, helping her get to Heat games. Now we're just talking 20 years of history that have nothing to

• 5:09Speaker 02

  do with PTI, so I think I can well chronicle my love for Lebatard.

• 5:18Pablo Torre?

  So I just need to clarify here, and I should clarify this, this week especially, I think, that while we are over here striving to create the weird new future of sports journalism, I also have a deep, deep affection for the past and for the even weirder coaching tree from which I have sprung. Because for the last decade now, I have been a fill-in co-host of Pardon the Interruption, the daily sports television show starring Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon that airs at 5:30 PM Eastern on ESPN. And if you've never seen PTI before, just know that Wilbon and Kornheiser are the predominant married couple in all of sports media.

• 6:01Pablo Torre?

  They are two incredible journalists who met while working for Ben Bradley's Washington Post. And by now, PTI is so good and so influential, inspiring imitators across not just sports, but all of cable news as well, that for Tony and Mike's 20th anniversary in 2021, I got one of the show's biggest fans to send them a special message.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Tony and Mike, congratulations on 20 years of PTI. And Pablo, I hope you're proud of these guys for staying together so long. I know I am. Because 20 years is a long time. When PTI first came on the air, I was a state senator in Illinois. And whenever I had a little extra time, I would turn on ESPN. If I was lucky, there'd be a good basketball game on. If I wasn't, it would be you guys.

• 6:56Pablo Torre?

  But as my colleague and now boss, Dan Levittard, knows better than anyone, summertime is PTI substitute host season. And I always pair up with Kornheiser, whom I have come to regard genuinely as a mentor in this business. And I feel that way even though the most time he will give my podcast here is this voicemail from episode one.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  I was Tony Kornheiser leaving this message. Pablo's podcast is launching today. And I wanted to help because I love Pablo. I, of course, have forgotten what the title of Pablo's podcast is. I think it's Pablo Torre just found out, or Pablo Torre knows this. Or maybe it's Pablo Torre has gout. I'd have made it, uh, Pablo Torre graduated from Harvard, so eat it. To Kill a Mockingbird, Death of a Salesman, The Bible, they're all taken. How about this? Squeeze this with Pablo Torre, huh? Squeeze this. I like it. Good luck, Pablo.

• 8:01Pablo Torre?

  But speaking of eating it, while I always co-host with Kornheiser, I do remember Levitard, before, you know, he self-deported from ESPN, most often working with Wilbon. And Wilbon is, in some key ways, extraordinarily different from me. He's more opinionated in general, he hates analytics as a concept, he regularly rails against terms like exit velocity and launch angle. He might also be the last man on earth who doesn't have a podcast. But when I was growing up, watching PTI and Kornheiser was off traveling somewhere,

• 8:42Pablo Torre?

  I would delight in a combination that I shouldn't have loved on paper, which was Wilbon and Levitard doing stuff like this.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  Pardon interruption, but I'm Mike Wilbon. Tony's so tired from doing Monday Night Football, so please say hello to Dandy Dan.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Why do we do this? You know?

• 9:12Speaker 03

  I think I tore this jacket.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  I think you tore a pectoral muscle.

• 9:17Speaker 03

  This ridiculous jacket is torn groin muscle.

• 9:21Pablo Torre?

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

• 9:28Speaker 03

  That jacket, Mike, I, I think I have this right. I don't know if you guys have moved. I was so poorly dressed at the time, did not know how to dress at the time, that I would often go down the street, because I spent like big chunks of summer getting really shitty scheduled when those guys would go away and make me cover like a really dry time. And I think I still have jackets bought from Macy's in your wardrobe closet at PTI. If I had to bet, I think I could find them there.

• 10:00Speaker 02

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

• 10:08Speaker 03

  He really drilled me with that wardrobe elitism.

• 10:11Pablo Torre?

  There was no smile, no smile in his voice.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  That would happen.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  He really wardrobe shamed me. I volunteered that I was buying jackets.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  And by the way, see, that's Pablo, that's what Dan would do. He would offer himself up for the show, for the, you know, for the greater good, for Tony and me to do stuff like that. That's a, that's a perfect way. It's natural and Rhino didn't even have to write it. I don't remember any of that stuff until somebody brings the clip up and it makes me smile and it makes me genuinely happy to see it. I don't remember any of it. I don't consume anything you guys consume. I don't consume podcasts. I no longer consume sports talk radio. I just don't do it.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Well, you, you know though Pablo, that these guys are genuine heroes of mine and in one of the stranger ways you will ever arrive at your heroes where you feel like you know them before you've met them because you're just looking at their work and you're a columnist. So you know what that relationship means and they welcomed me into their world, which was the very top of this world to, to play with them. Two very different creatures, two persnickety creatures. One, a good deal more persnickety than the other, but both of them.

• 11:33Pablo Torre?

  Let's rank, let's rank the persnickety news for those who are not familiar with the family tree.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Okay, but okay, which way do you want to go here? Is it that Wilbon delights in being 45 minutes late according to Kornheiser's schedule every day purposely for 20 years in a gangster move that Kornheiser still resents, but will never say so to his face, only in private behind his back and Wilbon doesn't care and delights in that?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  Or the fact that Tony Kornheiser still writes in a yellow legal pad, the notes that he's taking before the game as Mike Wilbon just announced to you, I don't consume anybody because I know more than them already. I don't need sports radio. I don't need any more information. I know it all.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  No, no, that last part was not saying, I don't consume anything, anybody, because I don't give a [BLEEP].

• 12:20Speaker 02

  I don't, but I do think I know more than most of the people doing all these podcasts and all this [__] now, because I don't believe that they've come by much of anything authentically or genuinely. So Dan is on to something there. The late part is right. I'm usually intentionally or cavalierly somewhere between 30 seconds to seven or eight minutes late. I don't give a [__] about that either.

• 12:49Pablo Torre?

  I like how the podcast Mike Wilbon would host if he gave a [__] about podcasts would be titled, "Mike Wilbon Already Found Out."

• 12:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no. Mike Wilbon doesn't give a [__] would be more accurate. I don't give a [__]

• 13:03Speaker 03

  Mike Wilbon doesn't give a [__] about your podcast by Mike Wilbon.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Right. There we go. There we go.

• 13:27Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 14:37Pablo Torre?

  I do want to say like Kornheiser refuses to do this show or any show that's not his own at this point. Tony's afraid. Mike, you know this. Tony doesn't want to. You will say stuff into this microphone and Kornheiser is running as far, not even running. He's just locked the door and is sitting behind the locked door. And even to me, he's like, I'm not, I can't, no, I'm not doing that.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Well, that's, I mean, that's largely who Tony was before he decided to do daily television. Tony didn't engage with everybody. I don't, I tell the story that when I, that when I started covering Georgetown basketball, when it was far more important, groundbreaking, culturally relevant than any other story in college sports at the time, early 1980s. John Thompson, the person, the coach I was covering for a beat, did not speak to me for a year. Didn't speak to the Washington Post beat writer for a year. Well, when I got to the Post a couple of summers earlier than that, I don't think Tony spoke to me for a year.

• 15:44Speaker 03

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

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can vouch.

• 15:53Pablo Torre?

  I, I, there's no one I adore more than Tony, obviously. I'm somebody who professionally investigates things, gets people to say stuff, and yet the guy I would consider a mentor as well, won't, won't do it. To Dan's phraseology, he is the hardest nut to crack, and it only makes me want it more.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  I've had him on our show once or twice in 20 years. I think him and Wilbon did me a favor when I was starting the radio show, like the first week, they did it as a favor to me. But I've asked Tony over the years and then stopped asking because he didn't want to do it.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  I think that. We're the last of the people who did daily stuff the way we did it. And when you do daily stuff the way we do it, there's not a lot of time. I don't examine anything. I don't, people say, how was the show today? I don't know. There's one tomorrow. I don't know. It's like a baseball season. And so I think that Tony is, I don't think that there's as much re, he just doesn't want to do it.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Wait, so Mike, so Mike, you don't, you don't, you don't get the, I imagine that you're not so hardened that you leave every show, because I leave every show and don't remember what we did. But I do have the feeling of whether or not we did well or not, whether or not it felt good. When you leave a show, you may not remember the details, but you know when it's good and when it's not, right?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  No, I, I, I, because I don't allow myself to examine it. I, I don't, I don't consume it that way. I know when there's been a particularly good one. That's it.

• 17:31Pablo Torre?

  How do you measure it? How do you know?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  I gotta do it again tomorrow.

• 17:33Pablo Torre?

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

• 17:36Speaker 02

  It's just, it's just, it's just my sense of what's good and what's not. That's it.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Well, but, but when he says that though, Pablo, that sharpened over years of, when he says my sense of what's good, a columnist's gift is knowing for his audience what's good. Like, it's, it's one of the strengths that, that's what these people sharpen. It's why they put us on television, honestly. It's why ESPN decided to put newspapers on television, going back to when Mark Shapiro was the president and the Sports Century series was just a series before 30 for 30 documentaries that just had sportswriters talking.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  1997, 98 is starting then, and that's very well said, as always by Dan. It's, it's very well said. We have a sense of audience, which nobody has anymore.

• 18:20Pablo Torre?

  Can I talk about the competitiveness though? Because I don't think people, because again, I was already after this. When I came in through magazines, I have a totally different path. I'm trying to do like new media stuff now. The competition among columnists, right? Which is really the, the, the thing, the primordial ooze that birthed all of the argument television stuff because of PTI. But that competition, Mike. Could you speak to what it was like to open the paper and figure out, did I just get beaten by somebody as a columnist? What did that mean?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you, first of all, you started as Dan Mink. You started as a beat writer. You were competing against most of these same people all the way up. So from 22 years old, when a lot of us got out of our internships into full-time gigs in Washington and New York and Miami and Chicago and LA and San Francisco and Atlanta and smaller places too, Columbus, you know, or, you know, Oakland or wherever it is we were, you were covering the same things. I mean that you were all at a Sugar Ray Leonard fight, if you go back when I was young, or then a Mike Tyson fight. And so you could all read the way 26 people wrote about Mike Tyson biting off Evander Holyfield's ear and spinning it out.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  You could read every one of those the next day and have a sense of who did a better job, who was more eloquent, who was more forceful, who was more influential, who was more passionate, who had details that somebody else didn't have because they waited and they talked to Mike in a parking lot at 2:00 in the morning and rewrote. You had a sense of all of that for decades on everything. You had it on Carl Lewis and whether he hated Ben Johnson even though he ultimately won the race. You had it on Martina Navratilova and Chris Everett and whether they really liked each other or not. You had it on everything. You had it on Michael Jordan and the Bad Boy Pistons and what had, you had it on everything. You covered everything.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  I'm sitting there with 25 other dudes writing about Holyfield's ear rolling across the mat at me, and I wanted to compare those. And in that moment, it wasn't could you go out and get some other story? It was could you get this [bleep] story? Could you do this one better? Could you tell it in a way that would keep 80-year-old men by the fireplace or in the barbershop or at the gas station? Could you do that? But at the same time, I wanted to read Levitard the next day on game one of Dallas Miami and whether or not Dirk got in their ass. I wanted to read his take on that and compare what I said. And that was competitive too.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  And there may not even be a real answer. For me, that goes back forty-five years. Forty-five.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  I have later in life, uh, lost, uh, some of the value that I used to have in being competitive. And however it is that competitive masked my insecurities back when I was coming up. Uh, I was not good at news breaking competitive. I remember sobbing in a Miami Herald bathroom at midnight because I didn't want to be doing. I wanted to be telling stories. I didn't want to be chasing where the Marlins spring training complex would be. And so I didn't really like what I was doing. But later on, when it became writing, uh, uh, writing stories, I wanted to beat Mitch Albom at whatever the things were that, uh, got you awards when you were the best sports writer in America for telling the, the best stories.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  But I will tell you where and when, because I remember it, some of this got knocked out of me because it was around a dressing room at PTI where Skip Bayless runs into one of your dressing rooms and hides because he doesn't want me to see what his arguments are on the show. And I'm like, okay, I don't want to, this is not, I don't want to be this kind of competitive. This is not, I don't want to play the game this way. I'd rather just put on a, a policeman's cap and talk to a mailbox and see if I can ruin this game instead of winning this argument.

• 22:29Pablo Torre?

  I forgot.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  But only because you guys existed, but only because you guys existed could I zig while you guys were zagging because you guys had to establish the bit that these arguments matter.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  I wasn't interested in zigging when people zagged. I wanted to zig. I wanted to compare everybody's zig. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to sit in the same press box on the same Sunday afternoon, because I sat there with Eddie Pope. And when you replaced Eddie, I wanted to compare the zig. I didn't give a about zagging.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  I know.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  I wanted, I wanted to read everybody's zig.

• 23:03Pablo Torre?

  I cannot relate less to just loving zigs. I was like, that's just so the opposite of how I approach this.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  No, but I know, no, but see, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. I know what he's doing there on the zig. See, this is the confidence of a man who knew his zig was going to be better than most of the zigs. So he's comparing and he's like, no, mine's, mine stacks up here. Mine stacks up against just about anybody doing, doing the writing.

• 23:27Pablo Torre?

  No, Wilbon, Wilbon likes the fastball. That's what he's saying. He's like, you know, you're getting a hundred miles an hour. Can you hit it?

• 23:34Speaker 02

  I love the deadline stuff and comparing who had balls. Whose nerves were shot? The night, I'm gonna go back to the Holyfield Tyson, the ear thing, cuz that was, that's a real thing for me. When, when, when Holyfield jumped, you can see his both feet in the air and Tyson had bit his ear, but we didn't really know. If you're sitting in the, in the arena, you didn't really know what happened instantly. You had to see a replay. I remember thinking when I, you know, in three seconds, when I figured out what happened. There was a calm that came over me and I remember looking down at David Remnick, the great David Remnick, who was at the fight. Editor of The New Yorker now, yes. Said, I remember saying to him, mouthing to him, column. That's it. That's it.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Cuz if you couldn't do that, I didn't respect you. If you got nervous at that. If you missed deadline, if you couldn't get it done on the East Coast in 23 minutes. If it was 11:37 and your deadline was midnight, if you couldn't get that done eloquently in 23 minutes, then [bleep] you. And I, then I had you.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  So I ask you all these years later, Will Bond, who wrote the best story off of Holyfield Tyson? Cuz I think you're bringing it up because you know that you did. You know that you read 26 stories and on that day you kicked Remnick's ass.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  No, I like what I did that night, but I, I do go, I, I did respect the, the people, the Giants who covered Ali, Fra- Ali Frazer, Ali Foreman, all of it. I mean, those guys, when I walked in the press box, Dan, I revered them. I was in awe. I would sit around and listen to all of them. And I remember when Ed Pope called me in my dorm room when I was a senior saying, if the Washington Post doesn't hire you, we, I got a job for you here in Miami. There's no higher praise. That phone call was 47 years ago.

• 25:31Speaker 02

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

• 25:47Speaker 03

  I'm gonna embarrass you right now. Pablo, I don't have this wrong, right? Will Bond, you're that for me and Pablo.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  That's frightening.

• 25:55Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean,

• 25:58Speaker 03

  You are, though.

• 25:58Pablo Torre?

  Oh, this is.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  You paved the way, whatever. How you talk about Edwin Pope has to be how me and Pablo talk about you and Tony.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Jesus. I don't know.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  What are you doing? That's the highest compliment.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  It's a great compliment. It's also, it's sobering. It's why I'm sitting here recuperating from foot surgery because I'm old.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  You showed us what the top of the mountain could look like, Mike.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  No, that's praise too hot. That's a bridge too far.

• 26:28Pablo Torre?

  No, it's not, Mike. I, dude, hold on. I don't know if I've told Mike this, but I was at Sports Illustrated. They would assign me to like, you know, the regionals of the NCAA tournament and I'd show up at various sites around the country. One of the sites they assigned me to was of course, Washington DC at some point, like a sub regional. And it was a sort of thing where I wander through the press box. I wander through the media area where it's just like, you know, media guides and plates with gross rotting food. And there, typing by himself is Mike Wilbon. And I did not go up to Mike Wilbon. I did, I was, I was starstruck, but what I did do, what I did do was I took out my iPhone

• 27:09Pablo Torre?

  and snuck a photo of Mike Wilbon working and just sent it to my friends. And I was like, look what I, look what I saw.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Tom, old peeping Pablo.

• 27:18Pablo Torre?

  I was paparazziing Mike Wilbon when I was a reporter. Like, that's what it was like to encounter you.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  For that to have been 2006 when George Mason.

• 27:27Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Was making the Cinderella run.

• 27:30Pablo Torre?

  Might have been, might have been that.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  You could feel, you remember the creepiness 18 years, 20 years later?

• 27:36Speaker 02

  He mentioned being in Washington DC and that would have been like the only time I was in DC because I was on the road. I went to where the stories were. I didn't wait for them to come to me. And so there were, we didn't have very many regionals. That was.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  That's a movie poster. I went, like, it's a pathetic journalism movie poster, but I went to where the stories were. I didn't wait for them to come to me.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Remember that, Dan? Remember that, those days?

• 28:01Speaker 03

  You are, can I just ask a question here at the risk of getting a little too intimate with a man who doesn't like that publicly or privately? Does Matthew, does anyone in your life who loves you, uh, say that you don't receive affection? Well, that me and Pablo are here and we are trying to honor you the correct way for someone who is a hero and an idol in our business, gave us permission and paved the way for us. And almost anytime I tell you this, you get uncomfortable and run away.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not that, I'm not from that generation and I, I, I, I appreciate it to a level that you two don't understand, or I'm not letting you understand, but no, no, cause that's not, you know, I tell Matthew, you know, I've hugged Matthew a million times in my life, a million. I was 27 years old when my dad died of cancer at 60. I never hugged him, never. Let me try it again, never. That's not what we did. That's not what that generation did. I don't know any, any of my male friends or relatives hugged their fathers, never. So the, you know, the world has changed, men are allowed to, uh, express things that

• 29:16Speaker 02

  they didn't express.

• 29:17Speaker 03

  Listen to them lamenting, these men, they used to bottle up their feeling and push it down with all that brown liquor, but now they're out here just talking, talking about their feelings.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's how the world has changed. It's gone from watching the games to watching clips. We evolved from something.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  You have not evolved here, you have not.

• 29:40Pablo Torre?

  Look at, look at, look at Mr. Beast out here hugging his dad.

• 29:43Speaker 03

  You're staring into the camera, I accepted, no hugs, I gave no hugs.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  I'm just giving you, I'm just chronicling like the journalist I used to be. I also told you I hugged my son every day.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  Yes, you did.

• 29:56Pablo Torre?

  Well, I want to, I want to ask about that.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  I asked you about receiving affection, not giving it.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  I don't know, I don't receive it. That, that's not how I was, you know, that's not how I, and you know what, you know what, Dan, it's great because obviously our work comes through what we are personally, at least that used to be the case. I'm not sure it is anymore, but. Yeah, that's no, I'm glad to be a product of what I'm a product of. I wouldn't change it. I mean, maybe a little, but overwhelmingly I wouldn't change the way I was brought up. And there are certain touches of that that I still include in the rearing of my 17 year old, who just has to shake his head and go, Jesus Christ, how did I get stuck with the old dad? You, you got stuck.

• 30:56Speaker 00

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• 31:33Speaker 02

  What has old dad life been like for you? Great. It's the greatest thing ever for me. It's the greatest thing of my life. It is the greatest thing of my life. And I tell my son, and I, he, there's no reaction from him because he's at 17. 17 year old boys are the same as 17 year old boys were when we were 17. They don't give you anything. But I tell Matthew, the greatest thing I've ever done in my life is be your dad. That's it.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Pablo, I will tell you, having seen Will Bond make a decision late in life to, to be a dad, and at the time, when he's talking about the story, I went to it, it doesn't come to me. He was busting his ass and he loved that life, traveling, living a big life. It was an unselfish act of clarity and maturity for Will Bond to decide to become a father at the age he decided to become a father because he was plenty happy with what his life was at the time. He'd arrived at his dreams.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  That's true. Dan knows how often we talked about it. Uh, we did. We, we talked about it in person. Um, and I tried to convince him of, of the same thing. Uh, especially when he got to the exact age that I got to when Matthew was born. And so, yes, I had, yeah, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. But daddy, the only thing, I won't call it completely unselfish. I always wanted to be a dad. I didn't know what that meant necessarily, but, you know, but yeah, I, I, it's the greatest thing. I would trade all of it in for that. And it's the only thing I would trade.

• 33:07Pablo Torre?

  What's?

• 33:07Speaker 02

  The only thing.

• 33:08Pablo Torre?

  What's better about being an old dad, Mike? Now that you clearly love being the old dad.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  You know, all the [BLEEP] you didn't know it. I didn't know anything at 32.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Nothing. I knew how to get on a plane and go find a car. I didn't know anything.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  That's so funny. That's all we knew. Mike, that's all we knew. That, I'd say that's all the three of us knew at 32. I'd say that the three of us were toddlers who had done and gotten good at a specific thing and probably weren't very mature in other places. But that one thing we were pretty good at.

• 33:42Pablo Torre?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, yeah, I, yes, I, I, I, I think we were. And so then to depart from that took, I won't say unselfishness. It took a certain determination. And that's, could be selfish to, to prove you could be good at something.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  Pablo, I don't think he's remembering because he's been a dad now for so long. I don't think Mike Wilbon is doing an accurate appraisal of the dusty cobwebs around exactly what he was 18 years ago. Watching games at midnight and one o'clock in the morning. Really liking being on the road, liking the travel, liking, really enjoying NBA cities.

• 34:23Pablo Torre?

  Mike, Mike, it's, it's talking to Cornheiser. Cause look, I have the weird position of like, I, I'm the other woman sometimes where I'm like, you know, filling in for you and I get to hear about you from your spouse, Tony. And he still is saying, Mike loves to go out, loves to travel, loves to, loves to be out in the world. So I can only imagine what you were like before, before you quote unquote, settled down.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  It's interesting, Pablo, that you, you hear that from Tony. Dan moved on from that and I didn't. Dan moved on to a life that had.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Other meaningful touchstones. And so we weren't necessarily at an arena at prime 112 at 3:30 in the morning, after a game or after a ballgame. We, I did not move on from that willingly. I loved it. By the way, by the way, I still love it to, to, to some degree. And I take Matthew with me. Dan, I don't know if you know this, if, if Miles told you this, Boston Miami conference finals. I took Matthew, I said, you want to see what it's like? We get on planes, we go to stadiums, we go to dinner at two in the morning. He's sitting at prime 112 at 15 years old at two in the morning. You know, with whoever, whatever, whatever players from other sports are around.

• 35:44Speaker 02

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

• 35:49Pablo Torre?

  Both of you guys have had the distinct experience of becoming so good and famous at what you did that you began to know someone you covered. A true celebrity athlete in a way that became personal. And if you're going to talk about navigating fame, I'd love to know what it's like for you guys, journalist, columnist guys to figure out, okay, wait a minute. Now this relationship with a very famous athlete or coach or whomever comes to mind here. Uh, that, that is something that you're navigating suddenly.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  Will Bond's list here is going to be so much better than mine. And he is so much better at this than I've ever been because he, uh, almost traffics in the relationship business. Uh, the columns would have a richness because he was in the relationship business. So he's got, I mean, how many friends you got? Michael, you're, I gotta think that most of your friends are either in writing or in basketball.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Look, I mean, I guess it's no secret and I'm not going to be disingenuous. I, I covered people who I covered as a newspaper person and they knew me that way first. And then the television happened and it segued and they got a kick out of it too. I don't know that there's any PTI and Tony can substantiate this if not for Charles Barkley sitting us both down saying, "You're not gonna do what? You told Mark Shapiro maybe." Charles Barkley. I'm being real now. But there were people, obviously the guys in that generation, the guys on that team. I covered David Robinson in high school. So these guys got a kick out of seeing what happened to us, both of us,

• 37:34Speaker 02

  in the case of people in and around Washington DC. You see a signed jersey from Charles Barkley in that corner of my me room in Arizona. If I do it this way, you'll see one of Magic Johnson that's game worn, game worn of Magic Johnson as a Laker in a championship series. This is not, like, I look at this stuff and freak out too. I go, "This is insane." These were people I had good relationships with and then it crossed over. And there's one, if there's a 23 jersey in here and there isn't, there's one that, you know, people would say if there's fame, it trumps all of that.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  One night, I'm sitting in Madison Square Garden. A guy comes up to me, a guy in a trench coat and says, "Mike, I just want to introduce myself. I love your work." Shook hands and he said, "David Halberstam, nice to meet you." And that's as close as I'm gonna come to peeing on myself. Okay? But the others are more famous for most people. And Dan has these, don't let him.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  No, I have a few, but no, I have a few, but mine, no, but see, mine are different, right? I have a few, mine are different though. A, I gravitate toward the weirdos, the people who others might see as weird. So the John Amici's, the Ricky Williams. But also, and I think you can both speak to this, as writers, as storytellers, in some ways. We sometimes have to fall in love with our subjects. And when we write about them, they're giving us a great vulnerability, the care of their story to tell it well. And a real intimate trust can be built by writing about somebody with great care. So I don't know how many of your two relationships can be there. But when you've told somebody's story with a care that they appreciate,

• 39:27Speaker 03

  relationships can blossom from there because these things can be painstaking, feature articles, and you really immerse yourself in someone's life, talk to the people who love them, get to know them, are curious about them. And, and look, that's a fast forward to a friendship.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  What Dan's describing is very organic. And it happened before we became famous, it happened before television or podcasts were in our lives. I know I went to Philadelphia in the early 1980s. And when I said to Julius Irving, when he was the doctor, winning a championship, you know, Mike Wilbon from the Washington Post, he said, sit down here. How's my friend Anthony? It's in Cornheiser. And it's like, that was intoxicating.

• 40:07Pablo Torre?

  Another fake doctor. Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  It was, yeah. Yeah. Didn't need a coat, though. Um, that, you know, that was intoxicating to have Reggie Jackson and Julius Irving, like, connect because of Tony, who I, who I inherited full-blown relationships from because of that before television.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Because of how he wrote about those people.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Because of how he wrote about the people. And Dan and Tony did much more of that than I did.

• 40:37Pablo Torre?

  What I wanted to know about really was what is the most dislike you engendered from someone you had a relationship with because of something that you wrote? So you become closer than a standard journalist subject. But now you do something and they... They let you know about it. Do you remember something?

• 40:58Speaker 03

  I've, I've, I've, the funny thing about what you're saying is that I can now look at relationships, and this will not surprise Michael at all. I'm sure he's got similar stories like this. But these people tend to be tougher than us in general about criticism. So whatever friendships I have with Pat Riley and Jimmy Johnson and Stan Van Gundy, begins with me criticizing them, them being really mad at me, letting me have it, and me taking the letting me have it, and over time repairing whatever needs to be repaired because I'm either fairer or more human or receptive. And, and so I'm not, you know, a caricature media monster. Those three relationships I'm thinking of, all three

• 41:41Speaker 03

  of them started with withering criticism none of those people liked.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, amen to, to, to, to that. And luckily for people having thick skin in public life, and we had to develop it because we came to public life after the people, Pablo, that you're asking us about criticizing. Mine was probably one of, my most notable one was probably more difficult because it goes back to childhood. I grew up watching and being on a playground and then watching my brother play against Isaiah Thomas at 13 and 14 and 15 years old. And then writing about the Bad Boy Pistons against the Chicago

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Bulls and criticism that then fractured and then changed and then, you know, reorganized, reworked a relationship into being grown men that probably resented certain things that were said and happened in the 1980s. Look, but I tell you what.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  You can look at sometimes how these things fester and don't necessarily evolve as much as you want them to. But I look at that one because it was complicated and Isaiah Thomas is somebody I talk to all the time now, all the time. But there were times, I'm sure, and it was like, wait a minute, I knew this guy growing up, he went to rival Catholic school, high school.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  No, but Isaiah's complicated, you're going through, wait a minute, criticizing him when you're the black guy criticizing the black guy and he's in the middle of all the Chicago things that you're in the middle of.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  His hometown, my hometown, you know, rival schools, Catholic high schools, when Isaiah's school went away sadly, a couple of years ago, I knew a lot of people who went to his high school, the first person I called was him. Just say, I know, I know how much this means to you. I am sorry today. And so ultimately you put relationships, I'm not gonna say back together, but Dan knows the complicated nature of those kinds of relationship and particularly, I brought it up, so that one, but yes, there are relationships plural like that.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  I had one that doesn't count at all relative to Dan for Pat Riley. And it just speaks to the greatness of Pat Riley that he probably doesn't even remember it, it doesn't even matter to him. But Pat Riley, you know, when I see him, there's, I'm able to have warm conversations and I'm just thinking, my God, when he refused to put Rolando Blackman in the game, Dan, I didn't let that go for years. That's John Starks, that's John Starks, that's the Knicks heat. John Starks, two for 18. Yes, John Starks choking. It speaks to how, it speaks to how large those guys were and are, and Pat Riley singularly to me, how, how large a person he was and how tough a skin he had.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  That he doesn't, I guarantee you, it's not even, it's not even a footnote

• 44:55Speaker 02

  in his sort of professional life, even with journalists. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't register to him. I can't believe it ever did.

• 45:02Pablo Torre?

  Have you guys lost friends? Or subjects that you thought you had a relationship with because of something that happened at the job? Because of you choosing, I gotta be media person, journalist person, over guy who's gonna say the thing that you want?

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  I have a longer answer in documentary form that I will tell at some point with Ricky Williams about a complicated situation that has a lot of details in it that are rich and interesting, that really push the boundaries. When I say at the beginning of this, that Wilbon has navigated these friendships well, you will find no places publicly where Wilbon is compromised by any kind of journalism integrity thing, because he's too close to somebody. There are no stories like that. People will question how close he is to Michael Jordan, how, how many years he has spent being not very critical of Michael Jordan, even though there aren't very many reasons to be critical of Michael Jordan.

• 46:10Pablo Torre?

  Have you not, have you not brokered the peace between Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley yet? How has that not been your job? How have you not succeeded at that yet?

• 46:17Speaker 02

  That has been my job, and that's all I'll say about it. That has been my job.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  All right, that's the other documentary we're gonna have to work on.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could be.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  That one will, that one, that one will sell because that, that friendship used to be a very special friendship, and it doesn't seem to be anymore.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's very true, and it has, Pablo, it has been my job. It has been my assigned job.

• 46:54Pablo Torre?

  The thing I think about is the toughness of, of skin that you gotta have to live in public. And Dan was referencing it, that like, we talked to former athletes now, retired guys, Mike, and they're like, "You guys are [BLEEP] .

• 47:10Pablo Torre?

  You guys can't take the criticism."

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Well, they say that about current athletes more than anybody else. We've heard that, because they've all got podcasts and they're all able to level that criticism personally without it being filtered.

• 47:21Pablo Torre?

  All roads, all roads.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Well, the way, I've gotta be honest though, Mike, you said, you said the word podcasts with such a disgust a couple of times on this show so far.

• 47:34Pablo Torre?

  I felt like we should bleep it. It's almost like a curse word.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Chokingly.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  It, it felt like me and Paul, I'm not, I'm not even understanding what happened to me, but the way that you said podcast felt racist to me.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Well, like, I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's an accurate criticism. I'm just saying, the way that you said it felt like that to me.

• 47:54Pablo Torre?

  It was a hard P. It was a hard P.

• 47:57Speaker 02

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

• 48:02Speaker 02

  No, I, I like [BLEEP] with you guys. And I am, I am honored, honored to have been on your podcast, on multiple podcasts with both of you. And Dan, I think the two discussions, the most revealing discussions I've had in my life are with you and Mr. Axelrod for your podcasts. Within a month of each other, God, has it been three years ago now?

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's been about that. It was nice to see you, I think. It's not the last time I saw you, because I saw you recently in New York for the, for the finals. But I, what I remember about that time, in keeping with what it is I was saying about him being very bad at receiving affection. Will Bond, this actually happened on South Beach Sessions, probably you'll appreciate this. Will Bond's in the middle of telling a story about seeing his late father for the last time, and, and he tears up. And as he's tearing up, he says to me, "This is something that happens to me after I've flown sometimes. It doesn't have anything to do with the emotions of talking about my father's death."

• 49:14Speaker 03

  I am not crying because it hurts to be in pain about the death of my father. I'm crying because the flights do this to my eyes sometimes.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  They do, they still do. They still do. No, so podcast is not a dirty word to me. I'm the only person in media who doesn't have one. I'm never gonna have one. There was a time in which I wanted to do everything or anything that was hard to prove I could do it. I'm past that point now. I wanna watch Law and Order reruns, anything by Dick Wolf, who should have hired me a long time ago as a consultant. And I wanna watch the Cubs and the Bulls and the Bears and the Blackhawks. And that's what I wanna do and play golf. That's it. That's all I got.

• 50:00Pablo Torre?

  I like it. Sounds pretty good. You want, you want Law and Order sports columnist unit.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  I don't wanna have to die on it and I don't wanna have to cast Stephen A. As a [bleep] villain at the top of the show.

• 50:16Speaker 06

  Sorry to interrupt.

• 50:19Speaker 06

  I'm gonna need to see some ID.

• 50:24Speaker 06

  ID.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  Now.

• 50:28Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 50:35Pablo Torre?

  You don't wanna fire a gun like Stephen A. on General Hospital?

• 50:39Speaker 02

  No. No, no, I don't wanna do any of that, but all of my best friends have podcasts.

• 50:47Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God, now, now it's racist. Now it's racist. Some of my best friends are podcasts.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  My best friends have podcasts.

• 50:57Pablo Torre?

  Now apologize to the people who talk about launch angle, Mike. That's why I really brought you on here. Apologize to people who believe in exit velocity.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  Oh, we can, we, we can curse, right?

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Can we, we can curse on this podcast?

• 51:11Speaker 03

  You can, yes, yes.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  Let me lean into the, let me lean.

• 51:14Pablo Torre?

  I can lean back now.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  No, it's not gonna be very brief. I'm not gonna go far. [bleep] them.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Cause they've ruined, they've, I'll go one sentence further.

• 51:29Pablo Torre?

  We get it, we get it, Mike. They've ruined everything.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait. What would a podcast be without some mention of race? So I'mma go there now. You guys tempted me, you dragged me, and now I'mma go there.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  Oh no.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  And I wrote a column, one of the last columns I wrote was about this.

• 51:44Pablo Torre?

  I remember this column. I remember arguing with people about this column.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  You know what I'm gonna say?

• 51:49Pablo Torre?

  I do.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Black people don't ever talk about sports leading off with points per possession or launch angle. White people talk about sports that way because they're excluded from the [bleep] conversation in every other meaningful way.

• 52:07Pablo Torre?

  Mike.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  They're excluded from sports.

• 52:09Pablo Torre?

  Mike, look.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  So therefore, they've invented, I'm only half joking, maybe not even half, about 20%, they've invented a way to get back, to reclaim sports by getting into V-Lo.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Anybody who starts a baseball discussion with V-Lo should be shot in the [bleep] head.

• 52:33Pablo Torre?

  Mike, do you realize you're so close, you were so close to inventing a joke per take statistic? You're like, 20% of this is a joke. I'm like, Mike, you're so close. You're so close to being an advanced statistic.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  I went to Law & Order, opening scene, bang.

• 52:53Pablo Torre?

  Mike Wilbon, Dan Lebatard, I say this unironically, two of the weirdest and greatest people I've ever met. Thank you for doing this.

• 53:06Speaker 02

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

• 53:21Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Abaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Sound design by NGW Post. Theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.

• 53:59Speaker 00

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