Transcript of Five NBA Playoff Takes, Plus David Letterman’s First-Ever BS Pod Appearance (We Did It!!!) New

The Bill Simmons Podcast, brought to you by FanDuel. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new Rewatchables on Monday. We did There's Something About Mary. And then this Monday, because we're doing comedies all month for Netflix Is a Joke Month, I did Tropic Thunder with Chris Ryan and Van Lathan and Joel Anderson. First time for him on the pod. So that's coming, uh, at some point Monday afternoon. Stay tuned for that one. Uh, for this podcast, I'm gonna freelance a little bit at the top because we had two basketball games tonight. I had a lot of, uh, a lot of scattered thoughts. Um, but I really wanted to get to our guest because David Letterman, after I've had this podcast since 2007, so this is the 20th year I've had the podcast, uh, and he was always bucket list. Someday, maybe really number one for a long, long time. Ever since I had Larry Bird in 2012, and then really after that it was Letterman. My three guys growing up were Bird, Letterman, Eddie Murphy. So I guess now Eddie Murphy moves into the pole position of guy I really need to get on my podcast.

But having Letterman was incredible. He's coming up later. I'm going to do some basketball first. I thought about doing a viewer mail at the top just as an homage to— or listener mail in my case, just as an homage to the mailbags that he used to do. Because I took the concept in 1997, the moment I had my own column, I was trying to figure out things I wanted to do. One of the things I wanted to do right away was have my own mailbag because I knew it worked because of Letterman. He had a huge impact on my life, and it was an absolute pleasure to sit down for him. We talked like, I think it was like 75 minutes. So I want to get to that as fast as possible. We have a lot of basketball stuff to cover at the top. We do it in one second. We're gonna take a break, then Pro Jam. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. It's been a wild playoff run, not over yet. FanDuel wants to bring you closer to the court to make all of that action come to life for you, the basketball fan.

FanDuel, the best place to bet the teams, players, plays, during NBA postseason, build a same-game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout, or try live betting and jump into the action right after tip-off. Whatever you want. That's the whole point of live betting. Download the FanDuel Sportsbook app right now and play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. All right, this top segment is brought to you by New Era. I am recording right after Thunder-Lakers Game 2 in Oklahoma City. And Game 2 was the game for the Lakers. You gotta steal one of the first 2 against a team as good as OKC. They gave it everything they had. They shot 50-40-90 from the field. You do that, you feel like you're gonna be in the game. Nope, they lost by 18. OKC ripped off a 23-5 run in the third quarter. Suddenly it was over. They're just too deep. They're too scary. Look at their box score. Did they have anybody that even played 30 minutes tonight? Uh, let's see. Uh, Chet, 32. Mitchell played 30. Um, Wallace played 30, but you know, they played 10 guys.

They really played more than that, but really they had this 10-minute rotation. Jalen Williams played 14 minutes tonight. He's was their second best guy during the title run last year, and now he's, I think, their third best guy because I think Chet has officially put on The Robin costume to Batman to flopping Batman. SGA. I kid, I joke. This is why I couldn't really get there with the SGA MVP, even though I don't begrudge anybody who voted for him. I just think this OKC team is incredible with the depth, the shooting, the defense, all the different lineups they have, guys that can step up night after night after night. And I'm looking at what the Lakers did. I thought JJ did an awesome job in these two games. They, the whole team was locked in. They were running good plays. Their defensive strategy to, you know, kind of really hound SGA, press 'em, force the ball to other guys. That's what you should have done. They were in these games in the second half where you'd look up and they, you know, it was like a 6-point game, 4-point game, and none of it matters because OKC can just do these runs.

Basically the Lakers, 'cause Luka has been out since I think April 2nd, they're turning 35 Luka minutes into about 10 for LaRavia, who's been a bust, 10 extra for Kinnard, 15 extra for Rui and Reeves. And then on top of that, you're relying on the Marcus Smart. He was 4 for 13 today. I think he is for the, for the 2 games, let's see, I have it down 8 for 27. Or 8 for 28. It's one of those two numbers. But so you're relying on him. I actually really like how LeBron's playing. One of the things that I had flagged for this series was how old was LeBron gonna look now that he's going against like, you know, the Oklahoma City Pit Bulls. He's kind of holding his own. I mean, this is pretty incredible what's happening here at age 41 LeBron. It's certainly something, you know, the Houston was disjointed. It was a weird team. They were poorly coached, didn't have a point guard. LeBron, He stunk in Game 5, but for the most part had a really good series. And it was like, all right, well, let's see what happens against OKC. He's been, he's been really good and none of it matters.

And they're going to get swept unless OKC just has a game where they shoot like 30%, which I don't see it happening. They just have too many answers. So noble effort by the Lakers and they lasted longer than the Celtics, although if they don't have a playoff win now, they still lasted longer than the Celtics. Fuck. Two notes. Was watching AJ Mitchell tonight, who was just incredible. Really, really good. When you think like he's a bench player who can also start when they need him, but he can also do like a pretty good SGA impersonation. He's only a second year guy and he's on a cheap contract. And I wonder, like you assume OKC or San Antonio or Minnesota, one of those three teams will win the title, but OKC is the favorite. They won the title again. Is AJ Mitchell— has he been good enough that you could trade AJ Mitchell with the number 12 pick? Because I assume they're going to land number 12 in the lottery, and maybe other picks that they have, because they have some future ones down the road. Maybe Lou Dort's in the trade. Could they get creative and do like a 130 cents on the dollar type of trade and move up to the 4th pick and try to get Caleb Wilson, try to get another blue chipper because the foundation of this team, you know, during the Durant, Westbrook, Harden era, blue chippers.

During this era, you have SGA and you have Jaylen Williams, you have Chet Holmgren, you have blue chippers, and you gotta replenish the blue chippers. And you also want guys on rookie deals. And I wonder like, is how much of an asset is AJ Miller, AJ Mitchell? Because Legler was on here. I remember, I'm gonna say it was either late November or December and we were talking about how impressed we were with AJ Mitchell. And, and he was getting big minutes 'cause I think SGA was out for a couple games. And we were just like, could this guy run his own team? Could you, could you look at this like a Jalen Brunson situation? When Jalen Brunson was on Dallas and Luka got hurt in that Utah series and Jalen Brunson came in and he kind of ran the team in a way. You were like, huh, what's this? Is AJ Mitchell, if I'm a GM on another team and I'm thinking about, you know, could I make, could I, how could I elevate fast? Like, let's say Atlanta gets the number 4 pick and Caleb Wilson is the guy left, or Cam Boozer. I would personally take Caleb Wilson over Cam Boozer, but let's say Caleb Wilson is left and you're Atlanta and you're like, well, we could take Caleb Wilson here, put him in with the nucleus we have, give it a couple years, we'll see where it goes.

Or we could get AJ Mitchell, we could get the 12th pick, we could get Lou Dort, cuz they have cap space too. Like, Could they do some sort of Godfather move to try to— to try to be better right away and put the team in AJ Mitchell's hands? I think he might be good enough to maybe be like a discount Jamal Murray or a discount Shai on the right team. He's certainly shown it in the leaps that he's made. This is why this lottery on Sunday, which we're gonna be covering right afterwards on Netflix, this lottery has so many variables to it, starting with the Indiana Clippers pick. But then also who lands— nobody's trading one. If you get one, you're taking Dubanza. I think 2, 3, 4, it's debatable. Teams moving back, teams maybe being overwhelmed. And then if you're OKC, like you're, you're stashing all this talent, do you start thinking about it? Now of course I'm making trades for them and they're trying to win the title this year and go back to back, and this is the last thing they're thinking about. But I do think this is what Sam Presti thinks about.

So just watch Mitchell. He's averaging, I think, 17 a game in the playoffs. He's arguably been the best bench guy, even though he has not, you know, he started tonight, but you know what I mean. So what, where does that go? Where does this lead? Maybe it leads to him being the focal point of a trade with the 12th pick and some other stuff. Keep an eye on that one. There's gonna be a lot of stuff that happens this next 5 weeks. The other thing is the review system has to be better. This game was almost 3 hours tonight, and we had a couple no-brainers where it was like in the 4th quarter, there's an obvious clear path, pal. Foul. Seems like you just go over to the monitor, you watch it once, like, oh yeah. And, and then you just do it. There was a, a couple flagrant possibilities and they just stare at it and they're watching replays like they're Christopher Nolan, you know, editing The Odyssey. And it's like, just look at the replay. You should be able to know within 10 seconds. I don't understand why they haven't sped this up.

And you have a sport like baseball that has added the shot clock. Um, and all these little wrinkles to just increase the pace of the game. The NBA just seems completely uninterested in it. So, uh, maybe instead of expansion, maybe try to improve the product before we start adding teams to the product would be my advice. Anyway, I think OKC, uh, I thought they were gonna sweep. I still think they're gonna sweep. And if you're the Lakers, you didn't have Luka. I don't know what else you could have done other than maybe trade a number 1 pick for Dusunmu. I still don't think he changes the outcome of this series. Um, and, and you have a really good coach and you might— LeBron's done enough. I think you have to think about trying to bring him back on a, on a, on a smaller deal and, and trying to pay Reeves and then trying to build around them. Unless Cleveland keeps doing what they're doing, which is what we're gonna talk about next, because this Cleveland thing is going so bad that we are now moving into a scenario of LeBron as the savior over the summer.

I didn't think it would happen during this season because I never thought Mitchell would allow it. But honestly, Mitchell doesn't have a lot of say. He has never really had true playoff success. The stats are fine, but he has never made a run. And you watch this series and Cade's the best guy in the series and Mitchell isn't. Cade's controlling all aspects of it. Mitchell isn't. And I think Mitchell has probably lost the right to tell the team you can't get LeBron. This team's gonna make some moves, but I wanna talk about Detroit first. They've won 5 straight playoff games. It's basically Cade just being awesome and then enough Tobias. I think Tobias has been really strong the last week and a half. He always, they always know they can go to him with like 8 seconds left on the shot clock. He'll get like a decent shot. He can get his turnaround. Their defense has been great. They've bullied the Cavs all over the place. What, what they did tonight was nuts. And I think the only good sign for Cleveland, I don't even know if this is a good sign, Detroit went 14 for 28 from 3, and this game was still close with 2 minutes left.

So if you're Cleveland, you're thinking they shot the lights out, we played like crap. We're gonna be home, we can flip this. The difference is not only can they not get stops when it matters, not only did they have trouble chasing the 3-point shooters around the line, that Duncan Robinson stuff was terrible. Literally, he can do only one thing, and you're letting him move around picks and getting wide open shots. The thing I was worried about with Cleveland and why I thought they had a— I thought last series would be tough just because their defense is so sketchy, especially, you know, I just feel like you can get good shots and 3-point shots on them if you want. Detroit's doing it. Detroit looks now the best they've looked all playoffs. But then you look at, you know, Harden's gonna take all the shit tomorrow 'cause he's, 9 for 28 in the series, 11 turnovers. Today was 3 for 13. He was 0 for 4 in 3s, 4 turnovers, was -15. The defense was worse than the offense. He looks slow, um, for him. He always played like at a methodical, picked his spots kind of, kind of way.

And it just, he actually, Detroit's making him look old. Um, and he's lost the ball multiple times on moves that he used to make in his sleep for the first 16 years of his career. So this trade so far has been a disaster unless you just think of it as a salary dump. And maybe that's what it was, 'cause Garland had that contract for a couple more years. The Clippers took— I don't know if they made a wink wink deal with Harden, but if he thinks he's gonna make $40 million next year or something like that, would be irresponsible for a team that's way over the luxury tax anyway. He just hasn't been good. And the crazy thing is there were no signs at all that James Harden might stink in a playoff series over the course of his career. We had no evidence. Oh, I guess we had a decade and a half of evidence. Mobley is the one that's more interesting to me. I assumed James Harden would be up and down in the playoffs and he'd probably forget to guard people and he'd have some bad games. And I'm sure maybe he'll come back in Game 3 and have 20 points and 10 assists and he'll look fine, then he'll stink it.

He'll do his whole James Harden rollercoaster ride. Mobley is the, the more egregious one to me. He's put up 9 points and 1 rebound today. Not, not in the first quarter, in the whole game. It was a classic, I forgot you were out there game. And this is, you know, he's, he's 24 years old. And Atkinson made excuses for Harden after the game. He's basically like, we can't have our Hall of Famer take 2 shots in the second half. I'll take that one. I, I would argue you probably could, and I don't, I don't think he's playing like a Hall of Famer anymore. James Harden. What he really should have said is, I'd love for Evan Mobley to show up in this series because Detroit's pushing us around and pounding us. I got this email. I was gonna do a mailbag at the top, but I ended up having too many basketball thoughts. Zach Connolly from Australia wrote, I'll keep it simple. Does Evan Mobley suck compared to what he should actually be? Interesting question. So it's not that he sucks, it's just The standard we have in our head, does he suck for that?

He now has multiple playoff appearances and nothing to really show for it. What are you doing with your Evan Mobley stock, which I have a ton of from when he got drafted? All right, so we're 5 years in, he's 24 years old. This is where you should start showing signs that you're rounding into the player you're going to be. I think he's an 18-9 guy. This is what he's been pretty consistently all the way through. He's been 18-9, shot 30% from 3 this year, and he went backward. Like, last year it felt like he was coming on as a 3-point shooter. It went the other way this season. In the playoffs, every playoffs he's dropped to basically being a 17-8. It's fine. He made second team All-NBA last year. He was not in consideration this year. And the fear for me, is he noticeably better than he was 3 years ago, or did we just kind of flatline it from year 2 on? Is he just doing this. 'Cause when you're 20, I think from 24 to 27 is when you should be going up. And by 27, 26, 27, you should be at the peak of your athletic powers and pretty close to the peak of who you're gonna be as a player.

The fear is he might be a, you are what you are guy at this point. And I don't really know, you know, there you could say maybe if they didn't have Jared Allen, he was center, maybe his stats would go up. Maybe he's, almost like a smaller ball five. Sure. Here's the contract numbers, 'cause it kicks in next year. 5 years, $269 million. I'm getting a really good defensive player who I don't think got any All-Defense votes this year, but did last year. And I'm getting 18-9, and I'm getting situations where I don't really feel him. I don't feel his impact in the game the way I should for a max guy. And I wonder, like, will he be the fall guy? What's he worth? Like, let's say Brooklyn got the 3rd pick in the draft and they have a ton of cap space and they don't have their pick a year from now. So they're, it's actually in their interest to be better this year. And Cleveland really has to get away from luxury tax. And what if they offered, Mobley straight up for the third pick. Is he worth it? Would you rather have Cam Boozer on a rookie contract or Caleb Wilson on a rookie contract?

Or would you rather pay Mobley $50 million a year? And if you're the Cavs, would you rather save $40 million, give half of that to LeBron, and that's your new team? You have Caleb Wilson and LeBron instead of Evan Mobley. I just think these are the questions that are gonna be asked about the Cavs, and the Cavs have now moved into pole position for I'm prepared for anything. I'm prepared for Mitchell to ask for a trade. I'm prepared for them to just trade Mitchell. I'm prepared for a Mobley trade. Jared Allen would be easy because he's making less money, but he's still, still making, you know, $30 million a year, which is a lot for a center that's not an All-Star. And then Harden, are they going to keep his contract or not? This team, everything's in play. Giannis is in play. Pick up Jamal Murray for Mitchell, like crazy shit like that. They're just going to be an all-time trade machine if they continue to proceed in this series like they are. And Detroit, I think, is just more physical. I think they have the best player, and I think they're gonna win this series.

And, uh, I, I find it hard to believe that Cleveland will come back and win 4 out of 5. So that will open the door for a lot of stuff, including what do we have with Evan Mobley? Where are we going? Um, Knicks-Sixers, really fun Game 2. Lot of lead changes. I never felt like Philly was gonna win. Now, Embiid wasn't playing, but, um, I just kind of trusted the Knicks to finish it. And I don't really know why. I trusted in the same way where last year with the Celtics, I didn't trust the Celtics to hold onto the lead as it was evaporating. Um, Embiid lasted a week and somehow knocked out the Celtics and then went out again. And, um, I can't tell you how many phone calls, emails, texts, related to the Celtics I've been on is all the Celtics fans have spent the last 5 days just kind of wondering what the fuck happened. Why did Tatum— why wasn't he on a minutes limit? Why did they run Tatum into the ground? Why did Ron Harper start Game 7? Why did they get away from their style that worked for the whole regular season?

Why did they play Vucevic at all? Why didn't they just put Jordan Walsh and Hugo on Maxie for the entire game and just try to slow him down and wear him down because he was the key to the entire series? Why didn't they put Embiid into the pick and roll stuff that the Knicks just immediately did in Game 1? Just the recipe that was sitting there for the entire series for the Celtics. I need it. I need it. I need some, need some honey water. Hold on. I want that on camera. That's how worked up I had. I had to get water for my voice. But really one of the worst series losses I can remember for a Boston team because I, as I've said now in 3 podcasts in a row, I don't think they ever thought they were losing to Philadelphia. I think they used the series as this testing ground, let's fuck around, and then panicked when things started to not work out. So the Sixers, it was great. They advanced to the next round. They're going to lose to the Knicks. And I think the best thing is they flip those Celtics-Sixers situation.

They revive Paul George's trade value, which is huge because I think they can get off that contract now if they want to. They might not want to. The way he went at Brown and Tatum, and even in the Knicks Game 2, I thought he really went toe to toe with those guys. Their one chance of coming back is if Anunoby's not healthy. It seems like he's gonna be a game time for Game 3. We'll see what they do with the refs in Game 3. The thing with the Knicks is that they're deep enough that, you know, they'll just tell Bridges to go in the Anunoby role. They'll play their, they'll play their bench. They have good bench guys, I think. And I would just be surprised if this went more than 5 games. And I think the big mistake, Chris Ryan said it, we did We did rewatchables. We taped the Tropic Thunder rewatchables on Monday, and Chris Ryan said it. We hadn't even seen a Sixers-Knicks game yet, and he was just like, I don't know why we're playing Embiid tonight. We're not gonna win. Why are we putting the miles on him? Rest him.

Like, make Game 2 the game. And somehow Chris Ryan knew more than everyone on the Sixers because they played him and he ended up getting banged up. We'll see if he plays. I'm not really sure it's gonna matter. And if the Knicks end up blowing this, Um, it would really rank way, way up there, uh, because it just feels like they're in complete control. Um, Knicks fans, I know a lot of them, a lot calmer than they were before Game 4 of the Atlanta series. I got an email from Tony Showtime who said, in the last few months, KAT has improved his defense. He's fouling people less and has stepped into a playmaking leadership role. Technically true. I mean, he is averaging like 6 assists right now. He's also just kind of likable. I've been telling my friends he's Rocky 4ing me. KAT is Rocky in Rocky 4, and I am the Russian crowd. I came into the experience not as a fan, but his play and perseverance has won me over. Have you ever been Rocky 4ed by an athlete? Take care, BS. Don't forget to feed house. That's from Tony Showtime. I put some thought into that.

I was trying to think who my greatest Rocky 4 guys were. And number 1 is J.D. Drew, who the Red Sox signed in the mid-2000s and was— I just really disliked him. The patience at the plate. Oh, and I just never thought he was going to get a hit ever. He played passively, didn't have the spirit of the '04 Red Sox. And we paid him, I think, $70 million for 5 years. And I never liked him. And then he hit the $70 million grand slam against the Indians and Ended up swinging in the 2007 playoffs and he totally Rocky Ford me. I have him, I have Derek Lowe, roller coaster ride with Derek Lowe in the Red Sox for, for years there. And then he threw a no-hitter, then he became a playoff hero. I mean, we had so many heroes in 2004 and he was one of the best ones. I think, I can't remember, he pitched on like 2 days rest. Well, all those playoff games blend together though, but he was one of the heroes. So he's one. Chris Hogan. When the Patriots signed him, and it just seemed like we've pushed it one too many white guys too far.

And then he came up big in the one playoffs and made a couple of big catches and gained my trust. He rocky forward me. And then Porzingis was my last one. I really was worried about Porzingis. What was that going to look like? Why couldn't he play with Luka? The trade made sense, but deep down, I was never a Porzingis guy. And then by the time we finished the 2024 Finals. I would've run through a wall for him. So I think those are my 4. Finishing last, Nikola Vucevic. I think he's a Rocky V guy. That's where I landed on him. Last series, Wolves-Spurs. I thought the Wolves were actually gonna have the eye of the tiger the rest of the playoffs. And they played Game 2 with, we got one already, the rest is gravy. Anytime that you could see it right away. And the Spurs played great. They got Fox going early. They tested out Carter Bryant, which I feel like is gonna be really important for this series 'cause the way he guards Randle and Nas Reid gives them a little size with Wemby. Nice win all the way around. They killed them.

The Spurs are one of those teams where when they're up 20, they look unbelievable. Still a little worried about them in the last 4 minutes of tight games. We'll see what happens, you know, when we get to Minnesota. I still feel like this is a 50-50 series. That Game 2 did not scare me off. Nick Wright and I talked a lot about it on on, on, uh, Tuesday's pod. Um, and whatever you look, you, they, if they, it was a recipe for a blowout. I didn't see it. I thought Minnesota was gonna show up, but they got the game they needed to get. Uh, couple of mailbag questions, then we'll get to Letterman. This is from Frank. You did the lottery karma rankings and mentioned the Heat not having a top 10 pick since '08. You mentioned the Bam 83-point game, but the biggest karma coming Miami's way is Miami getting screwed on the Rozier trade, only getting a measly second-round pick back. The league left them in limbo for months and then ruled that Miami couldn't even get its own first back. Could that incentivize the basketball gods to sprinkle enough karma to grant them a top 4 pick this year?

That's from Frank. You know what? When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I should have thought of this. They really got screwed on that Rozier thing. They traded for a guy who is now under a federal felony investigation for point shaving. and, um, for stuff that he did when he was on the Hornets. So, um, yeah, I, I, I have to adjust my rankings. I still have Indiana first, Atlanta second, Washington third, and I think Miami's fourth because I forgot about the Rozier trade. I think that's a lot of lottery karma points. So thanks to Frank for, uh, for pointing that one out. This comes from Morgan Taylor, who is a Toronto Raptors fan, and he says, uh, Messiah Uhari stan. And he says, my biggest fear now as a Raptors fan is that Giannis asked to go to Dallas. And in the opening press conference, Giannis comes out and says he's always wanted to play for Masai. These guys have had a long-time relationship. And, and when it, when we first thought Giannis might be available, Toronto was always a team. Morgan says, I really felt like Toronto had a solid chance of landing him up until they fired the best exec in the NBA to save a few bucks.

Thoughts? I hadn't thought of this. I've been very focused on Giannis, Jaylen Brown trades, um, and whether it made sense to trade for Giannis and how many years he could have left here at an elite level with a lot of miles on him and a lot of injuries last year. And I didn't even realize Boston might not, not even be the main contender. The Dallas thing makes a ton of sense. Um, if I'm Dallas, I have that pick, which we'll see what happens in the lottery, but they're gonna be somewhere between 1 and 8. I think they have like a 35, 36% chance of moving to the top 4, but let's, let's say it's going to be 6, 7, 8 range, which will still be a really good player in this draft. And I think a nice trade thing. I was trying to figure out things they could do and things Milwaukee would want. And one thing that would really help, ironically, the Celtics have this giant $28 million trade exception. So they could take Daniel Gafford in the trade because they need another center. He's making almost $20 million a year. Send Hauser back to Dallas into the trade exception they have.

So, so Dallas would save $10 million there and then be able to add Giannis. And then Milwaukee, they would get the Klay Thompson, Najee Marshall expirings, Max Christie, Dallas's 2026 first, OKC's 2026 first, 'cause they have that end of the round, but still. And then they have the Lakers' '29 first and maybe throw in a, a swap there. And the only reason I don't think they would do this trade, Milwaukee, is because, you know, they don't have control of their picks the next 5 years. So just doing a trade for picks and say— and to save money basically doesn't help the situation of, well, what happens if we have a top 3 worst team next year and we don't have our pick? But it is interesting. So I wonder, like, what would be the tipping point of picks and stuff Dallas would have to throw in there if I'm Dallas? I'm doing everything I can to end up with Kyrie, Cooper Flag, and Giannis, you know, within reason. And if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. But really interested to see what Giannis's trade value is and how desperate teams are to go after him.

And I, you know, we've been talking about it for 9, 10 months, but I think a lot of teams are looking at this the same way. Guy's been in the 2013 draft to now, 13 years, hasn't really been 100% healthy. Through a season for a few years now. And what are you trading for? And how much do you want to trade for the risk of this could be Dwight Howard in the mid-2010s for all we know? Thinking about that with my team. I think the reason the Celtics would think about it is Jalen's got the 3 huge years left. Giannis has 1 huge year left. You'd add an extension to that, so the money would be around the same. And then you would hope you get lucky. If you saw Brad Stevens's press conference, he was not happy with The playoff series, how the team played, being as 3-point happy as they are. He mentioned dunks multiple times and mentioned just being more physical. And it just, it felt like he was laying a lot of breadcrumbs to a Giannis trade. So we'll see. This could end up being a Giannis. I think that teams will keep, will keep adding to the list as, as more and more teams have unhappy endings to their season.

Tom from Toronto. This is the last one I'll do. Oh, I got 2 left. Tom from Toronto want to know, has there ever been more of a peak time for local sports radio content in Boston? Thank God I'm not there right now. Uh, from Vrabel to Jaylen to the Red Sox, just hot topics all around. Has any other time beaten it? So right now for sports radio topics, and you have to understand Boston sports radio, which is notoriously horribly negative and always glass half full at all times, so this is like a gold mine. You have the Celtics choking in round 1. Joe Mazz ran Tatum into the ground. Does Jalen want out? And fake Giannis trade. So that's the smorgasbord right there. The Red Sox just fired their manager. Their GM's a robot. They have the curse of Mookie Betts. They haven't won since 2018. Now they've made 20 dumb moves and everyone wants John Henry to sell. Fodder all the way around. Bruins, 15-year cup drought, wasting Pasta's career. He's 30 years old now. They just got screwed over in the lottery where if the Maple Leafs pick dropped one spot, They got the 6th pick in the draft instead.

The Maple Leafs won the lottery. So you have that and then you have the Patriots embarrassing Super Bowl loss. You can do the, were they ever good all along? 4th place, 4th place schedule to 1st place schedule. Drake Maye, DeeDee Ropadopa. So you have all that, you have the AJ Brown trade, and then you have Vrabel, the head coach of the New England Patriots, being involved in one of the 2 or 3 craziest Boston scandals ever. For sports. So there's that. So I went through all the years in my head, and I settled on a year. The only one I could think of that was as kind of loaded is this one, 1996. So I'm talking winter '96 into 1997, which was one of the worst winters to live in Boston, just in general. I think we had like 4 blizzards that year. But we had the Patriots made the Super Bowl, and then Parcells decided he was on his way out. He wasn't going to coach the team. So breaking up with Kraft, they make the Super Bowl, find out that he was maybe even planning to do the Jets. And so we had that.

Everyone's taking sides. People are blaming Kraft, Parcells. Unbelievable talk radio topic. And the Super Bowl loss. You had the Celtics who were in full tank mode at that point for Tim Duncan. And Tim Duncan's playing college basketball. You had the Bruins who were the worst team in the league that year. They ended up tanking as well. And then you had Clemens leaving the Red Sox and drawing the ire of everybody. We were so mad. I, that was, I think my second or third piece ever for ESPN in 2001 was called, is Roger Clemens the Antichrist? Also, the Yankees just won the World Series. So if you're just talking about like a dark, dark, dark place for Boston fans, I think '96 was worse. You know, we've had a lot of good stuff happening with the Boston teams, but this is a lot of fodder, which leads to my last email from Zach in Parkland, Florida. Is the big winner out of the Vrabel-Russini scandal actually Drake May? Had a terrible playoff run capped with a Super Bowl performance that would have followed him all offseason. However, Vrabel, like a true leader, has completely taken that burden off his young QB.

Even if May starts off slow next year, it's almost a guarantee that Vrabel will still be shouldering the blame. Due to the chaos he has caused. Zach from Parkland. Finally, a silver lining in the, in the Vrabel-Russini scandal. This story— I did a whole thing, I think, 2, 3 weeks ago about how crazy this story was. And every time I think it's over, something else happens, leading to what happened today, which was TMZ video of a 7-month pregnant Diana Rossini going on a clandestine boat trip in Tennessee with Mike Vrabel while she was carrying her future son Michael. Yeah, this is a fucking crazy story. This is the first time I talked to my dad today where we were like, can he still coach the team? Like, this is— is he gonna take a leave of absence? Is more stuff gonna come out? There's video of them on a boat trip in 2001— 2021. I, I just— it feels like every day there's 3 social media clips of her on some podcast, and Vrabel's somehow on the show too, or she's talking about her husband. This is like This story's a nightmare. I feel so bad for everybody, um, involved.

And yet you can't look away. It's like a car accident. Um, and honestly, I used to have this thing, the Tyson Zone, when any story— I think I started in the early 2000s where the Tyson Zone got to the point where you would just believe any story about Mike Tyson. You'd be like, Mike Tyson got in a fight with a zombie bat. Bit the bat's head off, you're like, I believe it. I'm hitting that point with this Rossini-Varable story. I went from, I don't want to talk about this at all, to being like, wow, we might lose our coach. And I guess the only reason we wouldn't is our owner doesn't have a clean slate of things that's happened with him either. Maybe he'll be a little more forgiving. Trying to be nice. Just a bonkers story. I don't have anything else to say. I just hope no more videos come out, please. I'm tapping out. I'm tapping out. I'm like, I need Arnold Scalin to throw. I'm in the camel clutch with the Iron Sheik. I need Arnold Scalin to throw the white towel and then save me. I really need to tap out from this Raybould Rossini story.

Please, no more. Please. Please. Uh, we're gonna take a break. We're gonna come back, uh, with my hero David Letterman. The Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NBA playoffs is going strong. Every possession matters. Every bucket swings the game. Tonight, your shot to boost the bet because all customers get a profit boost tonight. So when the moment hits, your win hits bigger. And FanDuel has given you better payouts on same-game parlays all NBA playoffs long. You could target, let's say you think Philly's gonna come back and beat the Knicks. I would definitely put a maxi points over on that bet with the Philly moneyline if you believe that. San Antonio, Minnesota, if you think Minnesota's gonna right the ship after getting blown out, a lot of good betting stats for that. You could, you could definitely maybe do the Randle points, rebounds, the one I tried in Game 2, it lost. You could give it another whirl and try that with, with Minnesota to win. Lock in your bets, boost your odds, make the playoffs pay off with FanDuel, official sports betting partner of the NBA. Head to fanduel.com/BS to get started.

FanDuel, play your game. 21+ select states or 18+ DC, Kentucky, or Wyoming restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER, call 888-789-7777, or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Countless hours in the gym, 1,000 shots before tip-off, day after day on the same court with the State Farm stanchion right there. That's right, the best players put in the work, and State Farm is the same way with insurance experts who put in the work as well. Whether you get a digital quote or reach out to a local agent, State Farm is there to get to know you and help you select the right coverage that fits your life and your budget. Putting in the work is what separates the good players from the great, and that's why you want State Farm on your team. So get the coverage that's right for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. David Letterman is here. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it either, Bill. Thank you very much.

We talked about this.

Thanks for inviting me. I, I really appreciate this. I feel honored in some respect.

Inviting you? I, you needed to invite yourself because this was up to you. I'm just so glad you're here. Yeah.

Oh, well, now I feel less important if I invited myself in here. But thank you for having me. Thank you for tolerating me, and thank you for whatever we have ahead of us.

So you were here for LA for—

Well, Netflix is— You did a thing with Mulaney. That's right. Oh, yeah. We talked to John Mulaney last night. I don't know. I just love the kid. He's tremendous. He's so nice. He's so bright, he's so funny, he's so multi-talented, and I think he would make it difficult for other comedians in his group because he is the guy to chase, boy.

Do you feel like he's somebody that in any era he would've been exactly as successful?

I think you're right. I think you alluded to that earlier, and I think that does apply to him because he doesn't seem to be locked into the 2020s. He could have been in the 1990s and earlier, for heaven's sakes.

So you have a son in college.

I do have a son in college. Why? This is like working with Kreskin.

Well, I have a daughter in college, but how much— I have the daughter in college and a son who's a senior in high school.

Yeah.

How much have you learned from comedy and content just through your son?

Not much.

He doesn't give you any tips?

Very little. He's— I don't know how to describe him. He's not forthcoming. He's not standoffish. He just would rather not share with his father.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I'm always badgering my kids. What are you watching?

Yeah.

What do you care about?

Yeah.

Who are the people?

Well, I badger my son as well, but the response is always, "Yeah, what do you care?" So I will say he frightens me. From the time he was born, I've been afraid of him. Because in the beginning, I was fearful that I would do something that might damage him. And I kept cautioning his mother. I said, don't drop him, because you hear these stories about infants being dropped. She said, oh, don't worry, I'm not going to drop him. So I'm at work one day and I get a call in the middle of the day, oh, I'm so sorry, I dropped the baby. I said, oh, well, good Christ, there you go. You've dropped the baby. Congratulations.

Baby was obviously okay.

Yeah, the baby is okay, unless that's the reason he has that attitude toward his father. I'm not sure. He ought to be angry with his mother, for God's sake. I'm still angry with his mother.

You had all this stuff. I mean, how old were you when your son was born? You're in your mid-50s, right? Later?

I think I was 57. Is that about what it was? Oh my God. It's just stupid.

I'm trying to imagine what my life would be like now if I had a baby, and I don't know. I'm so set in all these different structural ways.

Sure.

Of just introducing that.

Well, that was my reluctance up until the time I realized we better do this now.

Right.

Uh, and then it became the best thing I ever did in my life. I know every parent feels that way, but I certainly shared that. And then great regret about it not having done it earlier.

Well, when you did your, your retirement show and you, you told that whole story about you were out looking at birds with your son. And there was this bird. You couldn't figure out what the bird was. And you came back, and with the way you set up that story, and I just was watching it when it was happening, like, "Oh, my God. Is he setting up the retirement?" 'Cause there was, like, real thought put in behind— "I'm telling you this story because this is now becoming more important to me than this show, these little moments with my son." That's right.

And I thought that was a pretty good device.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if you took it to court, it would hold up. But at the time, It served a purpose.

Well, how difficult was that show for you? Because that— I thought that was one of the 4 or 5 best shows you ever did, because you knew the weight of it.

Yes, yes, you're very kind. And here we go. But thank you, thank you very much, Bill. Let's talk more about you.

No, I want to, I want to hear about the show though. How hard was it to know you were going to do that?

Um, there were so many other things tangential to that moment in my life, it was not difficult. And I had been doing it for 3 decades, more or less every night. Yeah. So the part of me, the internal mechanism felt like, oh, don't worry, you're gonna continue this without knowing it. It, it, it's like getting out of a car that's still moving. I just assumed, oh yeah, there'll be more of these. So the, the real difficulty of it didn't set in for about, I don't know, a year or 2, 3 years. Well, 2 years because everything had been programmed for me. I was taken care of and I didn't, I wanted for nothing. I, whatever that is, I didn't want for anything. So I didn't, I just assumed to keep going. So it wasn't difficult.

Because there's this moment when you actually said it where it felt like, yeah, there was like 2 seconds. You're like, oh my God, it's the words have left my mouth.

Yes. I was more concerned with telling the story than I was with what those words meant, right?

The result.

Because it was television, and there's a certain artifice about television, as we all understand. So, um, there was nothing personal about it. It was a piece of business, right? Yeah.

Because you grew up— I will not— grew up, but when you were a young adult, idolizing Carson. Oh, I did as well.

Yeah.

And Carson left, and he was gone. I don't even know if he has an IMDb credit after The Tonight Show. He was just We never saw him again.

Yeah, I, I was sorry. He was, there was a fellow who was a, a, a comic of, uh, of some success and he loved Johnny Carson and he was out in Marina del Rey, uh, after the retirement. And Johnny's boat was anchored in a slip there at Marina del Rey. And as he is walking down the dock, he sees Johnny in a chair on the dock reading the newspaper. Well, now he's, he's crazed because my God, there's Johnny. And he starts calling Johnny, because this is after Johnny has retired, and he wants an interaction with Johnny. And Johnny recognizes that he's being called, stands up, folds up the newspaper, and goes below decks.

That was it.

That was it. Yeah. I just love that. There are a million stories of friends of mine who have had interactions with Johnny where it was like, poof, and he's gone. But wait a minute, Johnny was just here. Now he's gone.

He's doing the Irish goodbyes.

Exactly.

He came on your show after he retired, which was—

It was great. Yeah.

That was a significant thing. And I think that was the last thing he ever did.

Might have been. Might have been. Yeah, might have been.

But also not surprising, at least in his case.

Well, the fact that he went away, just cold stone goodbye, good night. I'm not coming back. I found that troubling a little bit, and I can't imagine that happening for myself. Not that I can make that comparison to Johnny, but suddenly you stop doing something, and he really did. But I could never have done that. I had to keep doing stuff.

That's why I brought that up, because part of me thought you were just going to be like that. We'd never see you again. You'd be living wherever.

I kind of wish I was that guy, but I'm just not.

There's a lot of people from, I would say, your generation who are still going at the— at either the same rate or a slightly reduced rate. But like, Lorne is still doing SNL, right? He's over 80 now. Howard Stern just re-upped for 3 years. Um, Larry David, who left Curb, I think— I don't know if Curb's gonna come back, but now he announced this HBO show. And I actually asked Larry, like, I thought you were done. Why are you— And he's like, what am I going to do? I still love doing it. That was his attitude.

No, the real trick when I was a kid, when everybody was a kid, was it 55 was retirement age or 60, 65, something like that. What a joke that is because you get to that or to the threshold of that and you realize, holy crap, I have nothing beyond this. What am I going to do? So if you're productive and happy, just keep going, for God's sakes. And I understand this is no great revelation, but it's what I experienced, and I think it's just what you described there.

Yeah. And some people, a lot of times will say, like, the people who keep going and keep going and keep going, they end up living longer anyway.

Oh, is that right?

The people that basically, all right, I'm done. I'm just going to play golf. Like, that's when you get into trouble.

Yeah, that doesn't work, does it?

Yeah.

No, you have to have interaction. You have to be doing things. And you like to think of, I love having ideas. Yeah. And all my life I've had trouble taking them from being ideas to fruition. And you can have a billion ideas, and when they're ideas, they're the same size. So when they're that size of an idea, everything is manageable. And I have trouble getting it to the stage where, well, how do we do this? How in fact do we change it from something you manage in your head to an actual occurrence.

I can identify with that.

Well, I don't think this is—

no, I'm good at having ideas and sometimes not good at executing them.

I, you look around your, uh, life and it seems to me like you've had very little trouble executing ideas.

I've had some help.

Yeah.

I've had a lot of good people around. Yeah. What you said about people retiring at 55, I feel like the curve is totally screwed up now. You know, because if you think about the way life was 50 years ago, people didn't even really expect to live past 60, right? All the ways things were different. I even think about this with horse racing. Somebody— I saw somebody had this great point about how much people used to care about horse racing because horses were part of our lives.

Yeah. Oh, that's right.

In the 2020s.

Yes.

How many horses were people with horses? Do you even know?

That's right. They were integral to existence.

They really were.

In the world. And then the Sport that transformed them as a recreation for us. Yeah, it never occurred to me that that's a—

Yeah, now it's been replaced by cars and people care more about F1 than horse racing because people identify with cars.

I have this thing I brought you. I saw a documentary with your name on it about yacht rock music.

Yeah, that was one of my— 2 years ago.

And I'll just tell you about yacht rock. This was the music when I went to California, Southern California, it was KNX FM, and that's all they played, the mellow sounds of Southern California. And it pretty much was all what we now know of as yacht rock. And I thought it was trifling and didn't have much interest in it as serious music. And then I saw how it was kind of dissected and discussed on that documentary. And I realized, no, wait a minute, these guys were really up to something pretty good. Yeah, high, high quality stuff. And I'll tell you what's been a problem for me. If you have the Sirius radio and you dial up yacht rock, oh yeah, they have some stooge, some cartoon character pretending he's some snobby, wealthy, superficial asshole enjoying yacht rock. And it's not for the people, it's only for the elite. I hate that guy and is what poisoned yacht rock for me until I saw your documentary.

Oh, thank you.

And then I, once again, I had real respect for it. It was great. I enjoyed that.

One of the things I love— thank you. One of the things I loved about that idea, it, it was an era as it was happening that nobody realized was an era until like 15 years later.

Yeah.

Those are the best ones. Yeah. 'Cause we're actually telling a story of all these people didn't realize they were part of something. They felt marginalized in the bigger picture of rock and they weren't.

I just thought it was California when I got out there. Yeah. That's all I listened to. And it was, delightful. And then later when it was given this label, and I understand how the label was applied, as I learned on your documentary, but then this moron on SiriusXM with that bullshit accent about, "I'm upper crust, I'm East Hampton." Yeah. And this is what appeals to me.

We'll try to get rid of him.

Can you do that? You can do that. You can make people disappear.

My big passion is when they play the when they play yacht rock music that's not yacht rock on the yacht rock channel.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bread is not yacht rock. Just stop. Air Supply is not yacht rock. Get them off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then, and then listen to this. Well, of course you'll listen to it. You're sitting right over there and the producer didn't bother coming in. When I had a morning show on NBC.

Yeah.

And I knew a friend who was a friend of Irving Azoff. And in those days, Irving Azoff, I think before he became a flat-out criminal, crook in the world of music. And by the way, if I've got the facts of this wrong, I'm sorry. They said, "Well, we can get Michael McDonald if you want Michael McDonald to write your theme music." Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God is right. And I said, "You're kidding me." And they said, "Nope." And sure enough, Michael McDonald wrote the theme music to our morning show. And now having seen him as the integral iconic, the king of yacht rock, king of yacht rock. Now I'm eager. We have this piece of music that he wrote for us 1,000 years ago, and, and here's another idea. I, I would like to use that somehow. So if you have any ideas, and by the way, I think he must still, oh no, of course he doesn't own it. Irving Azoff must own it.

Oh, Jesus.

Um, but there, use that on something.

Yeah, we had, we couldn't get Steely Dan to be in the yacht rock thing. Because they hate the Yacht Rock label. They feel like they weren't Yacht Rock people, like really genuinely hated it.

Well, let's call it something else, for the love of God.

Yeah.

I mean, the mellow sounds of Southern California is what I identified it as.

Yeah. So we finally talked him into it, but only if he got to trash Yacht Rock as the interview he did for the Yacht Rock. And then he cleared all the music for it.

Yeah.

Because really, they set up— they set up that Southern California sound that became Yacht Rock. So we had to have them in the documentary.

So anyway, here, when I saw your name on producing things and I knew you the genius behind 30 for 30, uh, and, and this came across my desk, uh, Jimmy Murphy American Icon. Take a look at that and see if you can do anything with that.

Jimmy Murphy American Icon.

Yeah.

All right, I'm going to look at it. Okay, give me the pitch though. Give me the—

well, he's the, uh, only American to have ever won a Grand Prix race in an American-built car. That's not true. He's one of two. The, the other one was Dan Gurney. He won the Belgian Grand Prix in a car that his company built. And this man, Jimmy Murphy, won the French Grand Prix back in the teens, I believe, in a Duesenberg, which was built in the United States. Two, two men have won races in the F1 system.

Wow.

In American-built cars. And, uh, this is in the era of board tracks. When you would have oval courses, oval tracks, and they were all made of wood. The track surface was wooden, highly perilous because of guess what? Splinters. Who would've thought?

Interesting.

Right. But he was a true icon and went over to France and the French disliked him because he won so handily even though his car was falling out from under him. And they were going to disqualify him because Well, sure, he won, but can he drive it home? And they said, well, no, he can't drive it home, but he still won the race. And other drivers in the event protested on his behalf and said, good Lord, the man won the race. Who cares if he could drive it home?

It's typical of the French.

You feel that way? I do. I do as well.

Because the NBA, Victor Wembanyama is going to take over, 7-foot-7 French guy. And I'm a little nervous because we've had a mixed checkered history with the French.

Is it because he's 7'7"?

And French.

No, but his skill set, mostly because he's 7'7"? Or he contains that other quality that makes him a great player?

So being 7'7" helps because he's a huge obstacle anytime you're thinking about trying to score. But he also plays like a guard, and there's never really been anybody who moves like him. And it's weird because he's His whole life has been conditioned to be successful in the NBA from when he was like 12 years old.

Is he the new face of the NBA now?

I, I think we're heading that way if he can stay healthy. Um, but he's, he, he's learned how to fall cuz he knew he'd be falling a lot.

Oh, oh. Learned how to actually fall or not fall.

How to actually fall where he doesn't get hurt when he falls. Mm-hmm. He learned English when he was like 12, 13. Like he's been ready for this for 10 years.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm a little, I'm a little nervous. You mentioned Southern California in the '70s. I can never tell how much you like California.

I loved it then. I came from Indiana and moved out there, and it was troubling to first move to California from Indiana because you'd go days— well, here we are in Southern California, you go days without seeing a cloud in the sky. And I thought that was odd.

You thought that was bad for you?

I didn't know if it was bad for me. I just thought it was odd because in Indiana, every 2 or 3 days you get a rip-roaring thunder and lightning storm and maybe tornadoes and high winds and stuff. Hail, and it was great. But in California, it was always that white-hot silvery sun in the egg, robin's egg blue sky, right? Like nothing was gonna happen. And I can remember one time a surprise thunderstorm blew up in over Mexico somehow, and it rained unexpectedly, and nobody had known it was gonna happen. And oh my God, hospitals quit scheduling surgery. They shut down the freeway, schools were closed. It rained for like 8 minutes.

I know.

And I just thought, I can't be friends with this place.

Yeah, we have floods sometimes, and the floods come from like an inch and a half of rain.

Yeah. And then whenever the freeways get wet, it's holiday on ice. Yeah. You just look out. So it took me a long time to get used to that, and then I began to love it for every reason everybody loves California. Yeah.

You were here initially in the '70s and one of the greatest—

'75. Yeah.

That was like the one of the best times ever to be here.

Well, I always like to mention it was so good because Jerry Brown, the governor, was dating Linda Ronstadt.

Oh, wow.

And I just thought, well, this is heaven. Let's— can this go on forever? Yes. Why? Why not?

One of the first great celebrity couples. And you're in that whole stand-up scene in the '70s.

Oh, yeah. The Comedy Store. It was great. And I think many people identify a creative circumstance period in their life as, oh, it was like Paris before the war. Well, maybe, maybe not, but it was pretty good. It was a bunch of really funny, funny people. And you would go to work at night and in return for your time on stage, you got to hang around these people and they would make you laugh because not only their material, But they were funny people and they would do funny things and they were unusual folks, quite a great stimulating peer group.

Yeah. So you're doing the standup, but you're also like writing for these sitcoms because we had a million sitcoms back then.

Yes, that's right. And that was so good too because you would get hired to write a TV show and the pre-production would be like 6 weeks. And in my case, I got to understand that I was only going to have that gig for 6 weeks and then I'd get fired. And then they'd get another 6-week gig and then I'd get fired. And it was delightful because I never had the headache of actually having to work on some show day after day after day, week, month after month. And it would always be new people and new stuff. And you knew from the beginning that they sucked.

Was there a show where you're like, how the hell am I picked to write this show? Why am I on this one?

Yeah, most of them. I was hired to write on something called the Paul Lynde Comedy Hour. Oh, God. And Paul Lynde was tremendously funny. He was an actor. The Hollywood Squares, he was always the center square on Hollywood Squares.

Yeah.

And really funny and quick-witted, but he was neurotic and I'll just say wacky. And the Paul Lynde Comedy Hour, It was Tony Randall, it was Paul Lynde, and it was, uh, Glor— uh, Doris Kleetschman, Laura Leechman, Cloris Leachman.

Yeah.

And, uh, this one sketch that we were rehearsing, uh, Paul Lynde was the, uh, was marrying Cloris Leachman and the minister conducting the ceremony was Tony Randall. And Tony Randall was the ex-husband of Cloris Leachman. So there's comedic stuff there.

That seems like a lot of things happening for that one. That's probably not a wedding that I'd be happy about.

And the big business was Cloris was so upset with somebody that she threw her bridal bouquet and it hit him right in the face. And it was, oh, Cloris. And he went running out of the rehearsal. It was high drama.

Oh my God.

Yeah. But he was very, very funny.

And then you were on the Mary Tyler Moore variety thing too, I remember.

Yeah, that was a good experience because it confirmed everything I knew about myself, which was I have a very low threshold of embarrassment. Very low. Yeah. And every Wednesday they would bring in the choreographer and that threshold would get lower and lower and lower. And there would be professional dancers and it would be the cast of which I was a member. And we had to— I can't even say it. I would watch everybody in the room dance.

And you would just mimic them?

That move you just made there, I couldn't even muster that. I would have to be hooked up to a car battery to make that movement. And so we did 10 shows and then I just had to get out. They changed the format. The show was not successful. And I just excused myself.

There's some things about, like, when I think about the stuff I watched growing up, variety shows are one of those that I, I just can't explain it. And it really only worked for the '60s and '70s, and then they would try to keep making work in the '80s, '90s, 2000s, never worked. But like, we watched Donny and Marie. That, that was a really important show. Ben Vereen had one. I watched a lot of those, and I don't know if it was just because we didn't have better choices.

They're the backbone of network television, that and half-hour situation comedies, but Boy, you were in for something with those one-hour variety shows. Flip Wilson had a variety show. Dean Martin had a variety show. On and on and on.

Now we just have shows where it's 3 straight hours set in Chicago and it's like fire, police, hospital. You just get to go with the worst parts of jobs in different cities and that's 3 hours of your life.

Yeah, it's interesting. And back in the day that you're referring to, you couldn't even pretend that TV would ever go away.

No.

And now here it seems to be teetering.

Well, I talk to my kids about this a lot because I'm really fascinated. My generation, we all watched a lot of the same TV shows, a lot of the same sitcoms, a lot of the same movies. We watched you, we watched Saturday Night Live, And then as we got older, we had this foundation of things that we kind of got all the jokes that the other ones would make. And I don't know what that is now if you're 20, because you have like a million kajillion social media people. And I guess there's shows that cut through, like Euphoria or Tell Me Lies every once in a while. But for the most part, it seems way more scattered. And I don't know if it's good or bad.

Yes. I don't know if there's an answer to this, but I rarely watch television anymore. More. And I don't know why. It wasn't a decision I made, but okay, today's the last day I'm watching TV. I just don't watch it. You want to know the show that I do watch and I get a little edgy if I miss it or it's preempted or something?

Is it network or streaming?

It's on ESPN and it's Pardon the Interruption.

Oh, wow. Still? I love it.

Yeah.

Those are my guys.

I don't know. I find something pleasant and welcoming and they're both avuncular. Tony Kornheiser looks like my new dog, so I have that connection. I don't know, but that's about— who was the kid that was the sportswriter at the Washington Post? Oh, Thomas Boswell.

Yeah.

Were you— you predated him or you came after him, right?

I came after him.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But that book Life Imitates the World Series. Yeah, that was great. Just great.

Yeah, PTI, it's like, it's just nice knowing it's there.

Yeah.

You can pop in and out. Sometimes I'll just watch the first, you know, first act of it, which is like 10 minutes, but just seeing those guys and them weighing in on the biggest stories. I talk to Kornheiser a lot, and he's just, he's been doing the same thing for 12 years about, I gotta get off.

Yeah.

Nobody wants to see me anymore. I'm too old. But I feel like he's just going to die on the air during that show.

I talked to a friend of mine about what the appeal of that show is, and he just abruptly said, "It's the clock. That's it. It's the clock." That's not it, is it? It's those two guys.

This is how we feel about podcasts too. It's the chemistry over the idea, I think.

Oh, with our question?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the person every day, not the guest, not the gimmick. I do think though, the, the, the show's the perfect amount of time because ESPN has multiple times tried to extend it to an hour.

No.

And Tony has always thrown his body into it. He's like, I'm, I'll never do it if it's an hour. This, yeah, this is why it's good. It's a half hour. We leave people wanting more.

Well, it may be partly the clock because when you see where they are on that countdown column, you get a little grumpy because, oh, they're just about to say goodnight.

Right. The other interesting thing is nobody else has been able to replicate it, come up with their version of it, and people have tried. There's been all these different gimmicks and none of them have worked. It's only been that. But I really think it's those— and I was lucky enough to host that show a bunch of times. It's— people are always going to want the two, right?

Oh, absolutely.

I figured out how to fit in and what my role was, but those, those two were always the big guys.

No, I— whenever there's a, uh, a guest host or somebody filling in for one of the two, it's is discouraging. Perhaps that's too strong a word. Right. I'm able to put myself in the—

No, I think it's the right word.

Yeah. Anyway, that's what I like watching on TV.

Did you ever think— Carson used to have guest hosts all the time. You never really dabbled in it that much, right?

Oh, no. I was deadly scared that if I gave up the seat, I'd lose the show.

Right. You were worried somebody was going to come in and be good.

Oh, yeah. Because the list of people better, more qualified, funnier, and better looking than me Infinite. And so, no, I wasn't going anywhere. Don't give up the damn chair. I'll wait to talk about watching birds with my son, but in the meantime, don't send anybody in here.

Yeah, because Carson would have— at one point, Chevy Chase was rumored to replace him.

Oh, yeah.

You were rumored to replace him. Then it was Joan Rivers, and then she got her on show, and then Leno was the last one.

Yep.

And then that was it.

Johnny was a man among men, for God's sakes. He knew Just don't— you— yeah, anything you want, give it a try. Let's see how that works. He was so good.

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What is a late night show in 2026? As both of us are friends with the one and only Jimmy Kimmel, we have Seth Meyers, we have Colbert leaving.

Yeah.

Does this— can this format exist in 2035?

You're asking me an impossible question. To respond to. I love Jimmy Kimmel. It took me a long time to fall in love with that guy because I thought there was something—

Because he was stalking you?

Well, it just seemed peculiar.

He loves you the most.

It seemed wrong-headed. And then I love Seth Meyers.

Yeah.

I think Jimmy Fallon is an outlier because I'm not sure if he knows what decade we're in, but he just comes out and does a show. He can sing. He can dance, he can tell jokes. He is rock solid.

Right.

But he doesn't quite fit the mold of the other. And then Stephen Colbert, who had the show yanked out from under him.

Yeah.

I don't know how to answer that because it used to be those shows were so cheap, easy to produce, and long running. I mean, Carson was the proof of that, and everybody tried to mount one like that, but it's like PTI without Carson. It was nearly impossible. Yeah, I don't know what a new show would look like anymore.

I felt this way in the 2010s, especially when you were leaving, wondering what era we were going to move into. And what you couldn't really tell at the time was what was going to happen with podcasts and all these different interviews and the ability of people to respond immediately. And, um, and late night shows taping stuff and being on 6 hours later. And then people under 35, are they even watching? Like, when, when you had your NBC show and Jimmy was the same way, I either watched it live or I VHS, you know, recorded it and watched it in the morning.

Yeah.

And I don't, I would, I don't know what it would like.

It seems primitive, doesn't it? All of that.

It was fun. I mean, when you went to LA, that was like, that and WrestleMania, I think were in the same 3 months. And it was, it was a true highlight. I was like, I feel, I feel seen. WrestleMania is now going to be a giant pay-per-view. Letterman's going to be blessed by Carson. This is all happening.

Yeah.

I was in my basement.

But then again, we're dumb if we don't acknowledge that everything changes.

True.

And knowing that, you can't hang on to things. I'm kind of getting a kick out of— I will see a category, name the category, I don't care what it is, of important current celebrities. So I'll think, all right, let me see who these people are. Number one, nope.

Yeah.

And I'll just run the list. I did not heard of two dozen people.

Yeah.

And, and it's people that are making healthy, good, happy livings. I have no idea who they are.

Yeah. It's attention. You can get attention without talent.

Well, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, but it's just true. I've just turned into the old man who has no idea what these people are doing. Yeah.

But I, I would say when you had your show, talent was usually the great differentiator, whether you were a great actor, a great musician, great comedian, whatever. Now, well, now you can skip all of those steps, it seems like.

Yeah. I'm not sure if you, if your position is that in the old days those people were talented, well then it's the guy on the lawn telling the kids to go home.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm trying to think. You didn't— there, there were no influencer type people in the '80s and '90s. No, there were more oddities. It was, it was more like, whoa, what's going on with this person?

Yeah. We used to, you know, subscribe to newspapers from all over the world, all over the country, small towns, and we would find stories about— there was a woman who collected potato chips that looked like famous people.

Yeah.

There's a little local story about her. You'd try to get her. Or there was a guy who collected insects, praying mantis. You'd try to get him. But now they just— that is the lifeblood of the internet.

You were really good, especially in those first few years of the show, of tapping into normal people in a way that— like, you had the mailbag. You did Petrix. It was like, oh, these are normal human beings on this show. This is cool.

Right. But that was by— that was a bit of a constraint put on us by The Tonight Show. Yeah, we couldn't duplicate celebrities. Uh, we couldn't have a lengthy monolog. We couldn't have a big orchestra. And, uh, so we, we— a lot of people just put people on TV. And the thing that was always satisfying to me is just regular people who aren't on TV. You put them on TV, they're just fine, you know. By and large, they're just fine.

Yeah, it's, it's— it was interesting as the show, when it started to take off, you were always so self-deprecating about the show and joking about whether it would be on Next week. And then people would come on and be like, this show is amazing. You're my favorite. And you could always see you'd be like, ah. So I could only imagine what it's like to deal with people like me and Kimmel when we're telling you, like, we watch you every night.

We grew up with you.

You're the biggest reason I'm doing this.

This is what I hear now. It will be a fellow or a woman in a certain age group. And I think, oh, well, because I keep forgetting how old I am. Here's a peer of mine. We have the same influences in life. My great-grandfather used to watch you, and it's like, oh, ladies, okay, here we go. But it's very gratifying. I had these two women tell me the same story a year apart about The Morning Show. Now, nobody watched The Morning Show on NBC.

Yeah, I'm not going to claim I watched it either.

And that's why I was afraid to give up the chair, because that thing just came and went. You know, like a strong wind. And the story that I heard from these two women is, I used to watch your morning show, and that snaps your head around because the response is, right, you're the one, right? Yes. And it was right after little Jimmy, our first son, was born, and I would be up early in the morning and I would be feeding little Jimmy and watch your show. I heard the identical story from another woman, and I For some reason, those elements, it was a very pleasant reminder of it's not really all about me.

Yeah.

It's supposed to be something for others.

Right.

And in these two cases, it had been. And I thought that was very sweet.

So, I mean, that was your big quote-unquote failure, the morning show, but it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Yeah. And the worst year of my life.

Right.

Being out of work. It was just horrifying.

How long were you out of work?

I think it was a full year before I went back at 12:30.

And what were you doing? Just stand up and pitching stuff?

Not even. I was looking, sniffing around at what would be failed projects, but mostly I was drinking and drinking to excess. And it was a dark year.

Are you in LA or New York during this?

I was in LA. Yeah. And I describe it as a dark year. I know of people who actually have had dark years, so forgive me. I'm not pretending that being an out-of-work comic really rates as a dark year. But for me, my own little self-centered world, yeah, things weren't going the way I wanted them to go.

Yeah. Sometimes I feel this way about me with a couple things. Failing turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, but I didn't see it as it was happening.

Right.

You don't realize till after, like, you know what, that was actually pretty good because that led me to this, this, this, and this. And yeah, I always tell people, when people ask me for advice, I always say like, just keep taking chances. And sometimes it's okay if it doesn't work out, just move on to the next thing.

I don't know what to say when people say, can you give me some advice? I don't know. I don't know what to say because it was so easy for me in the beginning. Yeah, I just had a plan. I saw it. It was all there. The blueprint was obvious. And I followed the blueprint perfectly and it worked for me. So I don't know what to tell people. I wouldn't even know what you'd do. I know people that I just think are people and then they say, well, yeah, you can contact me on my socials and then they give you whatever address you need and they've got like 2 billion followers. And I don't, how did that happen? How does that happen? You're one of those guys, right?

Yeah, I don't have that many, but I came in with some of the social media stuff right at the right time when you could build audiences. Now it's like the TikTok. I don't do TikTok at all. I don't really understand it. I mean, I understand it. I don't understand it for me. I'm in my mid-50s. What am I doing on TikTok?

I want you to help me out with something.

Yeah.

And going back to our discussion of ideas.

Yeah.

I went to Finland. And watched hockey games. I went to hockey games in Finland and was—

What kind of hockey games?

Professional hockey in Finland. Yeah. One in Helsinki and then another in Tampere. I think that's the name of the town. It was great, by the way. It was delightful. And then some of the kids on those teams showed up for the Finnish Olympic team. But I watched tie games, saw two tie games, and then the shootout. So here's now what I want you to help me with. Yeah. The NFL, and I know that like Chris Russo hates the fact that there are guys kicking 60-yard field goals now, and he thinks that that should be banned, that should be limited, get rid of it. It's not football. If a football game, pick two teams.

Yeah. Patriots and Jets. Okay.

At the end of regulation, the score is 7-7. What do we do? Okay, we have another full overtime period. Okay.

Yeah.

If at the end of the overtime period the score is still tied, then what do we do?

Well, in the playoffs it just keeps going forever.

No, no, no. We have a kickout.

Oh, that's what you want to, you want to add a kickout?

Yeah. We start the kicker at the 50. He makes it, then the other kicker opposing team has to duplicate that. If they both score, go to the 55. Yard line. And if that works, you go to the 60. And the first one that can't convert a kick from that, then the game is over. What's wrong with that?

It's pretty good.

Now you've heard this before, haven't you? I can't be the first one to think of this.

No, I've heard variations of it. Some, but, but then other people would say, why would a kicker determine a win or a loss? Like some people hate that. Like I have people in my life who feel like we should just get rid of extra points and field goals completely. Just have touchdowns, touchdowns and two-point conversions.

Well, I, I— what's wrong with just a bit of variety in the goddamn game? Yeah, you know, I, I—

during the regular season, that would work.

The kid, the kid for Dallas, the guy who kicks routinely 60 points.

Yeah, Brandon Aubrey.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, that's tremendous to see. What a great physical accomplishment that is.

Nobody seems to understand why kicking has gotten so much better Secretariat is still faster than horses we have now.

Yeah.

Pitchers can throw 4 or 5 more miles an hour than they used to.

Well, Bob Feller comes to mind.

Right. Well, but I'm saying, like, the radar gun was usually 96, 97, 98. Now there's guys throwing like 104. Yeah. Yeah. And then the 3-point shooting being so much better. But yet, like, the marathon— I always talk about this with Malcolm Gladwell. We were always wondering when somebody would go under 2 hours, and it actually just happened. In London. They did 1 hour 59 something. But is there a point where you can't just run faster in a marathon? You just hit a wall, basically.

Perhaps. But going back to kicking, let's just see how far a guy can kick. Can he kick a 100-yard field goal?

So you love field goal kicking. This is one of my big revelations.

Well, and the fact that it ought to be determined by moving the football on the ground. If you can't determine the outcome of the game in 5 quarters by moving the ball on the ground, passing and running. Okay, you're paying the price for that. We're turning it over to the kicker. And it's football, for the love of crap. Why do we resist that? And here's the other thing, and you can do something about this because I know you know—

I'm a powerful man.

Yeah. The quarterback ought to punt.

They used to have this. Randall Cunningham used to punt.

Thank you very much.

Sam Jurgensen, he's another one.

But that used to be part and parcel of the gig. You would—

So punters are out. We've just cost 30 punter jobs.

Now, I don't want to get in trouble by saying punters would be let go. No, keep the punters. We'll have punters and they can do stuff.

They'll do other stuff.

They'll do other stuff.

What do you think of the theory that we should get rid of— either there should get rid of 3-pointers completely in basketball or there should be a cap on how many you can make in a game.

Okay, here we go.

You hit 15 and you're done.

Here we go. The thing that I'm having trouble with is the 3-point line isn't consistently the same distance.

What do you mean?

Down, down toward the end of the court, right?

And then it goes up.

Yeah, yeah. So you get a shorter 3-pointer down in the corners, correct? Yeah. Then you do at the top of the arc, right?

So extend the court.

I don't know, but you're never going to get rid of the 3-point. Can you imagine just going back to watching guys do layups and soft jump shots?

We need the 3-pointer. I wouldn't mind, though. I wouldn't mind being like, you can only make 20 in a game, and that's Once you get to 20, you just, you, it's removed.

Here's what I want to do is you, you 10 foot the basket, the rim is 10 feet.

Yeah.

The first quarter it's 10 feet, second quarter it's 12 feet.

It just keeps, just moves around.

So in the fourth quarter, what is that? 16 feet. Let's just do that.

One of the theories is that every team—

no, I don't think you're taking that seriously because you quickly, quickly changed this.

I think that—

what do you mean, think it'd be bad?

They have to stop the game to raise the basket.

The thing is on a hydraulic deal and it's just okay. The fans hear it come and maybe some lucky ticket holder gets to press the button. It goes up to 12 feet.

One of the ideas that people do like is that every team can determine where the 3-point line is. So you could build a team—

oh, so it's like a baseball field in your hometown.

Yes. You could build a team and like, you know what, we're going big guys, we're going bigger. And you make the 3-point line, it's like basically 30 feet because you're not going to shoot them.

Yeah.

And you dare people to do 'em. Baseball, I have a lot of faith. I've always been a, I've always had this thing where I called myself the sports czar. Give me the job. I would do all these things. Baseball's shot, uh, pitch clock is the single most successful new idea I think anyone's come up with.

But they're slowing it down, slowing the game down now with the, uh, automatic ball and strike counter.

Oh, you don't like that?

Well, I haven't, I haven't actually seen it, but doesn't that then slow the game down?

It's quick. They just do this and it's like 10 seconds. What it's done is they just do this. They do this on their helmets.

I know, they hit the helmet and then that solves everything.

Well, what's happened is they have completely undermined the confidence of the umpires because what we're realizing is the umpires are all terrible.

These guys got a union of their own. They got to be raising hell.

They're like, what the F?

Yeah.

How did we end up with this?

Who was the umpire retired a couple of seasons ago who was known up and down throughout the league as being god awful?

Pick one.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of them. And they just, well, here he is again. And there would be highlights of him blowing calls. But in terms of baseball, there is an advantage if you're a left fielder, a left field hitter, a left-handed hitter. Yeah. You get a jump, you get a step down to first. If you're right-handed, you got to cross the plate and get down to first.

True.

So it should be both of you get across the plate. If you're a left-handed batter, you get to run.

You run the bases the other way?

No, you got to run to third.

Interesting.

If you're a right-hander, you can run to first. —And then here's where the fun gets really fun. They meet on second. What do you do then?

They cross paths.

Well, you'll figure it out. Yeah.

All right. I'll work on that one. What would you change about golf?

What's to change?

Yeah. You like golf, right? Or you like watching?

I enjoy watching golf. I'm so pleased that the LIV Golf Tournament seems to be having financial trouble. Oh yeah. Because in the beginning, yeah, you, you, and, and you can wear shorts and we'll give you a billion dollars. Shorts? Yeah. And now all of a sudden they're looking for other ways to finance it. Uh, I did get, I did get a kick out of the, the Masters, uh, Rory McIlroy or whoever that was. That was tremendous. You root for him? Well, how could you not? Trying to win two in a row. That was pretty cool.

Yeah. I like him because I got this great mailbag email. Thank you for the mailbag idea, by the way. I stole that from the moment I started writing a column, but I got a great mailbag idea. Somebody who was a Celtics fan and a Rory McIlroy fan who lived in Ireland and was basically saying it's the same experience rooting for both. Yeah. Where it's like a lot of talent, but I always feel like they're gonna fall apart at any time. Celtics, you miss threes, Rory, like, we'll self-combust. And it's like, did I, is this just an accident or is this what I'm attracted to as a sports fan? Yeah, but very similar.

Yeah. And then the Masters, and we call them patrons.

Have you been? You would love it. They take your phone. It's like going back to 1920s. You have to interact with people.

I'll tell you what appeals to me. Perhaps the single feature that appeals to me about the Masters is the pimento cheese sandwich. Unbelievable. Because we used to— I don't think they even make that anymore. They have to make it at the course. It's not legal to actually prepare that. Is it pimento cheese?

They have pimento cheese sandwiches. But then the hack is you also buy the barbecue chicken sandwich and you mix them. My buddy Joe House, I think, invented that.

How drunk do you have to be to do that?

At least a couple of drinks in. Yeah. And the sandwiches are like $1.50. Nobody has phones. People just walk around. Right. If we, you and I get split up, I might not see you again for 4 hours. There's just no way for me to know where you are and we're just gone.

And then you compare that to the Waste Management Open in Phoenix.

Well, that, yeah, that's a, I mean, that's a prison break, isn't it?

Yeah.

They just want everybody to be super drunk there.

Yeah. And that, that's okay with the golf's, uh, I think they kind of lean into it.

I'm interested to see what they do with the new commissioner, cuz I think he wants to move more events to the West Coast, have it be prime time on the East Coast, stuff like that. Like to, to try to speed it up. I like when people come into leagues and want to change stuff.

Yeah, I don't, I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, but in, in golf, you know the big tracer mark they have that you'll hit a tee shot and then they show you the tree like that where they show you where it went? Yeah, and, and how high and how fast. If they could generate that so it happens in, in real life, not just on TV, oh boy, you, you'd have to beat people away with stick, they'd be right. They'd be when the gates open.

That would be a really good—

oh man, what a visual. It'd be like fireworks.

Did you get into F1 or you just— you're old school?

No, I used to love Formula 1 back in the era of Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell. Oh yeah. And those guys. And went to a lot of Formula 1 races and just really loved it. And I think in those days, for me to really love it, it was because of Like we're talking, it's the personalities more than the content. Yeah. And, uh, I just, something about Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell, and they were, uh, enemies on, on the track and the, the personalities and the characteristics. And I don't know, I, I did love it. And now it's IndyCar, part of an IndyCar team. And it's, uh, I, I enjoy that. I love that.

Did you ever think about buying a minority stake in a sports franchise? No. Never? No. No. Just buy a little piece, little taste.

I think for a while I was part owner. I had some stock in the Seattle Mariners. Really? Yeah. Yeah. When was that? Jesus. It would've been in the '80s, mid to late '80s. Wow. Jeff Smulyan, for a time being, the guy who owned Emmis Radio, Yeah, Sports Radio and Beyond, uh, I think had purchased the Seattle Mariners, and I was a stockholder or board of directors or something.

You did like, I think, over 6,000 shows on NBC and CBS. Were athletes ever really good guests, or were they— or was it you were the one that had to do all the work? Can you remember guys coming in and actually being good, other than like Charles Barkley?

That's something to reflect on. I think they were pretty good because I always knew exactly what I was going to talk about. Right. Because this was in the ending days when Sports Illustrated was a thing. Yeah. And it helped me live my early life getting the weekly Sports Illustrated magazine. So I had that kind of interest built up from looking at the voluminous detail and data and personalities. So I would use that to talk to sports figures. So they were always pretty good.

Because I remember Michael Jordan, the first time he came on, he was great. You could tell he had it.

No, yeah, you could tell he had it, but he had a disliking for me. Oh, really? Yeah. He was on once and he was on to promote his— The new Air Jordans. Yeah. The Air Jordans. I just saw that movie not so long ago, Air. I liked it. Tremendous movie.

Yeah, I really liked it. They did a good job.

Oh, it's so good. Yeah, very good. Yeah. But we couldn't get him back. He would never come back. Really? Yep. And I finally called him because I kept imagining, and perhaps not imagining, perhaps really, that I had offended the guy, and I certainly didn't want that to have happened. And I called him and I flat out asked him, I said, We really would like you to come back. Is there a problem? And he said, no, not a problem. But he never came back.

Interesting.

Yeah, a real disappointment. Yeah.

Because you had in the '80s that your show was how I found out about a bunch of people like Seinfeld. He came on your show. That's how I knew who he was. And that was why when he got the NBC show, I was like, oh, no, this is going to be good. He used to kill it on Dave's. Yeah, that's right. There was a bunch of those from that era.

I get very little credit for the success of Seinfeld. You should get a percentage. I was right there.

You were right there.

I was like, uh, what's his name, Kramer? I could have been the— could have been a Kramer.

I saw him do stand-up twice in the '80s. I made my parents take me just because of the Letterman appearances. Really? Oh yeah. I, I thought he was one— I thought your best guest during that stretch, like the ones I was— Leno was the best one. I mean, you— that was like every 3, 4 weeks, but he would come in and just kill it. Jay was so good. Yeah. And you were so delighted. You guys were just great together. So he was one. Seinfeld, I just thought Michael Keaton was great.

Oh, I love Michael Keaton.

He would come on and just— and crush. But see, those guys—

now, Jerry was a class or two behind me, but me and Leno and Michael Keaton, we were all there in the same room at the same time. So I always got a big kick out of— we each knew something about one another that we weren't going to share. It was great.

Well, and you had George Miller too, a bunch of times.

Oh, my good friend George Miller. Oh my God. What a fascinating, interesting fellow. Just tremendous.

Yeah. So it went all the way through to when you were still doing the show, and then it seemed like Norm became your new favorite.

Well, that was the connection. George Miller was the connection to Norm. When I found out Norm liked George Miller, then I fell in love with Norm.

Norm is one of those guys, I think social media has weirdly really helped him. Because he was always really funny and he had a good career, but now the snippets of him, there's nobody like him. He's growing in esteem now.

That's right. You can't get enough of those.

He was an all-time one-on-one, and everything he does is still as funny as it was. Yep.

Yep. And a guy who reveled in dead silence after a joke, just like that wasn't his problem.

Right. He loved it. That's your problem. Right.

He loved when the audience was uncomfortable. Yeah.

I feel this way when I read stuff I wrote and I don't remember when I wrote it, that I wrote it. Like, I'll see some— I'm like, I think I wrote about this, and I'll find some column in like 2004, and I'm like, I honestly don't even remember writing this. I'm reading it like I'm the reader, like I didn't write it. Do you feel that way when you look back at 6,000 shows?

I don't remember. I don't remember. Uh, I don't remember how I got here. Um, but, uh, I want to tell you one George Miller story, which I absolutely love. He had a girlfriend and they were together for years. And it was always George and her girlfriend, his girlfriend, her name was MJ. That's right, MJ. Initials for other names. Yeah. But they were close. And then she decided she had had enough of George. And so she said, George, that's it, you're done. So George, because he was George, broke into her house when she was out. She started dating an architect, and this drove George nuts because he wasn't an architect. He was in the sweatshirt and the pants and his tennis shoes, and he was telling jokes. So he breaks into the house, and she realizes that it's been broken into by George. So she calls the police. The police go to George's house, and George is playing dumb. No, No, that wasn't me. What happened over there? Well, nothing was stolen, but the thing was damaged and poked around, and there was a picture she had of Jesus Christ that had an obscenity written across the face of Jesus Christ.

And George says, Jesus Christ, I thought that was Dan Fogelberg. And I just, I mean, how can you? Isn't that del— And here's how delightful that is. At his memorial, his girlfriend told that story. Wow. I mean, that's otherworldly. I thought it was Dan Fogelberg.

So who— Was he in your top 5 people who hit your funny bone the hardest?

He became a good friend. He was in that same class with me and Leno and Michael Keaton and Robin Williams came in a little bit later, but still in that class. Yeah, he counts. And yeah, he was just such a strange character. I'd never met anybody quite like him.

Does Kaufman count in that or is he a little earlier?

Kaufman was so— No, I think he'd gotten a head start and was way ahead of us at the time. But you didn't buddy up with Andy. Right. You stood aside when Andy—

So you'd see he was on the show and you'd be like, okay, buckle up. Yeah.

Well, he was great for the show. Yeah. Because it was just— you did— you knew, but you didn't know the dimensions of what you knew. You know, you had the idea, but it could— you knew it wasn't going to be this big. You know, it was going to be that big, right? And you just sat back there and were entertained by it.

So who hit your funny bone the hardest out of anybody?

Well, Jay made me laugh really, really hard because he would come in and he'd come at you.

It was like he was like the road team and he would try to turn it on you every time.

He was— when we were working at the Comedy Store, He was the funniest in the group. You know, he would go on, you couldn't follow him, he was so funny.

Right. Yeah. You know, I know you hate talking about this, but I used to love Leno. And then when all this stuff happened with you and he got The Tonight Show, I really felt betrayed. It was like I was learning, like, the lessons of, like, business friendships versus actual friendships. Because my attitude was like, I would just never do that. Like, Letterman was my friend. He's the whole reason I have a career. I would never want to, like, go head to head. But then you get older and you learn in life a lot of people are going to do what's best for them when they have the chance.

Sure. I wish I could say he was a dangerous criminal. He's not. Right. And that's what happened, and that's what happened.

Did you ever see the movie? No. I think I asked you this. No, I think— I can't imagine anything you would hate more than the Late Shift movie and somebody playing you.

I couldn't watch my own show. I'm not about to watch a movie about my own show.

That would be a fun, if you ever got into social media, the social media should just be you on camera watching The Late Shift with a steady camera on you as you start convulsing.

I think that maybe I mentioned this to you, but at some point a friend of mine who worked with us on the show named Stuart Smiley. Stuart Smiley, is that who it was? Stu Smiley, yeah, had given me some kind of trampoline thing where you would pitch a ball into and it would return. Bounce back, yeah. And they depicted me at my home on the weekend throwing, I don't know, something toward this thing and it bouncing back. And it was complete fabrication. I don't think I have it right. I don't think I was ever even gifted at this stuff.

Yeah, I know the scene you're talking about. It's actually a really good movie, but always with these things, it's based on a true story. And once you say based on a true story, you can basically do anything. You could just have you hitting 3-woods in your backyard.

Well, that would've been preferable. This was something a dope would be doing. And here I am depicted as a man in his 40s bouncing the— I don't know what it was, but it was humiliating, I tell you.

What has drawn you to this Netflix show and what makes you want to keep doing it? What's your favorite thing about it?

Oh, it's nothing but fun because the schedule is just about right going back to retirement. It's enough work to keep you juiced. And if you don't have that, then you get sad. Right. So we've done enough of those to be And then here lately we've done a string of stuff that's been pretty fun. And you get to travel, you get to see people, and you get to run into people that tell you about when their grandfather used to watch in the hospital when he was dying and they were all there around him and they were watching the Top 10.

His last wish was to watch your Top 10 List before he died.

So yeah, the people at Netflix, and I would love to just go nuts and tell you how awful I think they are. Because I have that gene. Yeah. Just pick a place where I worked and I hate them. But I can't do that with Netflix. We started, I don't know, years ago, 4 years ago. I don't know when we started. They've been nice. They've been friendly. They're pleasant. They invited me to their barbecue on Thursday.

Right.

Yeah. So it's been a great experience. And like I said, the schedule has been enough to satisfy me. Being out of work.

I feel like I learned that from you, the always turning it on your boss, the person who's employed.

When I was at ESPN, it's so easy.

Well, I ended up getting suspended and I had to leave. Yeah, I got suspended for 3 weeks. Well, what were you doing? I, uh, I was very critical of Roger Goodell and knowing that he was their biggest partner. And, you know, in retrospect, probably pushed a little too far.

Oh, that blows. That's, that's not right because They're suppo— they're the punching bag in the gym, and you don't take the punching bag out of the gym. That's why they're there. There's nothing you can do to personally affect the bottom line or the stock price.

Well, and then they realize, like, by the way, there's nothing you can do to affect the bottom. You're gonna leave now and we'll be exactly the same, which is what you learned.

I'm telling you, this is exactly what's wrong with this country. Is it really? I don't know. Maybe.

Well, the thing, when I started writing my column and they had all these media criticism rules, so I had to figure out all these different ways to like make fun of announcers and Chris Berman and, and, you know, do these roundabout things. And it actually kind of was fun creatively. Like, how do I get to the message across without hitting somebody over the head with a hammer? You know, which I think Howard Stern was probably like that a little bit too when he was on the radio versus being on satellite. You're on satellite, you can just say anything.

But isn't it— you mentioned the NFL has a large share of ESPN, is that correct?

No, well, the ESPN, their most important TV partner was the NFL. So they didn't really want people to be that critical in the NFL. And at the time, there was a lot of things to be critical about.

But I understand recently that there was a great— They bought a stake, yeah. So is that okay that the single biggest topic of the sports broadcasting owns that outlet?

it seems a little dubious. Yeah. Yeah. It's— it's— they own a— they own a piece. They run the NFL Network. I mean, they would say, and I would agree with them, that they're still doing investigative journalism. They'll still write about the league. They try to be objective. But you always have that air of like, eh, is this objective? So you just gotta prove that it's objective. Yeah.

And what is the line before you get the phone call, you know?

Right. That was my issue when that— when I had all this stuff with Goodell and— 2014, because it was all about that Ray Rice story that had happened. And ESPN did good reporting on it, and I was expounding on the reporting. I felt like he changed his story and probably went too far. I'm trying to think when you went too far. Probably late '80s, you started pushing it with NBC a little too much.

The only real trouble I got in was making a joke about Sarah Palin. Oh, it's CBS.

Yeah.

And then I remember one time, what's his name from CBS? Les Moonves.

Yeah.

He said, he called me, he was in town for the upfronts or some nonsense. I don't know. Yeah. I'd like to come over and have a chat with you, Dave. And I said, okay. That sounds terrible. Yeah. So he comes over and I always tried to make them uncomfortable somehow. So I would sit where you're sitting. And then they would have to sit behind my desk. So I knew that that was a bit of a head fuck, like, "Wait, why am I sitting behind his desk?" And he looks at me and it was like being back in high school. He said, "What is your problem with me?" So I loved that moment.

Why did he think you had a problem?

Because you were making fun of CBS. I was working him over on the air. And then, of course, because I'm just, I guess, a class—

That was your show for 30 years, though. You would always make fun of whoever lost.

I know. But I folded right up and I said, oh, geez, nothing. It's all fine. We're just having fun here. We're just a bunch of kids. And it was like that. Whereas I could have just gone after him, but I didn't.

Well, if people didn't play along with the joke with you, it would make me, the viewer, not like them. Yeah. Because I remember you did the bullhorn thing with Bryant Gumbel when he was doing the Today Show, and he didn't react great to it. I was like, That guy's a fucking asshole. Why doesn't he get that this is a show?

Yes. Brian Gumbel was 1,000% right to be upset. Yeah, totally. Because they're doing a primetime live Today Show, and I'm leaning out the window with a bullhorn.

And then conversely, on the opposite side, when Vince was on your anniversary, Vince McMahon was on the anniversary show kind of having fun and was like, oh, Vince McMahon. Didn't realize he had a sense of humor. It could definitely sway how you felt about people. Costas was another one. Yeah. Costas was always great.

Well, Costas was, I mean, he was on the payroll in the beginning. Yeah. He would do anything and he was great because he had the right sensibility and sure, I'll play along and it's not going to lean on my integrity as a sports broadcaster. He was great.

Yeah. Kimmel and I have talked about that. You felt like, especially for us growing up idolizing the show, everybody who played along or or could fit in, we just liked them. We were like, okay, they're in the club, let's bring them in. It was like the Soho House.

Well, you're explaining power I didn't realize I had. You had it.

Now, you know you have it. You just pretend you don't.

No, no, I know. Because in those days, I don't know how you feel about this, what you're doing right here. I didn't realize, was not aware, or didn't have time to consider that what we were doing in that studio was anything beyond the 300 people in the audience. If you've been—

Yeah, because you're doing it every day. You're doing it every day.

And it's like running a restaurant. If people are sending the soup back, you realize, oh, we got bad soup. Right. And I think for a while we were the only TV show that served soup.

Well, I remember, I think you were on the COVID of Rolling Stone at some point, and that felt validating because it still mattered to be on the COVID SI and Rolling Stone, if you made the COVID like, something was happening. So that was, that you probably knew at that point.

I, uh, I only knew of the Rolling Stone importance because of the song on the COVID of the Rolling Stone. And I realized then, oh shit, maybe this is something I would like to be on. And so I finally ended up on the COVID of the Rolling Stone and, and that was cool. I loved everything about it, but the photo shoot, you know, it was always something wacky. 'Can we do something wacky?' And that always made my skin crawl.

They taught Kimmel. Kimmel had an ass crack shot. They did it for an hour and then he did a fake plumber thing. And of course, that was the one they used. Yeah. Yeah. They try to let your defenses down until you do something dumb and then that's the one they use. Yeah. Yeah. You can't trust those people. So what's next for you? More Netflix shows? Well, no.

When I leave here, I'm going to have lunch with a friend at a deli. That's what's next.

What about rest of the year next? Uh, any, any like chance we see you courtside for like a Knicks playoffs game or anything? You're never doing that.

Let me tell you something. It's, it's like we're connected psychically here. Saturday I will be in Indianapolis at the, uh, Herald Square Arena, whatever they're calling it now.

Oh, for the Caitlin Clark?

Yeah. Season opener for the, uh, wow.

Fever. Tommy must have helped you.

The Dallas, Dallas Wings. I think I did this on my own. Did I do it on my own? You did it on your own?

I didn't. You didn't need Tommy?

I think Mary did this. Did he do it? Oh, he did it. I'm sorry. Oh, you did it.

You know, Tommy's like the string puller of the favor. I don't know if you know.

I just don't know about Tommy.

Still figuring him out?

Oh, well, I don't know. Remember, did you ever see the Woody Allen movie Zelig? Yeah.

That's Tommy.

I'm being told now that it was a Bryant-Heddick connection. And anyway, I'll be there. Speaking of courtside, not courtside. They tell me they can't put me at courtside, which is fine. Might it change?

I'll be courtside. No, they'll be putting you courtside.

This is breaking news for you, Bill. Wow. You'll be courtside. I'll be courtside. This is great. I'll just say a few things about Caitlin Clark. I got to know her a bit. Yeah. The same way you can tell people that you know me. Yeah. And nothing beyond that, please.

I just say a bit if they ask.

I know Dave a bit. And I just fell in love with her because as a person, that would be like the daughter who comes home for Thanksgiving dinner from college and the house would light up when she pulled in the drive and was home for 2 or 3 days. I had that feeling about the kid. Oh, that's nice. And then, so we did this show with her on Netflix. And about a month afterward, I thought, let me call Caitlin because I feel like I put in my time. Right. I can get a call. And then it was all of a sudden, it became, well, what do you want to talk about? Well, I just want to see if she was happy with the show. Yeah. Okay. Well, let me see what we can do. I don't know. That was 2 years ago.

Never got to call her. It's a lot of protected people. I don't know.

Is it me? Is it just whatever you do, don't let asshole call?

No, I don't think it was. She probably didn't even know you called, would be my guess. Your mistake was not going through Tommy.

Tommy, didn't we go through you?

No. See, Tommy never happens with Tommy.

Well, who the hell did we go through then? How often— let's try and get her on the phone now.

How often do you go back to Indianapolis?

Well, I go back every year for racing activities, uh, and then I go back to visit my family, uh, here and there, which is— the family's getting smaller and smaller, you know, death. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and I like going back. Indianapolis has turned into a tremendous place. It's, it's a great place to live. Uh, you gotta overlook a few things. You have to overlook a few things. Yeah. You have to overlook some things. Couple things. But it's still a great place.

I went back for the Finals for two of the home games for Pacers, OKC.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I spent like 5 days. Yeah. I mean, it's perfect for— Yeah. It's a perfect, like, come in and out for 4 days sports city.

But didn't we know that that was not gonna last? I mean, Tyrese Halliburton, and then all of a sudden the—

Yeah, but here's the thing. So we're taping this before the lottery on Sunday. And they have a really good chance to get a top 4 pick and the draft's awesome. Tyrese is coming back. Yeah. They traded for a center. Yep. So I think they're gonna be really good next year.

Well, that'll be delightful. I go back to the ABA days and it was just, I loved it.

Oh, that's right. You were there for the, uh, the old Pacers.

Yeah. Yeah. It was delightful.

Who else was on that team?

Uh, Freddie Lewis, Billy Keller, uh, Mel Daniels, uh, Roger Brown. Mel Daniels was a Rick Mount played.

They won the title.

I think they won 3 ABA titles. Yeah. Yeah. And it was delightful. It was in the old Indiana Fairgrounds Coliseum and tickets were 75 cents and you'd go and it would be like an old black and white movie about fighting. You could just see the haze settling over the ring.

Right.

And the only way you knew there was— because of the colored ball. They— oh, I see them. They're down there playing basketball.

It's so funny that there's barely any footage of any of the games. It was just this alternate league happening.

Well, there's a tremendous documentary that I just watched.

It was on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pretty good. Pretty good stuff.

Yeah. Hopefully Indianapolis will come back. So you won't go to a Knicks game?

No, I would.

You could be on Celebrity Row with Chalamet, Larry David. You could be right there with those guys.

Good for them. They're people. I'm afraid that I would probably get beaten. I don't know why. I just have that fear wherever I go.

But I mean, when you're in New York, you're like New York royalty though, aren't you? Really? I think so. I mean, you did a show there for 33 years.

And that's what it takes to become royalty. Yeah, I would say. Well, people have been very, very nice to me. And Colbert will go through this. Yeah. Is now, "Oh, we miss you." And you get to the point where I know if you really miss me, I'd still have a show. You understand? You see what I'm saying? Like that.

All right. This is a true pleasure.

Now, don't tell me we're finished because I'm just kind of settling in.

Tom's ready to go.

Tom's doing the custom. Oh, and it's been running. Yeah. This is— Oh, yeah. I'll be at the deli. Yeah.

You got to go to the deli.

They ordered you a Reuben. Yeah, comedy. Favorite, you're a Reuben. Well, this has been a great pleasure, and I feel like I would like to come back and do a better job.

I thought you were great. I had a great time.

But I'll tell you what happened, uh, last night, uh, I feel like I was dragged out of a bar and beaten, uh, because it was, uh, it was, uh, John Mulaney. Yeah. And it was a big, big, big deal. Yeah. And so of course I didn't sleep. And now today you're getting me at 60%. You're getting groggy Letterman. Yeah.

I thought you did great.

Thanks for coming on. Well, what are you going to say, for God's sakes? The producer's not here.

I had a phenomenal time. You had a producer. I wish in retrospect I would've invited the producer.

Well, now you're going to look into this guy.

I'm going to look into this guy for you. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Bill. I enjoyed myself as much as I'm able to communicate.

Thank you for the viewer mail idea. —anything you want. It's all yours. I got 18 years out of mailbags and now more on the podcast. So thank you. Thank you. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to the one and only David Letterman. Thanks to Gao and Eduardo as well. Don't forget to watch Tropic Thunder this weekend because that's the next Rewatchables on Monday. So here's the schedule for this weekend. Sunday night, there's two games: New York-Philly, the lottery, and then San Antonio-Minnesota, which should end around 10 o'clock ET. I'm coming on live on Netflix with a couple guests, and we're going to break down the lottery and all the basketball from the weekend. So enjoy the weekend. I will see you on Sunday night. Must be 21+ and present in select states. For Kansas, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino, or 18+ and present in D.C., Kentucky, or Wyoming. Opt-in required bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut. Or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope Is Here, visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York.

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