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

How do you know when to hang it up? Or do you keep working, even if you're sick or if your loved ones are dying? Do you need to be laughing at yourself, while the audience laughs at you? And is sports media really a young man's game? Plus: the state of the organic a$$hole, the Gisele of hand-modeling... and the Braveheartian climax of a very threatening lullaby. 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

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, did you climax?

• 0:09Speaker 00

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• 2:17Speaker 01

  Good afternoon.

• 2:19Pablo Torre?

  Look at that. Restrained, classy, punctual, flannelled journalist.

• 2:28Speaker 05

  I used to be one of those. I don't know how it happened that I became the third ranking journalist on this in terms of just journalism-ing.

• 2:38Pablo Torre?

  Just a guy, a guy wearing a clown nose alongside two members of a Mount Rushmore of reporters. Correct.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. You sold your soul, Dan. Sold your soul.

• 2:49Speaker 05

  You know how Dan Patrick refers to our show, Pablo? He says, "You talking and somebody next to you dressed like a parrot."

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It just screams out 60 Minutes.

• 3:03Pablo Torre?

  The voice, the voice emanating from the flannel. I don't get tired of it. My Dan, other Dan. I don't know how I'm gonna do this today.

• 3:13Speaker 05

  Wait a minute. Which one is your Dan? Hold on a minute. What did you just do there? I'm your Dan. He's other Dan. But yes, his voice sounds like polished professional television. It's fucking infuriating. Infuriating.

• 3:27Pablo Torre?

  It's pipes. They call them pipes.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. Mm-hmm.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Mine are rusty and filled with sewage. His sound like a flute and angels singing.

• 3:43Speaker 01

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

• 3:50Speaker 05

  Sounded both, both sounded both like a lullaby and a threat. Both of them.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  Hi. Is Pablo there?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Pablo who?

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Look out, Liz.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Hi. Hi, Valerie.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  No, you better knock that [__] off. You better back up.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Valerie, I'm here too.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Are we recording? I mean, we started?

• 4:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, this is what journalism is like. Welcome.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:41Pablo Torre?

  I wanted to start beyond the just truly mellifluous, guttural noises of Dan Patrick. Beyond even that, I did want to address my two Dan's. What an honor. What an honor to confuse the audience by me calling both of you by your first name without explaining your dynamic, which I think is a little bit obvious now, but for people who don't know, like, how you guys know each other, why you guys like or dislike each other, can you explain? Can one of the Dan's please explain how it is that we're all here today and how you guys have gotten together?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Well, do you want the brief version? I can do that. But if you want the novel, then your Dan can do that. Go ahead, Dan. Pablo gave us over an hour to chop this up, so why don't you wax poetic?

• 5:33Speaker 06

  I would say that Dan is one of the few people who I've become friends with late in adulthood. I have not done that with a whole lot of people. I admire him for a lot of reasons. He's a little bit of a loner and does things his own way, gave us a lot of permission to do the things that we do, gambled on himself, did some things that I really admire, and I've genuinely felt like I've gotten to know him a little more than most people because he's a bit guarded, not with his radio audience that gets the most intimate him, but a bit guarded, and I feel like he's let me see a little more, and I've appreciated the access to that vulnerability.

• 6:13Pablo Torre?

  Dan Patrick is already, already making the face of someone who's like, are we about to do [bleep] therapy with Levitard again? Is that what I wandered into? What is it? What is happening here?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  No, I think it's having somebody that you can talk to. I think Dan was going through a tough time. His brother was sick, then his brother died. I was going through health issues. So I think we found it cathartic in a certain way. And, you know, we cross paths, but I, it's weird to have friends or become friends when you get older, because I'm six months from being 70. I'm not collecting friends. I'm usually losing friends because they die. But we just kind of hit it off and conversations have been rewarding.

• 7:02Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna jump in by just pointing out that I see you guys as having occupied during truly like peak ESPN, that broad arc of the company's history, two different sides of the company. Dan Patrick, I grew up with watching on SportsCenter for those who are too young to remember what that was. Televisions were a device that you could use to watch sports. And there was Dan Patrick and the aforementioned vocal cords. Then Levitard, I mean, I worked with you, obviously, people know that part. The way in which your sweat and your sweat equity funded my entire enterprise here, that's obvious. But you guys were different sides of the thing.

• 7:37Speaker 06

  But Dan and I didn't know each other at ESPN. I don't think we crossed paths at all at ESPN.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  I didn't even know you were there at ESPN until Pablo just told me that you were at ESPN when I was there.

• 7:51Speaker 06

  I may not have been. I don't, our times might not have matched because when I think of Dan giving us permission, I think of him doing stuff on television on his own where his producers are going into a confessional box and doing things during the breaks and doing things that I had not seen television people doing with a radio show. And one of the many places that Dan and I connect is he really respects radio. Just really respects the intimacy, the connection to the audience, the idea that he has to remind his guys even after 20 years. Hey, we're a radio show. Make sure that we're not talking over each other. We're not a video product.

• 8:30Speaker 06

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

• 8:39Pablo Torre?

  Plagiarized Dan Patrick's show, I feel like. That's another way of saying he lit candles for us along the path. I wonder if Dan Patrick feels any of that part of it.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. Because people will say, hey, McAfee's show looks just like yours. I go, good. Like, I couldn't care less. I mean, if he wants to showcase his show that way, he's doing a TV show. I'm still doing a radio show that's on TV, and it's different. And our approach is different. I tell the guys that I work with, the Danettes, that just, you have to explain everything. You can't expect somebody to know what you're talking about, because it's visual, because it's not. It's voyeuristic. I wanted to create voyeuristic radio, where you get to watch what we're doing. And even during the commercial

• 9:31Speaker 01

  breaks, I have 13 cameras in there. And I wanted you to be able to see, you know, like this is one of those reality shows, Big Brother, or whatever, you're all living in a house for three hours. And that interested me. I just couldn't get anybody to buy into the concept. So I kept waiting to get somebody, and I finally got somebody at DirecTV, Chris Long, who said, I get it. We'll just put in all these cameras in there, and we'll just shoot everything. I said, exactly. Like, I've had the most fun, I think when I did SportsCenter with Keith Oberman, that was fun, but, you know, really challenging, because you had to kind of make it greater the next night. When I left ESPN, I said, I'm just

• 10:16Speaker 01

  gonna do this in my own words, in my personality. Because when I was at the mothership, it was an echo chamber. They wouldn't let us have guests on who weren't ESPN-related. I wanted, the audacity of me, I wanted to have Peter Gammons on. And they were like, no, you can't, he's not ESPN. I go, but he's Peter Gammons. And then I wanted to have Rick Reilly on. And they said, no. They, you know, you had to have people in-house. And I just, I fought them on that. And then when I got out, he just said, you know what? We're just gonna do it this way. Let's just go, go to work and have fun. And Been very fortunate to have the guys that work with me.

• 10:56Speaker 06

  It's one of the reasons that I like this platform more than any of the others. It's because the connection that he makes with his audience is real. The connection is born of, they feel like they know him beyond the television veneer of being a polished person on television. When he shares with them a softness that doesn't get seen when he has to be professional anchor guy, and that connection is something that you see in a fractured media today is more and more valuable because the audience comes with him, because they've been with him in a way that makes an allegiance that's even deeper than it would be to Four Letters. It's not Four Letters, it's a human being. It's a human being who left Four Letters and now connects in his audience in a way

• 11:41Speaker 06

  that travels. And it's the specificity of the medium that does that. The space to be, it's not 50 minutes competing with who can be more clever, me or Keith Olbermann. It's three hours a day, flaws and all. Here's us making mistakes. Here's us having the confidence to sink into the mistakes. Here's the veneer of television taken off so that you can see something more clearly, ironically enough, that isn't even meant to be seen.

• 12:06Pablo Torre?

  All of this drives me to this point when I am hearing about Dan Patrick declaring, "Also, I'm gonna retire soon." So where are we on that? Where are we in the countdown clock? Other Dan? Can you catch everyone up on where that is?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  I didn't realize it at the time, but I had signed for four more years and I said, "That'll be my last contract." Well, immediately, people went to the end of the four years and like, "So you're retiring in four years?" And I go, "Yeah." But it wasn't meant as an announcement, other than, you know, "I'm gonna be here for four more years, that'll be the last contract I sign." And all of a sudden, then it became, "I'm retiring." And I said, "In four years." You know, I mean, it's not the rollout that you should have.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And I wish I could have taken it back and not said it that way, but I got two and a half more years before I retire. But from this day to day show. That's, but I made a promise. I didn't want to be laughed at unless I was laughing at myself with you. And I can tell where I'm slowing down a little bit, not as sharp on things. And I just, I can't, I'm a perfectionist. I can't put up with that.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  I want people to notice the difference between polished, professional, sculpted person on television who is slightly scripted and has room to be glib and clever, but what you get televised to you, even though you think like you might know Dan Patrick, is a stick figure. It's one dimensional. It has the range that television can provide, but it's in confined range. What he's talking about there is all sorts of humanity that you only get to see once he moves away from the confines of broadcasting into doing it his own way and doing like you, Pablo, now following his curiosities. What's interesting to me, do I get to be the barometer on how this is successful because

• 14:09Speaker 06

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

• 14:18Pablo Torre?

  But what other Dan just said, what Patrick just said was, when people are laughing at me and I'm not with that, there is something of an inflection point to acknowledge and address. And Levitard, I suppose this is a convenient segue to me pointing out, no one's ever described you as a stick figure.

• 14:43Speaker 06

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

• 14:45Speaker 01

  That's a fat joke. That is, that is, that is wrong.

• 14:49Speaker 06

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

• 14:58Pablo Torre?

  That's right. That's right. But hold on though. The question of, for Levitard, do you need to be laughing at yourself while others laugh at you? Because no one leads the league in more, hey, shoot arrows at my flesh than Dan Levitard. In terms of make fun of me, his crew of people, they are rude, they are actively disruptive, they get off on making fun of him. And I just wonder for Levitard, when did you make peace with the fact that it sounds like your threshold for what you need to also be laughing at is different from Patrick's?

• 15:34Speaker 06

  Well, there are a couple of things here. One, I didn't grow up with television. I've been a fat kid all of my life. And as soon as I got to pardon the interruption, they beat everyone to the joke with, we know he's not wanted here. They want Wilbon and Kornheiser, so they beat everyone to the joke. So whether I wanted it or not, that was the route that we were going. But the other thing that's important, I've never gotten better at this part. I have never, as a professional communicator, gotten better at the fact that when my tone goes bad, my message totally gets lost. So if I'm gonna be obnoxious, if I'm gonna be self-righteous, if I'm gonna be strident, good to have the softener as a tool and a

• 16:14Speaker 06

  formula. Let everyone make fun of you so that you don't come off as always thinking you're the smartest guy in the room, even though you often do think you're the smartest guy in the room. And so you let everyone else undercut you and it becomes a design. It's something I say around here. This is not a problem that Dan has because he's got a very good control over his environment. But I'm not in a position with this group of people that it serves me in any way to just be doing a show with Jeremy Tache or Chris Whittingham or Mike Ryan where we're always the ones talking and it sounds like a sermon or a lecture, as opposed to the guy in the parrot costume who's there to soften

• 16:56Speaker 06

  everything up so that I can be, you know, my natural, organic asshole.

• 17:02Pablo Torre?

  Organic is also not a word I think people often use to describe Levitard's [bleep] hole. I feel like there's a lot of inorganic stuff coming out of there.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  Actually, it's more organic than it's ever been. Actually, Dan and I, Dan and I connected over organic food when he was just eating mushrooms. So, more organic than you might imagine.

• 17:19Pablo Torre?

  Wait, hold on, wait, what was, what was, what was Dan Patrick's mushroom diet like? What was that about?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Oh. I, I had this inflammatory, an autoimmune, and we could not figure out how I got it, how to get rid of it. Felt like you had the flu every day. You weren't nauseous, but you were just beaten down. And I, my wife, God love her, she was like, "Let's try this, and let's try this, and let's try this." And then, all of a sudden, you know, she wanted to find, you know, one of those special health doctors, and he, he said, "How about you have steamed vegetables and purified water every day?" I said, "For how long?" He goes, "The foreseeable future." And so I go, "Okay."

• 18:09Speaker 01

  So I said to my wife, "All right, you wanted me to go to this doctor." He said, "We're having steamed vegetables, purified water, every single meal." Nothing, you couldn't waver, no, no beer, no snacks, nothing, nothing. So I did it for three months, and Levitard saw me, I had lost 20 pounds, but I still had this inflammation, and we went out, he, he brought his show to, I think, Gramercy Theater and was gonna do his show up there, and we went to lunch, and I had, I think I had mushroom soup, and water that had to be room temperature.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And, um, thank God, my wife got me a trip to Normandy for Christmas, because I was doing this for three months, I get ahold of the doctor, and I said, "Hey, I'm going to France." And he said, "For how long?" I said, "10 days." He said, "Well then, enjoy France."

• 19:08Speaker 01

  I never went back to steamed vegetables or purified water. It was full speed ahead and uh but yeah, all I did is lose weight. But Dan saw me, I was, I was kinda sickly. I was going through some treatments at a hospital for special surgery. Once a month I'd go in and I get was, it was a 12 year period. And uh I was gonna give up. I, I'm thankful I had the job to go to. I just, I didn't wanna go to the job because it hurt. I had a guy who had to follow me up the steps in case I fell back. I, I was, we moved all my clothes to the basement. I couldn't climb steps. I mean, it was really bad.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  And uh, but I had the show to go to and that was the most important part of all of it. But I'm doing better. I did stem cell, went to Panama, did stem cell and uh maybe turn in the corner here.

• 20:02Speaker 06

  Pablo, people have no idea how tough this human being is. I will not betray any confidence. No, I won't betray any confidence. Well, he doesn't share this part and he shared more there than I've heard him share. Because he, I've grown to learn that he is very good at stuffing down all of those feelings into the basement of his nether region. And I do believe that part of our connection is at least in part, some small part. Because I will get a crowbar in there and I will ask Dan questions to make him talk about that stuff. But he doesn't want, he doesn't, he doesn't wanna do any of this. He doesn't want.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Well, but only if I can help people. That, that's, my wife said, maybe you can help people. And I, I said, okay, but it's like even now, like I don't, I don't want this to be a testimonial or something, you know? All, all I do is turn on a microphone, you know? I'm lucky. I get an opportunity. I'm very, very, very, very lucky I get to do this. So we all go through [BLEEP]. Like Dan, when he lost his brother and I, I, you know, I, I tough love it. And I'm like, damn it, make your brother proud. Stop, stop mourning.

• 21:09Speaker 06

  Stop crying on air, Dan. Stop crying on air. You, you.

• 21:13Pablo Torre?

  I wanna ask, I wanna ask Patrick if he had the same thought that I had, which is, I was astounded and worried and then ultimately unsurprised despite my initial reactions that Levitard went and hosted his show the same day. That he found out that Dave died. Because what I'm doing here, by the way, I lured both of you in with talk of LeBron. And now we're plumbing depths that I didn't necessarily intend on. But it's all in the context of when do people know when to [bleep] hang it up? When do you know when to stop going to work? And Levitard, his instinct was, I need to go right to work at the very bottom of my personal trajectory. And I'm wondering if Dan Patrick saw that and had a thought that was anything

• 21:58Pablo Torre?

  like what I just described.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I needed to go to work. I, I just couldn't sit home, even though I would have been by myself. I, like I, I had to go and just somehow plow through it. I was just gonna get through it. I, it was three hours. All right, let's go. Stop being a wimp. And I saw Dan, it was defeating him. And I kept thinking, think of your brother. He doesn't want you to be this way. Don't be this way. And, and I kept reinforcing that to him because I, I could see where he was, he internalizes, holds on for dear life. Here's my emotions. They're right there. You can see them.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  And I was telling him to move past that. Just make your brother proud that you moved past it with respect to him because he would hate to have that impact on you. Hey, we can joke and say, oh, I'm sure he'd love that you were crying over. No. I was being sincere with him and, and I said, make him proud by, by showing him how strong you can be because you saw how strong he could be in the hospital.

• 23:10Speaker 06

  Here specifically, you and I are built differently because I do remember those conversations. And I remember there being some balm in the idea that you were mocking me inside of that and there could be laughter there. But where you are seeing, because you come from television and you come from CNN, Don't Make Yourself the Story and ESPN's imprinting of Don't Make Yourself the Story, Don't Be Different, you're seeing weakness where I was seeing strength. I did not see me breaking down in front of my audience as something that was blubbering weakness. To me, it's like, no, this is what you get. And, and you know this, Dan, you know this part? Because when you came in sick, even though you weren't talking for the 12 years

• 23:52Speaker 06

  about how much pain you were in, you did share with your audience more than you ever would have on television. Look, this is what I'm dealing with, and this is why maybe I'm not as good right now as I would like to be because I'm undergoing, I don't want to make excuses, because you're not going to make excuses, but you told your audience on the front end, look, I'm going to show you this much, I'm more comfortable showing my audience more, and I don't think that's a weakness in me. I think it's part of, part of the whole thing.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Well, sharing your emotions on your show was not a weakness. Off the air, it was consuming you. That was the part where, and it's not a weakness, it's just, it's not a strength. The strength to be able to share with your audience how you truly feel, something I never thought that I would do. But I'm, it was empowering. Because now I got a connection with you. Especially if you're listening in your car, I'm just talking to you. And maybe you've gone through this, maybe somebody else has gone through this. Now you have more of a connection with me that I'm not that guy who was sitting on SportsCenter. And, you know, wearing a suit and tie. Like, this is, he's talking to me. And that's, that was

• 25:04Speaker 01

  the goal. But I would never, ever say, you know, what you did on the air. It was just every time I talked to you, it felt like it was holding you back.

• 25:12Speaker 06

  Agreed, because I was broken, and in some ways, I'm not healed, I'm, I'm healing, but not healed still, and don't know that I'll ever be healed because the pain is a perpetual reminder. But the place that you and I are probably most different, Dan, I think I can say this, is you're very much Move on, move on. Like, I don't know that I've heard two words more from you than move on about you, about like, you're like, stuff it down and move on to the next thing.

• 25:44Pablo Torre?

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

• 25:49Speaker 06

  I mean, he's really tough. He's tough. He's really, really tough.

• 25:53Pablo Torre?

  I was not telling you any of the things Dan Patrick was telling you. We don't have the same relationship in that way. But I also was somebody who just isn't that tough either. But the thing that I'm getting to here in this conversation around retirement, the illusion of it, the desire for it, the countdown towards it in public. I'm trying to figure out if whether either of you mother is gonna retire. So far, this conversation has been one in which you express a justification for the emotional vulnerability that Dan Patrick will not permit privately. He will permit it publicly. He's also just kind of walked back his desire to even talk about the fact that he is in fact retiring allegedly. That was like the first thing he said.

• 26:37Pablo Torre?

  And Levittard, him going to work on that very traumatic day, told me, this guy's gonna be hosting this show until the very end. And I don't know whether either of you guys have credibility on the question of, I actually want to stop working.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Well, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop after the Super Bowl in Atlanta. That's it. I'll do other things, but I have a broadcasting school at Full Sail University. And there's some other things that I'm involved in. But I, once again, I want, I want to be great or the best that I can possibly be. And I'll be 72, almost 73 when I retire. I just, I don't want, he's not as, you know, he's not as good, not as sharp, not as. And I'd rather go out early than go out late. And I made a promise to my wife. I mean, I was selfish for, we've been married 38 years. You know, I've been in TV since I've known her.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And it was always about me, always about my career. She raised kids, four kids. I'm the one that, hey, I'm on TV. Hey, I'm going to the NBA final. I mean, all of those things. And I, I told her that I'm going to retire. So I can still, if I'm healthy enough, that we can actually do things. And that's important. That's the most important thing, having a couple of grandkids. And I had to, I have to come to grips with that. I haven't yet. So if you hear me kind of not being really declarative, you're right. I have to convince, I have two and a half years to convince myself.

• 28:21Pablo Torre?

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• 28:53Speaker 07

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• 29:23Speaker 03

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• 29:55Pablo Torre?

  How do you guys feel about the fact that the entirety of our industry started, you know, getting invested in what turned out to be a alcohol advertisement?

• 30:07Speaker 08

  Well, everyone's on pins and needles across the country. You ready to go LeBron? Where's the powder?

• 30:14Speaker 09

  Left it at home.

• 30:16Speaker 08

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

• 30:22Speaker 09

  In this fall, man, this is tough. In this fall, I'm gonna be taking my talents to Hennessy VSOP.

• 30:32Speaker 01

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

• 30:37Pablo Torre?

  Which we're finally getting to. We've gotten to it.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, but I went, there's no story there. That's gonna be something for Amazon, something for T-Mobile, something. It was more cringe-worthy than I thought it was going to be. I had a friend who bought tickets to the last regular season game of the Lakers.

• 30:59Pablo Torre?

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

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, and I kept saying, I said, "Don't do it, don't do it." Well, what, Kobe went out against the Utah Jazz and LeBron could go. I go, I said, "Don't do it." And then the announcement comes out and he goes, "Yeah, it's okay, it's all right. I didn't spend that much, but, you know, I got, I got good tickets for the Lakers and the Jazz." And I go, "Okay, congratulations. Start drinking Hennessy right now."

• 31:30Speaker 06

  It is lame. It's lame. It's Michael Jordan wearing your dad's jeans and how it is that somebody becomes the oldest player in the league after 15, 20 years of real groundbreaking and pioneering. The initial thing that they did... Was quaint, at least in part, because it could be flaws and all, somebody trying to change the game. This is the opposite of that. This is taking those same feelings that you have spun on your finger forever, teasing it, and then monetizing it in a way that's commercially grotesque. If I were the brand, I would be offended to be associated with what it is that they did there.

• 32:12Pablo Torre?

  Commercially grotesque.

• 32:14Speaker 06

  Oh, come on. Like, it's just, like, what are you doing? Just, what are you doing? You have been such a good caretaker for all the things over your 20 years. At the end, the punctuation is gonna be just sellout for dollars here and there?

• 32:28Pablo Torre?

  Hold on, though. I think the takeaway that I have here is that we're not close to the end. Like, I think there was a framing of this because, of course, it was meant to sort of troll us into thinking it, that we're at the end and he's gonna truly come full circle, and that equity, his sweat equity, was gonna be cashed in on something meaningful and momentous on a day that happened to be Amazon Prime Day. It's a total clear side note. Instead, what he's like telling us is, "I'm not going anywhere."

• 33:02Speaker 06

  Which is fine, but he doesn't, he doesn't have to tell us that. I, I hope he continues to play the way he's played. He's great content. I just, everybody criticized the initial decision. It was handled poorly. And then you're gonna double down on it and bring it back as if we go, "Boy, man, I'd certainly love to see a modern day version of the decision, a second decision there. If you're gonna do it, then get Jim Gray."

• 33:31Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, my one critique is, I wanted Jim Gray to be back. I don't think we've talked enough about Jim Gray as basically the avatar for us in that dynamic. Levitard, I mean, you, this is your account, but Jim Gray being the guy to break the chapter of Sports History Open is endlessly funny to me. I don't even know if you guys really know Jim Gray. I don't. I know of him. But it's just hilarious that he was the guy who did it.

• 33:59Speaker 06

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

• 34:13Pablo Torre?

  He does?

• 34:14Speaker 06

  Yes, he does. And, and that was all his idea. That thing that you say, both of you say, I think, was poorly handled, but I didn't think it was poorly handled. I just thought it was groundbreaking and way ahead of its time. Yes, it fooled with and toyed with sports fans' feelings. That's the part about it that I think most people found offensive. But the idea that it was all the brainchild of Jim Gray and that Jim Gray would have a connection point anywhere with LeBron James to make that happen doesn't even make sense.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Jim, I would consider a friend, and we've talked about this. He went to Maverick, he went to LeBron's people and thought, you know, we can do this. And, and you're right about it being groundbreaking. The problem I had is ESPN wanted this to be an hour-long show. That was the problem. And I thought it was poorly constructed because Jim is out there and talking to LeBron about the powder and you're biting your nails and like, that's not who Jim is. Jim's not a, hey, chummy, chummy, small talk. Jim gets right to the point. When he asks questions, when he's doing interviews, it should have been, let's make the decision. Now let's, you know, deal with the fallout. Like, the show should

• 35:31Speaker 01

  have been LeBron makes the decision. Now we get reaction from South Beach. Now we get reaction from Cleveland. Now we get reaction from the commissioner of the NBA, other players. Like, I think they could have framed it in a way that they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. It was just, it was just drawn out. And I felt bad for Jim because it lost its momentum. Like, they kept going, uh, okay, we're gonna go to break. And when we come back, and then, they go to break and come back, and then, well, when we come back? And I go, oh my God. Just, just tell us, please. Now, now I don't care.

• 36:10Pablo Torre?

  It is important to remember how much of a troll job the original decision was. That is in keeping with the second decision that we just watched together. I remember talking to Matt Ricciardo about this and he said, "We would not do that the same way if we had a second chance at it." I did not necessarily foresee the second chance at it being a Hennessy ad, to your point. But it does remind me that when LeBron is being asked by Jim Gray, "Do you still bite your nails?" What I was doing in this video was really focusing on the hands that are in this commercial. Do we have the... Because on the left is what is presented as LeBron James's hands in the ad.

• 36:53Pablo Torre?

  On the right is LeBron's actual hands. And I'm just here to tell you that Pablo Torre finds out has completed an exclusive investigation in which we tell you those aren't LeBron's hands in the Hennessy ad. LeBron definitely didn't do any of the things involving the close-up on his actual hands. And the fingernails are just one clue. The other part of it might be the fact that they don't look anything like each other.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Well, I can speak-

• 37:16Pablo Torre?

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

• 37:22Speaker 01

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

• 37:27Pablo Torre?

  Oh my god.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  These things do happen. And my wife was a hand model while she was in college at NYU. One of the great hand models. She was the Giselle of hand models. Oh, it was very... Put her through college. But she would see these ads where they would have the model and then my wife would have to put her hands up holding the product. Uh, yeah. So I can't speak from experience that I married a model. Just a hand model. That's Who's gorgeous, by the way, but.

• 38:02Pablo Torre?

  I mean, right, exactly. The wrists also must be reckoned with. The wrists are incredible. They get underrated in the discussion of the hands, but.

• 38:11Speaker 06

  This is what you're doing with our money and our journalism, Pablo. You're exposing the Hennessy ad fraud hands of LeBron James. This is what you're doing.

• 38:19Pablo Torre?

  This isn't exactly, you know, Kawhi and the Clippers here. I mean, look at this. What are they? Do they think we're fools? We have on the left LeBron James in quotes, shuffling a deck of cards. And then on the right, you see the actual, you know, six foot eight, six foot nine specimen we've come to know and watch.

• 38:42Speaker 06

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

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  They're perfect. They're perfect. They're smooth. They are worthy of, look, I'm not here to play matchmaker, but I imagine that Sue, those are hands she approves of, just as a matter of like game recognizing game.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Manicure is really the key, she said, you know, gotta have the nails done. Just, just letting you know, some of the tricks of the trade there with a hand model.

• 39:22Pablo Torre?

  Does your wife wear gloves around because she must protect?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  She used to wear gloves. No, the investment for a long time.

• 39:30Pablo Torre?

  The money maker.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And then I started to make some real money at ESPN and I said, hon, you can quit your hand modeling career.

• 39:43Pablo Torre?

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

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Finally getting around to this here.

• 39:52Pablo Torre?

  This is, you know, handcrafted, this segue. Dan.

• 39:55Speaker 06

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

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Get to the point.

• 40:19Pablo Torre?

  Foreplay is a very important tenet of modern journalism. And neither of you old guys apparently respect what it is that we're doing here. Because the climax, I would argue, is in this sentiment.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Oh, for the love of God.

• 40:33Pablo Torre?

  It's in this sentiment. We're living at a time where Tom Brady is the case study. He is the one who's lit these candles, these lamps, for other athletes to follow. And all I'm here to say is, yes, there may be a day when LeBron James does the thing that Dan Patrick is clearly conflicted about, which is the retirement tour, in which he gets the rocking chair made of baseball bats, or the various signed lithographs that Kobe Bryant got, and on and on and on. We may get to the point where he actually stops playing basketball. But what both of you guys are very clear about to me, and what LeBron is very clear about to me, watching this stupid ad,

• 41:13Pablo Torre?

  is that you and he and they aren't going anywhere. Tom Brady is more everywhere than he's ever been. LeBron, you think LeBron James is gonna disappear? LeBron James has channels. Everything you described about what it is that you do, this thing that's everything and yet nothing, LeBron's gonna be doing that in the way that Tom Brady's gonna be doing that. I subscribe to Tom Brady's newsletter. Dan Patrick, you telling me you don't have designs on what that afterlife is gonna look like?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  It's gonna be, I'm not adding, I'm subtracting. And, and you're right, you know, Tom and LeBron have a lot of opportunities. LeBron will probably end up owning a team. Tom, you know, has a minority stake in broadcasting, and LeBron will be active. Um, I hope he is active with the game. And, but I'm, no, I'm, I'm subtracting. I'm not, I don't wanna be out there. You know, when I was at ESPN, and that was in the mid 90s, we were everywhere.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  We were, ESPN had exploded, SportsCenter exploded. You know, I was told by SI they were gonna name us the sportsman of the year. One year. I mean, it was, it got crazy. And, you know, you just felt like, you know, I sold my soul here. In retrospect, you look at it, and, and I just, I hated the feeling. We went from being that underdog, hey, kind of a fraternal channel that you turned on. And then all of a sudden, you know, they had the ESPYS, not that we needed it, but we had the ESPYS. And then, you know, I meet Sandler and he puts me in a, a movie.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  And Darius Rucker and Hootie and the Blowfish put me in a video. Like, it became too mu... I didn't say no. And it was all there for the taking. So, no, I know, in my little world, being overexposed too much, certainly, certainly aware of that. I always had that in my memory bank.

• 43:24Speaker 06

  Pablo, though, the thing about Dan, right? When I tell you that he's unreasonably competitive, when I think of Tom Brady and these conquerors that you're talking about, that aren't gonna be able, at 40, to just put away the competitive. Because however competitive Dan is, and Dan is wildly competitive by the standards of our industry. That industry's a whole nother thing. Like, Peyton Manning is taking on a media company, and he wants to compete against whatever it is that LeBron and Tom are doing, just in media, just off to the side of media.

• 44:00Pablo Torre?

  That's my point. LeBron and Tom Brady are coming for you guys.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  Yes, but I'm...

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Oh, they can have me. I'm not, I'm not gonna be here when they come for me. I won't be, that's, I'm fine with that. And it's a young man's game. Like, there are not many people who...

• 44:17Pablo Torre?

  Is it, though? Is it, though? I don't know. I see, I see America as a place where the older generations, those who are excellent and those who are terrible, neither sides of that sort of a spectrum of quality are giving it up. And I am so glad that some are not. I am very glad that you two particularly are not. There are others where I'm like, Jesus Christ, they don't realize the game is over. And I don't know if it's a young man's game. I think we say that, Patrick, but I don't know if that's true. And I think LeBron and Tom Brady are kind of proof of that in sports as well.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they're only 40. They're in their 40s. I'm gonna be 70. That's a

• 45:04Speaker 01

  There's a lot of separation there of, hey, I'm just getting into this to, hey, I'm just leaving this. They're taking on things. They're excited. I'm, no. It's completely different.

• 45:17Speaker 06

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

• 45:29Pablo Torre?

  Correct. This is my take that you disagree with.

• 45:32Speaker 06

  You had better hope so, given the collapsing media and how much your podcast costs. You should, you'd better hope that I never stopped doing that. But so that, as I've gotten into my 50s, I have seen less and less value, and I've had this conversation with Dan because his daily standard is, I believe, so unreasonable and so unforgiving. I've seen less and less value in being competitive at my age. To me, I really have settled into a space where the mere getting to do it is the success. I don't have to beat everyone. I don't think that's how Dan comes to work still every day. I think we're different that way.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  This will sound really pretentious. You know, Jordan would create rivals, but they weren't really rivals. He'd make up stories. Like, in my mind, I'm still competing with ESPN. And, and they're not competing with me, but in my mind, I'm competing with them. And other shows, whether it's McAfee, or Colin Cowherd, or whatever, it's, you want to be great. And there's no report card you get. It's just the feeling of, did we get the right person on? Did we get information? Are we breaking stories? And that, that's really important. It'd be easy to just sit here and go, uh, who do we have on? Oh, okay.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Albert Breer, the Monday morning quarterback's on. Let's talk about a couple of things and then take a break. And then come back and then, I don't want it to be formulaic. But I, I, I have to come in and be competitive.

• 47:19Speaker 10

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 47:52Speaker 03

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• 48:15Speaker 11

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• 48:54Pablo Torre?

  I want to pay you the compliment here. The reason why I've come to really respect and enjoy Dan Patrick, as well as Dan Lebatard, is that you guys ask questions that many other people are afraid to ask of people who are powerful, influential, very famous, don't appreciate those questions. You guys have done that in ways that have comforted me as I think about, like, what is this whole entire business? A business where the athletes, and again, not to make this all about the athlete podcast, because I think we've reached a point, frankly, of diminishing returns, where so many people have gotten shows and microphones because of what they used to do that now we're, I think, realizing what it is that you guys were trained and learned.

• 49:42Pablo Torre?

  How to do? I think, I think that's not the argument anymore. It's simply that, you know, when Tom Brady thinks he can do the job that broadcasters can do, and LeBron, of course, I believe will have designs on that as well. Competitiveness is funny because you've done this for so long where literally the guys you covered are trying to do the things that you do now because that's what media is. It's why it's so important in this country is that it's the thing, the microphone is still the thing that everybody wants, even the guys you think would have no interest in it because they have won and done everything. They actually want what you guys have built.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Well, the one thing that athletes can't replicate is they're, they're not curious enough. They're not curious about the people they have on. And I'm curious because I could never play at their level. So my questions start out with wonderment. How does this happen? Why does this happen? Where, who, when? And having been taught how to interview many, many years ago, still being curious is what it's all about. But there is a competitiveness. When I interview you, I'm gonna win. Like I got, I win by, and I remember Pete Sampras said to me, you gotta, you gotta work harder if you're gonna get better answers out of me.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  And he was right. I wasn't asking good questions. And Pete was famously a difficult interviewer. And I figured it out. And if I step on your toes or it's a little uncomfortable, it's just part of the game.

• 51:22Pablo Torre?

  I think it's important to establish that in none of this is the presumption that I know more about sports than the athletes. It's the opposite. It's the thing that you can't train and condition and coach into somebody, which is the lack of expertise, the lack of knowledge, forming a worldview that makes the angle that you take to these stories, one that aligns with a public interest, which is where the journalism thing becomes not just a joke, but a real premise.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  That's the great tug of war because they go into these interviews, they don't want to give you stuff.

• 51:59Pablo Torre?

  Correct.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  I mean, they're conditioned to not give you something. How do I get in this interview and get out of this interview without saying something that's gonna make a headline for all the wrong reasons? So all of a sudden, your guard is up a little. That's why I love talking to somebody and trying to have them forget that we're doing the interview. Like, the goal is that it's just a conversation. And when you get that, that's when you get somebody telling you something, and that's the fun part. Or they don't even know they've told you something. And it's not gotcha journalism, as much as it is, "I'm gonna study, and I'm gonna get ready, and I'm going into battle, and I'm gonna lose more than I win, but, you know,

• 52:40Speaker 01

  I'm sort of Braveheart, you know? It doesn't end well all the time, but, you know, you're gonna know I was there."

• 52:46Speaker 05

  Christ almighty. He's Michael Jordan over here, he's Braveheart over there, but he doesn't mean to be pretentious, folks. He goes into every interview.

• 52:59Pablo Torre?

  But you know what? But, but much like in Braveheart, at some point, you are gonna see some guy's ass. And so, yeah, there is, there is just that as well.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  And there he is, right there.

• 53:13Speaker 05

  There it is, there it is.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  There's his ass, his organic ass. Organic ass.

• 53:22Pablo Torre?

  Bound to fall.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, I gotta rest my voice, just, uh, might wanna wrap this up.

• 53:30Speaker 05

  He's gotta go, he's gotta go, Pablo. We're on Dan's time, not yours, Pablo Torre. Wrap it up, he said.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I did do three hours today. Just saying. I don't know how many hours.

• 53:43Speaker 05

  No, no, Dan, you and me, you and me, the dinosaurs, still three hours a day. Pablo strolling in with his parasol. Three times a week, I'll see you guys, and I'll ask Dan and Dan to do one of the episodes for me.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Oh, you gotta be exhausted. Who canceled today, by the way, that you had to rope us in? What deep dive? Is this the Knicks, the Knicks Brunson contract?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Is there something in there with Jalen Brunson?

• 54:11Pablo Torre?

  Well, look, how he arrived at the Knicks, this is where I will have to defer to the reporting I may or may not do on this. Certainly was interesting, right? Like, okay, that's a pretty good deal for the Knicks, has some, whatever. Anyway, I don't want to get ahead of myself in terms of that.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  That's a tease, though. That's a tease.

• 54:26Pablo Torre?

  It's a bit of a tease. Yeah, I'm showing a little ankle with you. I always show a little bit more ankle than I should with you.

• 54:34Pablo Torre?

  But, but, by the way, subscribe, like and subscribe. I got in so much trouble because I told you that, holy [bleep]. The number of people in New York City come up to me on the street now and are like, "Please don't do the Jalen Brunson story that you told Dan Patrick you were gonna do."

• 54:50Speaker 01

  That was awesome. When I said, "Oh, you working on anything else?" And all of a sudden, you gave it to me. I was like, "Yes."

• 54:58Pablo Torre?

  That was that.

• 54:59Speaker 05

  Braveheart beat you, that's it.

• 55:00Pablo Torre?

  I lost. Braveheart got my ass.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  I did get you. I was like, "Man, you're on a roll. Hey, you've done a great job. This is great."

• 55:08Pablo Torre?

  The number of headlines that came out of a tossed-off comment to you, because I thought you're my friend and we're riffing. And instead, suddenly are hearing, people are hearing the saber rattling of the next great investigation, and I'm like, "Jesus Christ."

• 55:22Speaker 05

  The call that he got the next morning from me, Dan Patrick, screaming into the phone, "Why are you giving Dan Patrick the good [bleep]? Do you know how much we're paying everybody for their good [bleep]?"

• 55:33Pablo Torre?

  That's right, because as we start at the top of this show, Dan Patrick, now, we can understand him as Braveheart. And in the meantime, you guys think this is foreplay. I climaxed like 20 minutes ago.

• 55:43Speaker 05

  Oh, for the love of God.

• 55:44Pablo Torre?

  What was going on?

• 55:45Speaker 05

  Pablo, Jesus. I'm a professional. The man's an icon and a pillar of professionalism. He doesn't do crude sex jokes.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  This is awkward. I'm uncomfortable.

• 55:56Speaker 05

  So am I. I'm gonna go take a shower.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Yes, I am. Yeah, I'm the one that has the voice. Oh, there it is. I'm sorry, did you climax?

• 56:22Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 56:28Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 56:49Speaker 10

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithgemini.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 57:46Speaker 11

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