Transcript of Hour 1: Perception Is Not Reality

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This is the Dan Levatore Show with the Stugats podcast.

This episode of the Dan Leventard Show with Studio Gots is presented by Smirnoff. We do game days. Please drink responsibly. The Smirnoff Company, New York, New York.

Mike, Roy, we've been doing this show a long time with the Cody family, and I don't know if you guys have noticed all of the ways that Chris is becoming his father. There are many. I previously thought that Billy Gill was the champion dynasty for all times of being on our show and making the joke that the least number of people would get. Chris Cody lobbying to end the last segment to his father, the name of their brother's fantasy league team, Michael's Chickens. Him doing that and making his dad howl and no one else in the room except me understand because I happen to know, but give me the names of all of the teams. Give me all of the names of all of the teams. You guys confounded with a joke just for each other, everyone else who has known you for 20 years.

I thought he would keep going with it. That was me trying to keep the ship going there. I'll just throw him something and he'll run with that.

That is you not knowing your father's self-involvement very well. That is you not producing your narcissist father's show very well.

Well, the segment ended with you saying Mike's Chicken.

Okay? No, it was you laughing at that.

That's how it ended, with a joke. We're ending a joke that is actively alienating everyone in our audience. The closing joke is just you and your son laughing about something, and I couldn't even stay in character because Billy would have appreciated.

Yet he got it, too.

People know about the PFPI team. What are the names of the teams? Christie's, Ferrari's, everybody knows.

Name the teams. What are the teams?

Okay, Dick's Rough Riders. The Champs this year, right? Yes. Thank you. Uncle Dick, huh?

Mom's Maniacs, Christie's Ferraris.

Are you looking at a list? Do you not know this off top of your head?

I'm thinking Christie's Ferraris, Mike's Chickens, Chris's Critters, Tatie's Llamas, Grace'sGregg's Lomas. Of course.

She just likes llamas. Of course. Most people go with the same letter.

And of course, the legendary Greg's Lobos. Lobos. Thank you.

We're just going to let Dick's Rough Riders go.

I mean, what do you mean?

What does that mean?

Okay, I guess we are.

It's annoying how well he does every year. He just picks favorites. It's obnoxious.

Then why doesn't he win every year?

I want to get to other things, but I also want to recreate, if you would, Greg. I've not told you I want to this. Would you do me the favor? I don't know if I'm going to be able to execute this correctly, but would you please do me the favor of getting up, coming and sitting down in the chair, and as you sit down in the chair, do the same thing you just did privately that you said as you sat down with the sound that you sat down with. Can you do all of that again? Just sit down in the chair. I know. This is dangerous. What did I say? What you always say, you make a sound just like you go Brad, when you burp?

Yeah, it sounds like Brad. Some say. I'm not actually saying Brad.

No, but you said, When you sit down, you sat down. If he doesn't know what it is, you say ass wipe as a groaning sound as you sit down, and you don't even know that you do it. You don't even remember. Do for me what it is that you just did. It just showed me what sits in that seat next to me every day.

It's got to be organic. I'm not really saying ass wipe.

Although some have told me that it sounds like that. You are saying ass wipe. You're He's clearly sitting down with an old man's groan that also is accompanied by the word ass wipe.

They call them flushable, not organic, by the way.

Is this like a dog? A dog doesn't say bark, but it sounds like a barker. No, he says ass wipe. It sounds like a wolf. Maybe he's just making a noise. It sounds like-Anamanipia?

Exactly. He's been doing it for years. No, he's saying ass wipe. Are you sure? Yes, I'm pretty sure it's an onomatopia. He says he's not.

I'm saying maybe it's ass wipe, but Bass swipe.

Yeah, bass swipe.

There's no explaining it. It's just a pecado.

Body's a weird thing.

Yeah, it is. But Billy makes a great point. When a dog barks, it's not saying the word bark. It's not saying ruff-raff like R-U-F-F.

And if the dog's in Spain, it doesn't say ladra. Yes. Well put.

Dogs speak dog. I speak me. That's all it is.

I'm sorry that I started there with any of it. I apologize.

And you know it.

And you know it.

I apologize to the audience that my co-host is running on gas.

Could be speaking up dog.

I want to play the game that ESPN has stolen from Billy. Damn, I almost had them.

For me?

Perk Up, Perk Down with Kendrick Perkins. Wow. They stole that from Billy Gill. But I wanted to ask you, based on the events of the weekend, based on Kevin Durant saying three years ago, NBA fans don't like anything about the NBA, and it's weird. And now he's saying fans complain about anything. The only thing they care about is playoff, trades, deadlines, free agency, and player beef. To me, it is very interesting to see what that league has now birthed at the end of the players getting some of this power out from under the discipline of Overlord Coach will tell you what to do, and you will play all the games, and you will do eight-hour practices, and you will be tougher, and you will just do as the coach says, to see that sports ratings overrun in 15 years by people objecting to the players don't care enough for the coverage of the All-Star Game to be only complaints about the All-Star Game. That it's not... That as a content vehicle, the All-Star Game that used to exist as a place where Magic Johnson would come back from the the stigma and the fear of the lack of knowledge around HIV virus.

To turn that what Magic Johnson and Isaiah Thomas and Michael Jordan once did for the respect of that sport to what it was this weekend, where it's Zoe summer groove, or it's Rock 'n' Jock, or you might as well play the games on trampolines. You're not doing anything. And I'm not here. Now you're talking. I'm not here. I'm really not. I know this is just the easiest thing in the world to complain about this game. But I also think it's one of the lamest things in sports coverage that we dine on the content of complaining about an exhibition because there's nothing else going on. And the sports machine's got to feed on something this week. A bunch of people are taking vacations, but there are a bunch of two-hour shows, in this case, three and a half hours. You got to find the things to talk about. And it's a lot easier to complain about Kevin Durant than it is to talk about he scored 30,000 points the other day, and the numbers don't mean anything in that sport. And Kevin Durant is one of the great scores of all time. And we're going to cover more what he says about this than we covered the 30,000 points because it's easier.

I will say, look, sports is plagued by an assortment of topics that it's easier to talk about. Sports content is. That's It's why we gravitate toward the blame and the criticism. It's why I'm guessing outside of Canada, you will hear more complaints today as people return from work all over your television still complaining about basketball more than celebrating hockey, which is strange, you would say. No, but it's what's happened the last 15 years. When you make the basketball players stars, when what you're selling instead of team is stardom, when there are basketball players that are more famous than football players by a lot. Jimmy Butler, you know a lot more about than Justin Jefferson, even though Justin Jefferson is better at what he does than Jimmy Butler is. It's because we feed on, Give me drama, give me beef, give me transaction, give me soap opera. And for 15 years, this is the end result. Lebron shows up for the last game in casual gear because I'll show you my good stuff at the end. I'll punctuate this Hollywood style. I'm not doing this, Silver, the way you want me to. You work for me now.

I don't work for you anymore. I'm I'm in charge of the Lakers. I'm your star economy for 20 years. I'll dress how I want, when I want, where I want. You should be happy. I'm showing up at your game at all. And he's earned that. No one's ever earned it more, and everyone's going to buck on it because they want to care about the romanticism of these guys care as much about you do as you do at the end of this game, he wants to win. But it wasn't that long ago that he cared about winning at the end of the game. The All-Star Game does have those moments when Kobe wants to match up. When you mourn Kobe Bryant, you're also mourning the death of somebody who at the end of his career was caring in a way that was unreasonable compared to all of his peers, and people loved him for it. Even though he could be a bleep hole, they filed it under competitive winner needed to be doing that. Why? Because you never questioned how much he cared. You could question a thousand other things, but you never had any questions about whether he cared about basketball more than you did.

Well, if they go with the one-on-one stuff, it's only going to take one or two people to care deeply about it to raise the compete level for the entire event. Hockey doesn't have that problem because hockey players are different, but they did with their All-Star game, but they found a way around it. The players collectively wanted to represent their country, and they're showing with their effort how badly they want this concept to work. I'm not really sure what the NBA players want except time off.

Time The most competitive part of NBA All-Star Weekend was between a baseball player and a football player, Jerry Rice and Barry Bonds at center court. Did you see this? It was intense.

We okay. We all right. We okay. Okay. All right. Well, Barry, let's start with you. We know you're a heavy hitter, but when you look at your group, do you feel like you have home run plays on this team? I'm a hometown boy. We just rented him.

The smack- We borrowed Jerry.

He's not from the I'm from the food. We're going to win. You got a response to that? What are you talking about?

How many rings do you have? Wow. How many rings do you have?

I have two divorce rings. Oh, no, he didn't.

Okay, That took a turn at the end.

Glad we could laugh.

I got a new wife now.

I think that one of the things that gets lost in sports coverage today, Cody, because it is proud because it is argumentative. This part's real simple. People tune into sports to feel something, and joy is among those things. I can't tell you how disrespectful it feels to the customer that in basketball, more than in other sports, because of tropes, because of stereotypes, because of things that have actually happened, because load management is important, because honest to God, it is insane what we're putting basketball players and baseball players through physically. Many years ago, we probably should have been doing it kinder to the human body. But the way we did it then makes it so that all of today's players are soft or some version of soft compared to the past, but all of them are also protecting the economy of their bodies, which legitimately feeds families and have been empowered to do so in a way that tatters the construct of discipline that you need in team sports. So a Restrepo is not learning young when NIL money is involved. But, yeah, this is business, and it's not about your friendships anymore. It's about dollars, and you're messing with people's economies.

And Adam Silver is begging LeBron James to play, and he won't even dress. And it's like, LeBron has been running the league for 20 years. I need people to understand that Adam Silver is the administrative assistant over there. They've changed the All-Star Game for LeBron. Lebron wants time off at the halfway point. Lebron wants his players to get more rest and to not have their salaries capped because LeBron is still in that sport underpaid. Still.

I need to see who sat out of this flag football game for the NFL because we got to rip them. I need to see MLB All-Star game, who sat out? Because we're looking at this NHL thing, which is the outlier. Nobody acts like this during these type of competitions, and we're holding this against LeBron. I don't know. It's just supposed to be fun these weekends. I don't understand why we're getting so serious with LeBron over there. It's this strange juxtaposition of expectations. No one was paying attention to the NHL All-Star game a few years ago, and they came up with an incredible concept that only works for their league, given what the diversity of where people come from is within their league. But we've seen things like the World Baseball Classic work and be the most unbelievable atmosphere as ever. Not something that necessarily works for an MLB All-Star game. I think it does. Yeah, but the tradition is still built within it.

You do a final four of the WBC at the All-Star break. I think that course.

Sure, but the problem is the same one that NBA has, which is they're not going to be bringing in guys who are going to throw... You Andy Alcantara is not going to throw nine innings in a All-Star game in the middle of the season when the trade deadline is coming up a couple of weeks later. A guy just has been traded to a new team in the NBA. It's going to be a different conversation about what they do. But I just think that the reason we're going extra hard on the NBA All-Star Weekend is because we're juxtaposing it with this perfect new moment that was created because of geopolitical things combining with a the awesome job by the NHL. But I just think that we're really taking this to an extreme with what's going on with the NBA when that product is... The basketball that did happen, they did a bad job in terms of presentation. The basketball this year was actually superior to what we've seen in years past.

There's an understanding that when the playoffs come, the fans are going to tune in again in the NBA. The level of play is going to be intense and passionate. It's just different than the regular. I don't... Base, basketball, and even hockey have too many regular-season games.

But I've said this a number of times. You've heard me say it. Perception is not reality. Perception perception. But what is reality is that the perception being talked about on every sports show in America today is noticing the differences between both of those All-Star games, one in which you've got people caring so much, the other not at all. You've just never seen it play out like that before the same weekend, same time. This is not something that has ever happened before in my recalling of the doing of this.

I think the major story, I did not watch NBA All-Star Weekend. I think that the story lines that I have seen was McClung won the dunk contest again, who's a D-Lead guy. You had something with Mr. Beast. I don't know what he was doing, but people were upset about that and thought that that was where Damian Lillard lost some contest to a fan, and Mr. Beast was there handing out money, and people were like, Why is Mr. Beast here? This is a weird swing. Chris Paul decided to try to cheat in a contest, and then he got disqualified for trying to cheat in the contest. Then LeBron decided five minutes before the game that he wasn't going to play. Then there's three teams or two teams, and then they only have a certain number of guys, and now LeBron's team is down to seven guys instead of eight guys. Then that's the major storyline. For someone who didn't consume it, those were all the story lines I saw. None of them were like, Wow, this is a celebration of the sport. This was such a great weekend. Look at these moments. It was all just weird things that were going on.

You're talking about things that permeate the sport. When you say Sandy is not going to throw nine innings during a WBC, Sandy is rarely going to throw nine innings during a regular season game. How you do anything is how you do everything. And baseball and basketball have been really on the load management train for several years in the analytics train, and it's altered the sport. The player empowerment is different. Those are two really strong unions compared to what they have in the NHL. Look, the NHL is not Puppy Dogs and Ice Cream. The NHL has got a ton of problems. But one thing that you don't have to worry about is ever when it comes to the regular season and when something matters to these players, like Canada USA did, you're going to see a guy I like Charlie McAvoy who... Do you want to guess when Matthew Kchuck's next Panther game is? Matthew K'Chuck is playing in this game. He's told everybody. He's playing this game on Thursday night. His next game is Saturday. The Panthers play on Saturday. That is Matthew Kchuck's All-Starake. Charlie McAvoy lays this hit on Connor McDavid. It's just been announced, reported by Elliott Friedmann.

He's out on Thursday because he has an infection from an injury that he sustained in this game, in which he hit Connor McDavid damn near harder than you've ever seen on open ice. So there's just a different way, a different makeup of a hockey player. I'm not saying they're ever going to be hockey players, but we have been in positions in those sports before with their exhibition games where they've cared.

How many of you are going to put in this effort on your company retreat? That's, I guess, the question that I would have, right? I go hard, dude. Is these all-star weekends are our company retreats. That's all it is. You have a labor class in the NHL that, like Mike mentioned, doesn't have the same representation from their players association. They don't make nearly as much money as these players in MLB or in the NBA. And so those guys are protecting their money because they, at the spaces that their league are, have already earned that. In 20 years, if the NHL continues at the rate that it's going and continues to gain popularity, I can promise you, I don't care what we say these guys are built like, there will be guys dipping out of this All-Star Weekend, too.

I can promise you. I can promise you. It's happen to know and with certainty, where does that rank?

If Matthew Kachuk was making $49 million instead of 11, we'd be having a different conversation. We just would. We are getting somewhere now with this. Four nation competitions, every sport. Nfl, who are we playing against?

That would be great. What are the Four Nations for the NBA tournament? It would be epic to watch. What are the Four Nations for the NBA tournament?

Think about how funny that would be to watch.

Whoever it is, Jovic wants to play with.

Spain, Germany.

Who else? I'm talking about football. Just the Olympics.

I'm talking about NFL boys. Okay, and how does that one go?

Nfl is a terrible idea.

It would be amazing to watch.

No, it would not be amazing to watch. I like the US.

Imagine the Sweden right tackle trying to block Aiden Hutchinson.

No, it would not be good. It would last five minutes. You cannot do this in the NFL. It would be hilarious. For four or five minutes is all you would- Oh, my God, that would be great. I want to play some sound here because Kevin Durant is right, that we do like the beef. If you're going to make them stars, if you're going to make them personalities, hockey doesn't really have the advantage of that. A lot of these guys doing the sport in their second language, a lot of these guys as interviews, boring on purpose, boring. There's a hockey mentality. They don't do a great job of selling their sport with their talking. It's not a lot of effervescent personalities that you get in hockey.

They do their talking on the ice, Dan.

That is correct.

That's another reason why Kachuk stands out. Matthew Kachuk, good interview.

That is right. But when you're looking at what it is that's happening in basketball and you've got people fighting with each other, and Draymond Green is saying that the game is very boring now, that everybody's running around. It's an unusual thing. I think Tim Anderson with the White Sox got into a lot of trouble with all of Chicago as the only black baseball player on the team or one of the few, by saying, Baseball's boring when he's playing it. He said that on our show. That's right. He got into trouble, and the White Talks never forgave us. It harmed Tim Anderson's career.

Base never forgave us, actually.

That fight. It was never the same.

He had that moment at Field of Dreams. That was really cool. That was cool. That was great. But he also got a.

He got that fight. That did happen to Tim Anderson.

He didn't pan out with the Marlins, and when he got into a fight, we will show that fight, that ended what was his career publicly taking that beating. But when Oscar Robertson hears Draymon Green say of the sport that they both ostensibly ostensibly love. It's boring. Here's his retort. Well, out of dream on said so much. Who cares what dream on says? It doesn't mean anything. This is what I mean. One guy can say this, and one guy can say that. The game is the game is what it is. People either like the game or they don't. I think people enjoy the game, especially if their team can win. If you look at the basketball, it might be boring him because if he's not passing the ball to Curry, what is he doing? I agree. A triple single is. Not the single that out because I think he knows how to play basketball. But he's passed his ball to career more than anyone I've ever seen him in basketball. All right, cut that up. It means a lot.

Was that Hank Azaria?

Cut that up. The sniveling reporter saying his agreement to the big O in a way that was too slurpy and uncomfortable and just had a lot of drool in it and just an agreement that was overtly agreeable. Cut Let that up so that we can just hear the reporter distracting us in the middle of that, just overloving Oscar Robertson.

I know this is an exhaustive conversation. Fixing basketball is now approaching. I feel like we've almost been doing it as long as we've been doing the fixing baseball shows. But baseball finally got around to fixing it, and they had a great Dream World series, and hopefully that tree continues to bear fruit. But they have to do something about this. We're so far beyond the tipping point on needing... Adam Silver is a disaster.

He's a disaster. But Mike- He's a disaster. This is what happens, though. He has gone from the best commissioner in sports, most innovative, to getting left behind by the power among the players, at least in part because, How do I stay young? Get me Mr. Beast. Just get me Mr. Beast. Put him on the court. Look, have you guys not seen... It is hard to evolve. I believe that Kanye West, as one example, has seen that Kendrick Lamar has passed him as the artist Kanye wishes that he were back when he was at the top of hip hop running the Ego game, and now he just stoops to, My wife is naked and going pro-Hitler.

They split up. It may be ex-wife soon, Dan.

The reports are conflicting.

There's a lot of people betting on the fact that they may get divorced before April.

You know he doesn't have a prenup?

That's crazy.

If only there was a song that warned him What do you get?

Isn't he in a massive debt? If you get divorced and your spouse is in incredible debt, do you take on half of the debt?

I'm not sure. I mean, he keeps putting out slips that says he's a billionaire. Yeah. I don't really listen to much of what he says anymore.

My point is that Adam Silver has gone from the top of the game to, How do I keep up with the young people? My employees aren't cooperating.

It didn't necessarily happen quick, but I'm old enough to remember when Adam Silver was called by this show and by others. Consensus, the best commissioner in sports. Now, is he the worst? Is he the worst?

But I would say to you, if you're looking at a... Man. So on Kaepernick, politics came to sports here when you're talking about we're coming off of the Kendrick Lamar halftime show. The tension that that sport had around its racism births entertainment that's allowed to be at the center of the spectacle and make its own artistic noise. But that's where it's going to be relegated to. They're going to get end racism out of the end zone. They're going to distract you with that. What's happening in that league right now with its black employees is Adam Silver became the most popular progressive Commissioner when he got rid of the racist. That's when it happened. It's Donald Sterling, Oh, look, a leader just got rid of an owner. The owner are untouchable. It's not because Adam Silver had any real power. It's because all the other owners wanted him gone and then had their excuse. Adam Silver becomes, Oh, look, David Stern's progressive learner rises to the top of sports. What leadership? And now look, I think it's relevant that I'm telling you that none of these players wanted to play in the bubble during the pandemic because America was in crisis.

There was a race war that was being promised, and they didn't want to spend the time descending from Civil Rights League, descending from Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. They didn't feel like entertaining us. They didn't feel like working for the owners anymore.

They also didn't want to be locked in a place for over a month without being able to go out.

Yeah, The reported details was a lot of that was coming from Kyrie, and they were dealing with all sorts of Kyrie stuff.

Did he take money from the Mr. Beast thing? There's angles where it looks like he just when he took money.

No, he did. And then Durant took it from him.

Was that real money? Because that's a crazy prop. Also, Why didn't more people just say, You know what? This is going to be ridden off by someone. This is free money sitting out. No one's going to inventory this after the fact, right?

I will say one place where Adam Silver probably did a good job, and it came off of a bad job initially was, given everything that's been in the news over the last two years in the Middle East, everything quieted down. They finally got a grip of that situation, and that's a pretty thankless job, especially with how messy that it got. I know errors are impossible to compare, but some of the guys that are in the especially some of the guys that are most known, LeBron, for example, Kevin Durant, they were around when David Stern was around. I see a lot of these things happening, a lot of these problems happening. It's not like some of these things weren't around when Stern was, but I just have a hard time wrapping my head around. This would definitely feel different if David Stern was in charge. He was such a cult of personality that the players wouldn't have gotten so much power to the point that if Adam Silver, which what we all assume, goes to the locker rooms, All right, guys, let's try to go. Give America a good show. And LeBron's like, No, I'm good.

I just don't see that happening to David Stern. I feel like David Stern commands a little bit more respect.

Different era, though.

Different players. Totally.

I know it's hard to shop there. Also, and different America. Different public America. There's some stuff here, man. Look, man, don't ignore. Please don't ignore that this would have all played out differently in Canada if it had been our basketball team up there.

Right League, right place, right time, right? No, it's not about whether or not we're booed. It's whether or not the players embrace the villain. The players right now, if we're taking a straw poll of the players on the American hockey team, I would think that straw poll leans towards some more people supporting the present administration than it would be if you had sent the NBA All-Stars up to Canada. When they're getting booed, how do they handle the national anthem? How does all of this work where right now you have highlight clips to Fortunate Son by CCR being put out by the White House, you're not having the same thing being done if you have these NBA players, not to sound like Dan, but there is some stuff here.

Look, I genuinely think hockey players care less about politics. I understand what we're doing demographically, but you got to keep in mind, the league is mostly Canadian. What do you think about Canada's politics? Hockey is actually a lot more progressive than it lets on. Look at what Matthew Kachuk said when the rainbow tape situation popped up. I think I understand where you're coming from there a little bit, but also there are bad faith aggregators. You have a nation convinced because of some of these aggregate sites like N Wokeness and even government websites. Oh, this is a response. You boo our anthem. This is what happens. Man, this was so predetermined. It had nothing to do with the anthem. It had everything to do with the first best on best matchup between the US and Canada in 11 years.

I'm not saying the fights have anything to do with it, but I imagine there might be conversations being had about, Hey, how do you feel about this happening while you're out there and those responses from what we saw literally in 2020 and on, those responses from the NBA are going to be different than what you get from the NHL. Tell me an NHL response.

It's just right place, right time. I don't. I'm not talking about that. There hasn't been a newsworthy- But the ignoring of it is the same thing.

That's the point. I'm not saying you need to cape up for it as opposed to what would have been an abject criticism. There's a difference there in the way that we respond as fans as well.

I'm sure the players would have responded differently, too. It seems like everyone's taking Austin Matthews lead, which is like, We're just not going to talk this. We understand that this is not about us. This is about a singular person. I felt the emotion. I didn't like hearing it. No matter how bad things get between the two countries, I could never see me booing another anthem because of one person.

It's probably going to happen Thursday.

But I get it.

I'll boo the shit out of an anthem. Any anthem, I don't care what it is. Coming up against my team, I'll boo you. I don't care.

I've never thought about it before.

I would boo the hell out of any anthem.

If I was there this Thursday- That was going against my team's anthem.

If Out of doubt in my mind. What's wrong with you people?

Our national Anthem, you would boo any anthem?

It depends who's playing and what side I'm rooting for. If it's the enemy's side, I'm booing it. I don't care. I'll boo anything if it's the enemy.

After being in that arena-I'm not going to go after a period and go start high-fiving people and say, Hey, nice beer, whatever.

Hey, you know what I mean? Good period. No, this is war. Sorry, Chris. Go ahead.

But any anthem you would boo, including if you were, for some reason, if you were rooting for a Marlin, who played on the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic was playing in the World Base Classic against the United States.

Well, I'm not Dominican, so it's different.

Okay, so thank you. Cuba? I don't know. What circumstance would you root against America's national anthem?

It's a good question. One I wasn't prepared for.

I'll get back to you. We have someone. Thank you for all the help, Billy. Excellent work, as always.

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Don Levatard. I took my son to the barbershop, get a haircut, and my man gave out some limp dap.

Oh, no.

Damn, damn, damn. Stugatz. I disowned him. I threw him right under the bus. I was like, Whose kid is that? I'll We're dissing out here dishing out limp dap?

This is the Don Levatard show with the Stugatz.

Dominic Foxworth is there. Dominic is noticing the show. He is in pain at how poorly you just did that. Dominic, tell us all your thoughts on what you We just saw Anthem related because you're here to what? All right, hold on a second. We've got to unmute you real quick. Okay, we'll get that right in a second.

Maybe he's doing a mind bit.

We'll get that in a second. We'll get that right in a I can't tell. You were saying, Billy, did you want to continue or you're done?

I'm thinking of circumstances. You mentioned the Cuba one. That one's tricky because then there's the whole, the Cuban team, who are they playing for? Because they're just men, but are they playing for the government and the regime? I don't know who I I would boo for in that situation. I was quite conflicted at the World Baseball Classic when Cuba came to town, I'll be honest with you.

I've never thought about booing an anthem before, but the way I felt with Canada doing it, if I was in that building on Thursday and I heard booing, I I'm not going to... It's tip for tat. You did it to me, I do it to you.

Really? That is not turn the other cheek. That is not take the high road.

We're at war, Dan. With Canada? Yeah. In many wars. A trade war. You guys are.

Hockey wars, trade wars, lots of wars. Why the hell would we be at war with Canada?

I don't know, but we're in it. What are we going to do?

Are you not paying attention?

You ever look around and say, How did I find myself here? I don't know, but I can't just pontificate on why I'm here now. I just got to act, fight or flight, and it's time to fight.

I've never been so-When it's the Four Nations tournament, it is time to fight.

Just Google Trudeau microphone on.

I didn't like being called a Yankee.

Didn't he step down?

Yeah, but not immediately.

You guys think that what our country is presently doing doesn't deserve to get booed?

What? Yeah, no, it does.

Are you going to root for Canada in the Four Nations tournament?

There were plenty of Canadians around us that were respectful and didn't boo it because they would find out real quick.

It's like when someone attacks Stugats. No, that's my Stugats. You can't say that. I can say that.

You don't boo an anthem. Right? Is it hockey? Dad, I know.

If you were with us, you would want to boo Canada's anthem if you were there.

You would want to, but you would think better of it.

Well, if they booed my anthem, I'd probably boo their anthem.

See? They started it. Canada started it. In Montreal, you would do that. Look at what Chris Cody learned. There it is, ladies and gentlemen. That is generations of Cody wisdom right there. Pass down the family right there.

It's hard to boot their anthem, too.

It slaps. Dominic is now returned, presumably with functioning sound. You have any thoughts on what it is you just heard?

First of all, the sound issue was completely on my side, so don't blame anybody. Don't fire anybody. I will take full responsibility. Your crack team in the video room and in the shipping container did an outstanding job. But the thing that I wanted to address was the conversation that we're having about the commissioners in the league I think we often do this, and I think I heard Bill Simmons doing it, and a lot of people doing it, saying that things would be different if David Stern was in office. But I think we fail to understand how different the circumstances are and weren't. When David Stern ran the league, they were growing doing, essentially a startup, and guys were making less than a million dollars on average. And I think the power dynamics in the league shifted in a way that you can no longer be the iron-fisted commissioner that I think people wish that we had. So I'm not arguing that Adam Silver has done a fantastic job. I just think that the strategy that he would have had to have taken was just going to be different. And if David Stern were still the Commissioner of the League, I'm not sure that the iron fist that we think would have had guys fall in line would have worked when guys were making 100 million from Nike when they step into the league.

When Adam Silver took over, and I think we're going to dive into this on my show later, but when Adam Silver took over, LeBron James was already LeBron James. I'm not sure that things will be different. I guess that's my only point.

No, and it's a good point because we're romanticizing for a day there will never be again. Once you've gotten to this point on Jimmy Butler, when the players realize that that's the power that they have, we will never go back to that day.

Dominic, correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the NFL address this issue? And you don't have wayward voices. There's pretty much everyone's on board with politics equals bad for the growth of our sport.

Yeah, I think the NFL and NBA are very different in the way that they function. And I think the players in NFL and the players in NBA fall in different places politically, and also fall in different places in their willingness to fall in line. I think one thing we've learned about basketball players, and it's not... I think sometimes these things come off as criticisms, but the players themselves became the franchises a while ago. This is the culmination of the process that started when the league started promoting Bird and Magic, is now we're at the point where we have LeBron fans, not Heat fans or not Cav fans. And I think there are still some local fan bases that matter, but we all recognize that the players are why we tune in. And as much as we love quarterbacks, we'll tune in for a defensive battle. We'll tune in when the promo picture is T. J. Watt versus Miles Garrett. I'm watching that. And so I think the players recognize that they do not have that same amount of sway. And so with the NBA players being generally, I think, probably more progressive than the NFL players and being definitely more famous, more valuable, and have more influence, I think arguing that you could run the same playbook that the NFL has run and thinking it work in the NBA is not true.

I think they are one of the groups, the entities that while we call them all partners, that actually are closer to partners with the league and need to be treated as such. And getting them on board is a lot different than telling them what to do.

How do you fix it, though, if you're at the NBA? Because it seems like they're just too big. The players are just too powerful and successful. You're getting paid $50 million. Yeah, I'm going to sit out this exhibition because why am I going to put my future earnings at risk. But at the same time, you do turn off fans where it's like, Okay, well, you don't take this seriously. I'm not going to watch. You don't take the regular season seriously. I'm not going to watch. I'll come around in the playoffs, and the playoffs is coming like, I'm not really invested in this because I haven't been watching all year. So then the ratings continue to go down, but seemingly TV contracts always go up, right? So it's only going to continue to have this divide and theoretically get worse, where players are going to be making more and more money, getting more and more powerful, and the league is going to have less and control. So how do you save this?

So I think that's the interesting part. It's a super challenging problem. So I think that what they started to do where they opened up opportunity for the players to be investors in the teams, I think it's just an incentive. It's like a basic Economists, and I know Dan loves to talk about economies, but a basic economist argument is you want to align the interests of the people with the most power with that of the league. And so I think it's very difficult to do in this situation. In the past, it was clear where the interests were lined up. The guys were not making a lot of money. So growing the league and increasing the value of the league would make it so guys in the '90s and the early 2000s would make more money. We're at a situation now where guys walk into the league making a ton of money from the league and also from their shoe partners and all those things. So I think that's the biggest challenge is ensuring that their interests are aligned with the interests of the league in the way that partners would. And I think the NFL is different in that those players are a lot more like employees than the basketball players are.

And then employees who know that their careers are going to be short and know that they have a short period of time to make money and know that they are eminently replaceable behave a lot differently than guys who are like, look, you've scoured the entire globe to find someone half as good as me. You're not going to tell me what to do. You're just not going to do it. And so you need them to be internally aligned with your interests. And that's a hard thing to pull off, which is why when people talk trash about how terrible all our commissioners are, I'm like, Job's pretty damn hard.

It's pretty hard. Dominic- I'm sorry. No, I just got to stop you because Chris and Greg are arguing about whether Greg should say to you, is this Jared Payton? They're arguing about it, and I can't get it. Oh, boy. Jared Payton's next.

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Hey there, Wellness Warriors. If you're like me, you've given a lot of thought to how to improve your health and wellness routine this year. I've started stretching more, do a little mindfulness, some meditation every day, try to clear my mind, make my body feel right. Take your health routine to the next level with the magic of contrast therapy. Meet our new amazing sponsor, Redwood Outdoors. They're making it easy to bring the benefits of saunas and cold plungees right to your backyard. A Redwood Outdoors backyard sauna seats 2-8 people, where you can relax, unwind, and enjoy all the benefits like reduce muscle tension, improve sleep, and glowing in. And it doesn't stop there. Redwood Outdoors' invigorating cold plunge helps to boost circulation, sharpen your focus, and leave you feeling absolutely revitalized. Whether it's detoxing deeper, reducing inflammation, or connecting with loved ones in moments of peace, Redwood Outdoors has you covered. Enhance your physical and mental wellness routines with Redwood Outdoors. Take advantage of special savings today. Visit redwoodoutdoors. Com. Use code Dan to save $175. That's redwoodoutdoors. Com code D-A-N to save your order. Redwoodoutdoors. Com code dan.