Transcript of Le Batard & Friends Presents: The Step Back - I'm Coming Home (feat. Iman Shumpert) New

I mean, you did this once before.

Yeah.

Let's try this again. Could you give us another dramatic reading of Dan's now front page?

This is uncomfortable every time you do this.

Good.

This is unpleasant.

This is a tryout. I want a career in voiceover work, Dan. So bear with me here. LeBron James feeling gratitude after 4 years, in my opinion, by Dan Le Batard. The letter in Sports Illustrated was super sweet, had a writer's touch, really nice. Perfect, really. So perfect. Too perfect, if you're cynical and embittered and hurtin'. And the fairy tale story itself might even be somehow better than that. Conquering hero returns home to rebuild the shattered place. It was all spun so well that even the Cleveland people, who were burning his jersey and urinating on cakes of his face in public restrooms, developed the inconsistent amnesia necessary to overlook the conquering hero's hand in shattering the place he now returns to rebuild. Such a thin line in sports between "thank you" and "fuck you." Wow. If you were in the public relations business, which Sports Illustrated usually isn't, this is exactly the way you massage all of this to get the worship and mythology that purifies the polarizing image of a global icon who rented Miami for championships. Get the premier and most reputable sports publication in America to tell the tale about going home for you.

Those kids in the entourage of LeBron James are smart. Sports, man. So personal, so emotional, so cool.

It was wildly uncomfortable, uh, hearing all of that for reasons that are complicated to explain because Yes, of course, I've always, my entire career, mocked the idea of people who get too much of their identity from sports, regional sports, but also while profiting greatly off how much they care about their regional sports. What LeBron James brought here, the same way they got him, was such a magnificent thing, the best thing I had seen in my sports journalism lifetime in Miami, that I didn't want to be sports fan emotional reactionary to Man, you should really be grateful that he gave you his prime at 25, and then you lose him the same way you got him. Honestly, this was protective, and it's one of the reasons that it embarrasses me to make sure no one in Miami wrote Dan Gilbert's letter because of how shitty all of that was. When I saw urinal cakes and jerseys being burned, and I'm like, this is one of the great athletes of our lifetime. Like, you can't treat him that way because he becomes a free agent.

You used the word fuck. On the front page of the Miami Herald.

Well, it's not there though. They bleeped it out. It's just an, it's a capital F with dashes. That's not the word fuck.

What did you type when you, when you turned in?

Did you type asterisk?

Oh, that's a good question.

How would I know what the hell I typed?

You know what you do.

You do your own research.

We did some research. And Dan, 3 other times you cursed. The big one, it was in 2020, a column about Colin Kaepernick. You referred to quote, "FU money." And in a fawning 2022 column about Pat Riley's quote, "indestructible empire," you managed to sneak in 2 2 FUs in a row. Are you proud of this?

Look at the childish toddler that is a grown-up. I mean, please, because someone said a curse word in public 3 times, 2 or 3 times in 15 years in a newspaper, but twice in the same sentence is pretty good.

I'm tired of this man being celebrated for what? This is the step back.

Next drive, steps back, puts up a 3.

Bang!

LeBron James from downtown.

The Cleveland Cavaliers select LeBron James.

LeBron, what's I made a difficult decision, but I understood what my future was about.

I believe our president is trying to divide us.

My first response was, "You bum." Welcome to episode 3. Puffing away a big cigar, waiting for them, you know, having a margarita, you know. "Oh, why? How come two of you guys so wrong?" I'm coming home.

You want to trend something? I'm pissed, okay? So go ahead. Get it out there.

The things that LeBron James triggered in Miami, there's never been anything like it, and I would think that there'll never be anything like it again. He created something here that has only existed with the University of Miami football teams that were also vibrating against racial, cultural tensions throughout our land that made it such a fascinating time to care about Miami Heat games when they were 9-8 in a 17-game start to the regular season.

And yet for us, it felt like such a major part of the story. For everybody else, it's a minor part of the story. What Miami experienced and what got taken away from them after 4 years doesn't compare with the story that is LeBron James, what he is showing us.

I wonder if— I wonder if Miami will be third on his legacy, on how he's remembered, even though he won the 2 championships here.

I have a question for both of you guys as Miami natives, right? I feel like the outside world, particularly inside the United States, considers Miami to be a big market, and it's not. It's not at all. It, it's a small town for one, but for two, when you talk about the TV market size, it is technically a mid-size market. And I wonder how many people would be surprised to find out that Miami is behind Orlando. Behind Denver, behind Detroit, behind Minnesota, and a hair above Cleveland.

Right.

As a TV market.

Because Miami's a glamor market. Mm-hmm. It's not a large market to me. It's a great place to live. It's, you know, great for vacation photos and, you know, day off photos. But it doesn't really— like until they won the championships, they weren't even considered a serious organization. And now they are. And now they're considered a big organization, but they're not. They're kind of middle of the pack when it comes to numbers.

Was that a function of LeBron and Bosh and Wade teaming up, or had that always been the perception of Miami?

One of the things that the Dolphins did for Miami is that Don Shula, when he got here, it made it from a small town to a sports town. They're undefeated, football matters, they're a national thing. Miami, the history of it, if you read The Swamp, it's a brilliant book. All of Florida is sort of rented. It's a real estate scam. All of Florida is a bunch of spring, spring break towns. And then Miami's the one that had the drug money, and so it became an international city, even though all it is is really a third world city that's kind of Caribbean adjacent. Same customer service. It's just the brown people are here. The brown people with money are here. But when LeBron says he's coming to South Beach, it's legitimately an icon. And Lionel Messi now coming to a spring break dump of a town that pretends to be Las Vegas, because we party. I don't know how soon Izzy covered Pat Riley when he got here, but I do remember what he inherited when he got here. And he started at what was a tiny gym in Miami that was adjacent to Palmetto Hospital.

It was a high school gym. It was a dump. But they had Pat Riley, and so now they're pretending to be big time. When they upgrade to the finest of class that Pat Riley can produce with Mickey Arison, they move into another high school gym at LaSalle, where it's not actually a big organization. I mean, Dwyane Wade winning that draft pick obviously got a lot of attention, but Shaq getting here and being bigger than basketball, bigger than everyone, bigger than, uh, not bigger than Riley, maybe bigger than Riley, as are the fans, I think maybe bigger than Riley, uh, Shaq gets here and stamps the organization. And from there, LeBron James ends up solidifying that Miami is a 2-3 championship town, not a 1 championship.

Well, thanks for taking us through that time machine. I'm to press a couple buttons and move forward to 2014 though. Uh, this was the early summer, the Ice Bucket Challenge about to take off.

This is going to be awful. Oh, oh, that was not worth it.

I mean, uh, which of the Transformers movies was topping the box office at the time? Could you tell me?

Uh, this is 2014. I'm going to say Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Ooh, I don't even know if that's a real title, but it's, uh, Transformers: Age of Extinction. Michael Sam had just been drafted as the first openly gay player in the NFL.

Controversial, controversial kiss on ESPN.

You want to do one of these step backs on that? We can do that too. Uh, in the middle of the World Cup in Brazil, which is a big thing for me.

No, let's move on past that one.

Okay, big loss for the Brazilians over there. NBA still reeling from the Donald Sterling scandal. The Spurs just beat the Heat in 5. And then Pat Riley had a press conference.

You want to trend something? I'm pissed. Okay. You got to stay together if you got the guts and you don't find the first door. I didn't come down here 19 years ago for a quick trip to South Beach and get a suntan. I can guarantee you that. And, and I don't think they did either. They have the right to pursue those options and think about those options and You know, whether they, they stay the way they are or whether they opt out, then we'll know what we have to do. But, uh, I don't take anything away from what LeBron had to say. He has to get away and he has to think about it.

I don't think honestly that we have enough time to talk about all of the stuff that I felt off of Pat Riley when all of this was happening, because it was such a public humbling of a man who does not like to lose. And I'm going to say he went a little crazy, like couldn't stop thinking about the idea that I've put this thing in place so that we can win 10 straight championships. And allegedly I can get out. I don't believe that for a second, but allegedly I can just leave this franchise in your hands and we'll be good. You and Spo will have it and I'll retire. And I did my job again. Don't believe it, but that was taken away from him.

We omitted perhaps the most famous quote, smiling faces, hidden agendas. The presser starts the way he sat down. He says, you want to trend something? Which is both incredibly aggressive and also just old man not understanding.

Never sounded older.

You want to play on the play box, the X station? That's how he sounded. He sounded completely out of touch, trying to use a term.

Hold on a second. All right, hold on a second. Yes. Like everything you guys say is so. He comes out once a year. That is purposeful. Let's look at the timeline. Eric, you want to be my coach? I'm one of the best ever. I am a general that is ruthless. You will be face and voice of the team. I'm face and voice of the team. I come out once a year and I will have your back. You can challenge LeBron James once a year. I will come out and be face and voice of the team, and my voice will be aligned with you. And he's not returning my text messages, and I'm stuck with Josh McRoberts. And hey, LeBron, would you like Josh McRoberts? Like, whatever it is that that ended up being where he couldn't get a hold of LeBron at the end. And the old dinosaur is losing his power and realizing, wait a minute, where's my power going? Can he take it with him?

Thank you for bringing up the name Josh McRoberts, because it sounds so ridiculous that Oh, he's the free agent that we picked up. We're going to keep LeBron. We're going to draft Shabazz Napier because LeBron said he was the best player. So he's wielding his power left and right. But really, he's just sitting back and saying, huh, I have no idea where I'm going to go. Probably not going to come back here, though. So let's repaint that picture. Let's go back to when LeBron was in Las Vegas. So he's bringing the 6 teams in the running. We've got the Lakers, the Suns, the Mavs, the Bulls, the Heat, and the Cavaliers.

Yeah, and the interesting thing is all of those teams met in Cleveland except for the Miami Heat. The meetings that they took starting July 1st was in Cleveland at the Clutch offices.

Mark Cuban, by the way, lies. He said he's going to Cleveland to shoot Shark Tank.

Yeah.

He's really going in for this meeting. Then he had to go to Vegas for the Nike camp. Just before this, he went fishing with his family in the Bahamas. There's a picture of 9-year-old Bronny James catching a tuna.

Woo! What color is this?

And that's where Pat Riley comes in.

All right.

Here is the very latest on LeBron James. He met with Pat Riley, the president of the Heat, for about an hour in Las Vegas. Sources telling our Chris Broussard, like Jorge mentioned, that LeBron will not make a decision tonight. Sources also saying that LeBron hasn't yet made up his mind. Now, I want to read some behind-the-scenes things. There was a book called Return of the King by Brian Winhorst and Dave McMenamin. They write, Dan Lebatard, who was close with Riley, later said on his Miami radio show that Riley was offended that a World Cup soccer game was on television in James's hotel suite during the meeting, and Riley felt he didn't even have everyone's full attention.

He goes and flies to Las Vegas with the trophies, and his general manager is playing blackjack downstairs and has to go see LeBron and his boys with their feet on the coffee table. They won't turn down the World Cup game. Hey LeBron, look at these trophies we won. Will you please come back to me? And the answer's like, maybe, coach. I'm gonna fly back with Dwyane Wade, and it'll Secret, you'll know when I know.

Having known Pat Riley as long as you have, like, when you think of everything that has happened in his career, like, how much is that moment the most disrespectful moment, the moment where he recognized he's not in charge as much? What was that moment to him?

It's funny hearing the question just 'cause whatever it is, more than a decade later, uh, you're saying a lot with feet on the table, aren't you? It's a detail to remember. A recruiting pitch where I beg you with our trophies, do you want to come back? Can you turn down the game on the television? Feet on the table. Like, I mean, that's where it switched, is it not? Like, wherever it is that Belichick and Brady argued about who gets the credit, the person who thought he deserved the credit— it wasn't him. It was one of the members of his quote-unquote posse, entourage, whatever Phil Jackson wants to say. When I think of feet on the table, like LeBron, that would be obviously disrespectful enough. But in certain contexts, if you're the old dinosaur boss, your friends in the room with their feet on the table is almost another level of this.

You don't think he's maybe playing the result a little bit? Because to me, there's a casualness because there's a comfort level. I've been around you for 4 years. This is the casual approach. This is the meeting. You don't have to sell me on anything. I just experienced 4 years of it.

But he's got the trophies out. He's got something— He threw his rings on the table at the beginning of the mythology, and now there are more trophies in the hallway. Can room service bring them in, please? Right, well, Pat already did that trick.

That's what got him in in the first place. Now he already experienced it.

He was reminding him, and LeBron didn't want the reminder. He's like, I know.

I want to ask Dan this, and I don't know if it's ever been confirmed, but I've heard stories and rumors for basically 10 years that there was a Dan Gilbert-level letter written by Pat Riley that never saw the light of day because unlike Dan Gilbert, Pat Riley listened to cooler heads. Is this true?

This is a rumored— I didn't know this was a rumored secret in NBA circles. Yes.

A rumor that there was a letter written. I shouldn't say a Dan Gilbert level because— Yeah, we don't know the font, right? And that— Oh my, I can't believe we never talked about that, like the comic sounds of it all.

But I did not know that this was a rumored thing in NBA circle and that it's like the Loch Ness Monsters. But I am interested in talking about some of this stuff because at the height of sports, two champions had a falling out that had a lot to do with ego, with power struggle.

With loyalty.

But it's where the Riley story is interesting because my relationship with him was never as strong and would only go stronger from everything happening about where it is that he went kind of crazy as this article is appearing and I'm coming home. And what is Riley's rebuttal other than to eat it?

Here's, um, some more interesting details on Lee Jenkins. Lee Jenkins is the writer who was brought in to have LeBron James tell him the story of him coming home. So he was waiting on the 57th floor of the Wynn in a room below LeBron James. The morning of July 12th, he gets a call to come upstairs and have breakfast with LeBron. Little interview, very much to the point. Lee goes back downstairs. Dan Gilbert comes in. Rich Paul tells him that LeBron is still in the decision cave and that he hasn't made a decision despite giving everything to Lee Jenkins, and that he'll be signing, quote, a one-year deal. Lee bangs out the first-person essay, goes to get some snacks in the lobby, and then— this is a quote from The Return of the King book, probably the best detail in there— "An attractive woman stopped Jenkins. She asked if he would be interested in having her tuck him into bed. Jenkins froze. His mind raced, and he started to think this was some agent sent to try to steal his secret, maybe to try to drug him and grab his laptop. He had to shake himself to get back to reality." She was just a prostitute propositioning him, as happens all the time in Las Vegas.

He took the snacks to his room, not the woman. The idea that this was such a major move and that he was holding the NBA hostage to where Lee Jenkins had to think that they sent a sex worker to get that information from him does not even begin to tell the story of this experience.

First of all, hilarious. Lee Jenkins is now an exec with the Clippers. —so that's a prominent NBA executive. But Izzy, you used a very interesting word. You said hostage. But what happened was we got no deals on July 1. No deals announced on July 2. And the reason was LeBron's decision part 2 held the entire industry hostage. There were so many teams that had so many plates spinning. They didn't want to commit to anything and ruin either their chances to get LeBron or ruin their chances to take advantage of someone who needed to clear cap space to get LeBron.

Do you guys realize that we didn't realize when we were in it that we were watching the power that thought it was the power in Miami, Pat Riley, 'cause he's always been the power, fly across the country to beg someone to keep playing for him, to beg someone to keep winning championships for him, and LeBron's got the entire economy of the sport with him in that room, and his friend's got his feet on the table, and nobody can move, and LeBron— has realized he has that power.

And this is the last thing here before we, uh, talk to Iman Shumpert here. This is a quote from the book where they said he knew, meaning LeBron, if he chose the Cavs, he would have input on the roster, and his team started talking about those choices. That is something, that type of flexibility that he didn't really have with Pat Riley. So it just goes to show you that there was a couple of blind spots from Pat Riley, and whether or not he learned from that, it was LeBron showing him, hey, 'Not your time anymore.

My time.' Yeah, but why would a lifelong winner, uh, ever accept someone telling them it's not your time? Because you have to evolve.

There's different ways to win. No, agreed.

Well, that is a major blind spot to have the monster ego of 'I always win, I'm all-powerful,' because you often win and are all-powerful. And you're the last guy who can do this and have Eric Spolstra stand up to this superstar and be the voice behind Eric Spolstra. And you, you can see how LeBron gained power. Year and then usurped the power that was in charge of his power.

I mean, it also kind of runs parcel with being a winner, right? Being a winner means that when everyone's saying, "You lose. Sorry, shut it down. Better luck next year," you say, "No, no, no. I'm going to find a way." And there's a scratching, a clawing, dare I say, to borrow a term from Pat Riley, you have to want it more than you want your next breath, right? This is the man who stuck his head into a bucket of ice water in front of his team and telling them, "You have to want to win like you want your last breath." That's the mentality that makes it where you say, "No, I can't accept no for an answer." But in reality, LeBron had his hand on the back of Pat Riley's head and says, "Nope, it's going to be a no." And all the death throes aren't going to help.

What's interesting about the Pat Riley story is after 2 minutes, people were amazed that his face was in a bucket of ice water in the locker room for 2 minutes. He came up gasping and breathing and saying that. The thing is LeBron's hand wasn't on his head. Then he was able to just get his head out of the ice water himself. In this particular case, he was just snuffed out.

Also very good for the skin.

The ice, ice bucket challenge. Yes.

A lot of water, a lot of blood rushes to the areas that need healing.

He's an NBA champion. He got a ring with LeBron in 2016 with Cleveland, then played 2 more seasons with him. He's one of the leaders of the athlete-first content game. He hosted the ESPN series Taking One for the Team and the Iman Among Men podcast on LeBron's Uninterrupted platform. He's got a cannabis line called TSA Approved. Ah, he's a musician. He's also a champion on Dancing with the Stars. Iman Shumpert, thank you for joining us.

Two-time champion with the Cavs at Dancing with the Stars. One of those was impressive. And he also won the championship with the Cavs.

I appreciate y'all having me, man. I appreciate you.

Iman, I want to start off because we're talking about LeBron, we're talking about player empowerment and, you know, free agency and everything else. But I want to play a clip for you from a podcast called the Bootleg Kev podcast from a few years ago and then get your reaction. No, he didn't.

It wasn't KD, it was Bron first going to Miami. Bron knows he ruined basketball. He thought he was making it better. Me personally, I love the NBA for the loyalty that I thought was there. He basically knocked the fourth wall down like, man, the owners ain't shit, they bullshitting, we doing what we want.

Shump, what'd you mean by that basically? The way LeBron gave power to the players.

I just think Bron made that move thinking everybody would make educated moves how he did, and it just became a free-for-all. Like, you can't find any kid that'll stay at a college for a year. They just gonna leave as soon as anybody faces anything unhappy. They just leave. And it's just like, I don't like what it became. Now, was it his plan? No. That's which is why I said, like, he didn't mean to. But even making it a show to pick his team because he didn't get to do it in college, just for somebody of his stature, me at the time, I didn't feel like that was necessary at all. I felt like you're LeBron, you stay in Cleveland, you win out for as long as you can, you know what I'm saying? And you make people build dynasties.

I thought we were celebrating LeBron here. This man, we brought a teammate and champion on here to say he ruined basketball when I thought you'd be— wait, wait, wait. I thought you'd be down with the entire statement of These owners ain't shit.

Iman as a person, yes. But when we talking about basketball, well, for me, in my mind growing up, basketball worked a certain way. You gotta get to a certain level. You have to get into the playoffs. You have to send people home. You have to make adjustments. You have to play chess. I didn't like the move because I felt like this move is gonna influence checkers. Like, do you guys think that KD would've left if Bron never did that? KD stays put. KD was all about what I was preaching. Stay on the same team. You live and die there, retire there. You know what I'm saying? You do everything you gotta do here and you make everybody want to come join you, but you don't leave. And then as soon as Bron did it, everybody just started doing it. And that's cool. It's not just that though. But I felt like it ruined the version of basketball that we loved. It's like, Bron, you didn't have to do that. Like, it was so unnecessary. You could have beat all, like, you're supposed to want to beat everybody. And I felt like it made, there's some players right now in the league, which I'm not even going to get into that.

I don't want to disrespect anybody along these lines, but there are some players in the league that are supposed to be main players on the team. And now they are buddy-buddying because of Bron's decision. Like, we should have more Batmans and we don't. 'Cause they're teaming up and joining arms and cuddling.

Shump, at the same time though, part of it, I would say even a large part of it, isn't exactly about buddy-buddying up. But when I see superstars leave, I see guys that are tired of watching things not be done the right way. Right? So if you're, use Anthony Davis as an example in New Orleans. He spent 7 years of his career watching them make the wrong picks, hire the wrong coaches, sign the wrong people. I mean, you obviously know this. Y'all have a certain amount of time to maximize your career, maximize your earnings, but also maximize your legacy. How I'm gonna be remembered. So what you're describing, I agree with you. The, it's the romantic version, which is, hey man, we're all kind of on an equal playing field and it's just about the players realizing their potential, working a little bit harder, being a little smarter come playoff time. But in reality, what we see with a lot of stars— maybe not all of them, but with a lot of them— is, oh man, they couldn't get you, they couldn't draft right, they, they didn't— they hired the wrong coaches, they, they're trading for the wrong players.

And the departure to me for LeBron wasn't about, man, I need to play with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. It was Man, I don't know if Cleveland knows what they're doing.

So what changed when he came back? That's actually a great question.

What changed when he came back?

He became more of a GM. He's sort of using his powers, right? I mean, you can confirm this if you know.

LeBron wasn't the GM. I'm not sure why people did that. LeBron wasn't the GM. You know what I'm saying? Yes, he's gonna be in those situations to give his influence. But one thing about LeBron, LeBron's a professional. Even though everybody like jokes around about it, LeBron lets people do their job. But as far as him coming back, I mean, there wasn't really much that changed besides Bron got championships now. It's just Bron knew good and goddamn well he should have brought his ass back there and won for Ohio. So he came back and he did his job and he won for Ohio, but then he left again, which again, when I think of business and I think of Everything that LeBron means as a brand, I get it. I'm not saying he did wrong. That's his choice. Everybody don't get to sit in that driver's seat. You see what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. I just know Kobe and Mike would've never did me like that. Right. No matter what the money was, they wouldn't have did me like that. No matter who the GM was, they wouldn't have did me like that. They'd have died right there in that jersey, Joe.

So there was— that's how this happened. There was that fear coming from LeBron that he wouldn't reach his legacy, and he got impatient. And you're saying, chill, be patient, give it another, I don't know, 10 years in this spot and you will get everything you wanted.

Yeah. I think that if Bron wins all 4 of his championships in Cleveland, there's not even like the thing that people are playing with now where they saying, well, we gotta put Steph in this argument and we gotta put this. There's so many people jumping in literally because LeBron did that move. People have lost a step for LeBron and it's just over that. And I keep telling, People like, people be like, why are you hating against LeBron? Like, bro, I have no hate in my heart for no LeBron James. It's like, bro, like I can tell you about the game and I could tell you at pivotal moments when stuff was and wasn't supposed to happen in order for the game to continue back to the basket or threes for the game to continue to be. There's guys over here building a dynasty over here and we don't even have to be building nothing. We could just all get on the phone and just hop on the same team next time free agency come. This is crazy, but it's dope though at the same time because you're seeing some all-out wars that it's like three-headed snakes everywhere.

I want to hone in on 2016 in particular because I remember in the finals y'all were down 3-1, 3-1 lead in these NBA Finals. And I remember I saw David Griffin, the GM of the Cavs.

Yep, the guy who— shout out to Griff. LeBron James and the Cavs now in a, in a Big hole as they head back to—

And I remember I looked at him and I said, "Hey, man, that's the best team of all time right there, man. You know, you did your best and y'all made it to the Finals and like, come back next year, give it another try." And Griff looked at me and he said, "Right now our guys are pissed off 'cause we feel like we should be up 3-1 right now." I legit looked in Griff's face and I laughed. I said, "All right, man, y'all be good. Say what's up to Meredith for me." And I walked away. And then Game 7 happened.

It's over! It's over! Cleveland is a city of champions once again!

The Cavaliers are NBA champions!

And I see him in the tunnel and he jumped and he looked at me and said, hey, Mean, fuck you!

I bet you he didn't even say hello to Meredith for you.

Yo, that is— that's so Griff though. The whole time though, Griff was like, after the games, he coming up to us, hey, we just gotta win one, we just gotta win one more, you know what I'm saying? He like, I ain't really got the X's and O's right now, but I know I put the right guys together And he had a, you know, he had a nice little group of psychos, man. We had a lot going on. We was having like arguments on the plane, but we was studying tape. Like we yelling, but it was passion. And then it was like everybody got quiet 'cause we was down 3-1 and we sat on that bus and Bron basically broke it down. Like we gonna go in here, we gonna win this game. They not gonna want to even win on our floor. They gonna hope it come back here. When it come back here, what they not going to realize is it's y'all shit to lose. It was like chills down my spine. He was breaking it down, but I could tell by the bus, everybody believes it. So it's like, we really going to roll the dice and get this done.

As we do the mythology and the recreation of the remembrance of this, I'm not going to allow you to make the Griffin mythology such that he wasn't saying to all of you, just make Draymond be an idiot. Can you guys, can you guys just get Draymond to be a jackass and we'll win everything? Remember, Draymond Green is one flagrant foul and two technicals away from being suspended.

Yeah, Game 5 he sat out. This is Green on the follow. Game 7 he went off. He went off because we literally were saying, you beat us.

Yeah, yeah, y'all told him that.

I mean, that was the game plan. 32 points for Draymond Green. Y'all can't win unless Steph is mouthpiece out and shimmying. If he not shimmying and making the crowd go crazy, brother, we not scared of y'all. Y'all don't have superpowers unless the light-skinned man does. So that's what, that's what, that's what was our, our mindset into that.

You mentioned the speech that he gave crossing the Bay Bridge, um, after that shootaround. But, and obviously you didn't play with him until 2015, but what did you see from LeBron that maybe he did take from him from Miami? How did he learn to be a champion, leader, everything else from those 4 years in Miami that translated, that you saw in Cleveland? He's a computer.

Like, if this was the Army, LeBron would be that decorated jacket military guy that's like all the way at the top from hours of everything you have to have to be there. You know what I mean? But it's just nonstop hours, nonstop putting the time in the gym, You know what I'm saying? Like, though he wouldn't play one-on-one with me at the end of every practice, he, he, he very much so used to be like, 'Shump, it's too much. You too thirsty.' Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, 'I'm gonna get hurt trying to play against you because you want to get under people's skin.' So he didn't really do that with us too much, which I figured if he was younger he would have, but you know how time it goes. But LeBron is one of those guys that if you say, 'Let's get shots up,' he's getting the shots up. Not only will he get the shots up, he'll tell you, you know, in the game a lot of times, Shump, I throw you this pass, you be halfway in between. I think you should just forget about even stepping into it and just chase it, run into it, chase it, take a dribble and just take off.

I don't care if you make it or miss it, but once a game I think you should just do that. So while we shooting, knock down 10, and on the 10th one he throw me that, I'm gonna go punch it just so we get used to doing it. So there might be times I knife in the middle of the playoffs, I get the dunk. The reason I'm coming up to him like that, I'm like, bro, you literally told me this was gonna happen, bro. I said, Bron is one of the best kids in the world because he knows how to play with all his toys.

Great one. You know what I mean?

He said, if you give him Christmas presents, though, LeBron play with his toys so good. He know every sound effect all of them make. He could pull the string on Woody. He know how to do it, and he gonna make it all make sense.

He could even make it work with the toy that doesn't remember the score in the Finals. There you go.

See? See? Now everybody can catch a straight. We gonna leave J out of this. We gonna leave my boy out of this now. We don't do that. My boy a 2-time champion. Yep. Shout out to him and Bron. 2 times, you see what I'm saying?

Thank you so much for spending this time with us and going down memory lane. Really appreciate it. Oh man, I love it, man. I love it. 30 feet tall.

I'm very impressed by them as well, man. My new thing that I'm actually doing, that chandelier is— that chandelier about to go. Okay, it's an old thing that just came with the house. Well then, I'm about to, uh, get the new one. I'm about to put the Jumbotron up. So yeah, next time y'all talk to me, yeah, hey, Yeah, yeah, baby.

I don't know if you guys remember where you were when this article came out in the same way you remember where you were when the decision released, but I do. I remember I just walked out of my car, was walking through my front door, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

LeBron James picks Cleveland. The decision made, the explanation simple enough. There it is, James' Instagram post: I'm coming home.

All the excitement that I've been around for 4 years, gone. It's going up north.

Yeah, uh, forget business. James' choice here entirely personal. For all the success he found with the Heat, There's one thing he couldn't replace: Ohio. He is a hometown boy, and the reasons he listed for returning to the Cavs on Sports Illustrated's website read like a love letter.

I just sat down and just read the whole thing and frankly felt good for him.

I had the opposite, the opposite reaction. My reaction was not less so by him leaving. You could go wherever, but I said, you're gonna go there? You're gonna go there to that man? That when— if you reach that mountaintop, they're going to hand the trophy to him first? All of that, I could not reconcile any sort of— whether it's goodwill back home, whether it's like, "Oh, this is how I went over the Memphises and the Utahs of the country that were booing for the last 4 years for some reason, even though they had nothing to do with it." All of that, I said, "Okay, I get it. I get all these karmic value, but you're going to reward that man?" Well, that was Dan's initial reaction is he's—

got to be the best at forgiveness than anybody else for going back to Dan Gilbert. But his actual initial reaction for the public was on Twitter, and it was this. Dan said, "Good for LeBron. Hugely grateful for the last 4 years. Even the last 10 days have been an amazing run. You won't hear a negative syllable here." And then underneath he said, "Uh, Poppy just tendered his resignation from the TV show and from being my father." My father was enraged and didn't understand it.

That will not surprise you a bit, I don't think. I've told you the story, maybe on this that my father has said he's been with the Heat all along. He's been with them ever since LeBron got here. That's loyal. Yes. So my father was a transactional person all along. His rage could be bought. I'm pretty sure he ripped on highly questionable LeBron for several years after he left Miami. I think it was 4 years, just every day ripping LeBron on television. Cow fans, LeBron, I want to keep them on their down. Ha ha ha ha ha!

I'm only kidding!

You know how bad you look? After that big, big Hollywood production you put on last night, you know.

There's going to be LeBron and his entourage, you know, puffing away a big cigar, waiting for them, you know, having a margarita, you know. Oh, why? How come it took you guys so long? LeBron is about to be 3-7 in the Finals. Not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, not 6. 7 Final losses.

I don't give a shit. I don't give a— I don't, I don't, I don't give a— bro, I don't give a— about you or anything that you do. And then LeBron sent 10 boxes of Blaze Pizza and my father stopped ripping LeBron and publicly thanked him for all his good work. So my father, just emotional and all of it's real. It all, it all actually happened. But I remember being surprised despite everything that I was saying about, you got to be grateful here. Don't be an idiot. Don't rip him. Come on. This is how you got him. I remember somehow even what he was wearing when he finally popped up after all those Wade flights and everything else in Brazil as a Cleveland Cavalier and feeling like a child, not an adult. How could you just go party and do that after doing this to Miami? Right. I had to sort of smother that down, but I was surprised it was even there. Like, I was like, how did I react reasonably to what he did here? But also, oh my God, I'm a journalist and I think I'm hurt.

So it made you feel a lot of what those Cleveland fans felt.

But it made me feel alive and dumb and betrayed and like a liar in print because I was trying to pretend it didn't bother me. There's a lot of stuff that happened in and around this that include me being suspended from ESPN for newspaper ads and a flight that was supposed to go up over the Akron homecoming, making fun of it from Miami, that had a banner that trailed, "Hey LeBron, you're welcome, Miami." But you weren't hurt. It— look, art comes from pain. And ESPN grounded the plane. And I had to talk people out of flying that plane over my objections once I'd grounded it from the Heat organization, because I couldn't plausibly deny that I hadn't flown the plane in defiance of ESPN edict because somebody from LeBron's camp called ESPN and made sure that nothing else happened to ruin in that homecoming. And so the plane was grounded, I was grounded, and the Miami Heat didn't necessarily want to stay grounded.

So when you do the joke where you were the mouthpiece for the Miami Heat at this time, you were attempting to filter what they were saying effectively, but still trying to get a message across for them?

No, just making jokes. Just making jokes. Okay. Yeah. Just making jokes in the middle of the spectacle because I'm a provocateur.

And do you have any regrets? Because again, you put up billboards in Akron after LeBron made the decision that said, "You're welcome, LeBron." No regrets there.

That was an amazing story. We got 10 billboards super cheap. I signed them Stugatz and Poppy to keep my hands clean because I'm a journalist and I would never partake in such biases. I've got to be objective in all instances.

I'm just very proud that you guys didn't write "your." Y-O-U-R.

I should have from Stugatz. I wish I hadn't. You know what? I wish I'd been talking to He pulled it. That's his right now.

Yes, I— you finally found one.

I don't want to put too much into the billboard, but was this just another example of just the blurring of journalism? Because we've got the players writing the stories, the GMs wanting to write stories, and now the journalists putting up jokey opinions on billboards.

What I will tell you, okay, comfortably, and I have my discomforts around this because the trust I have with and around Pat Riley is born of a just human relationship of admiring somebody who has worked here for 30 years. And I will tell you, well, preemptively, that in talking to him about how unhappy he would be at 80 years old, still doing this shit and unhappy, he described himself as a depressive, angry alpha. Like, not just at this time, but as a human being. Like, that he— Well, not a shocker, because if you look in a mirror, you will find Jimmy Butler there, and where it is that some of these things sort of clash.

Or I think of our good friend Adam McKay and his show Winning Time, Jerry West. Right? That's what Jerry West pretty much was.

Pat Riley's good with his loneliness, good with winning, being the only thing. He's 80 years old and he's still doing it, but it hurts sometimes when stuff like this happens. And so I will tell you that over the months of this happening, if your identity is tied up in your work and this kind of things happens, it's like a doctor who's a surgeon being sued for malpractice. You go to the depths of your narcissism and you go a little crazy if your entire identity is tied up in being this thing. Right? And so you can imagine the— I don't need to explain to you guys from a psychoanalysis perspective that taking this kind of humbling humility of you've lost your power, shame in front of everybody, I mean, you might as well feel naked in front of them.

Well, the famous quote that I remember from Michael Jordan when he discussed Pat Riley is, oh, the thing with Pat is he wants to have his sneakers on. He wants to be out on the floor. And that was back then. It remains that way now. That competitiveness never leaves him. And, you know, I would argue just for— as a human, it's okay to back off of some of that competitiveness. It's going to make your life a little bit nicer. But given the job that he has, he needs to be that person.

It's fascinating because I would say as I've gotten into my 40s and 50s, I have seen less nobility in competitive as a character trait. I've always thought competitive was a noble character trait. But Pat Riley still won't talk to Michael Jordan if they're in the same room together. Like, he still won't talk to Larry Bird. Like, no. Competitive is what he is, and he's in it. Angry, depressive alpha. And when those meet, they eat each other's faces.

You would think that after Kobe Bryant and after you hear Shaq talking about regrets and that, you know, maybe they would squash some of these beefs, but—

Well, that's interesting, right? Are you gonna be petty to the grave? Are you gonna be competitive to the grave? Shaq has his regrets with Kobe there that he can't heal some things. And they did fix their relationship, but this shit's hard. Because the alpha part, right? There's one. There's one that's responsible for the winning. There are very few people. I know we talk team and everything else, but when we talk alpha on stuff, there's one that thinks he's responsible. And Pat Riley and LeBron James think they're the same person. And LeBron James showed him at the end, no, old man, not anymore.

We're not. They kind of are. It's just There are different points of the cycle, right? And LeBron was cresting, and Pat Riley was on his way down. In Pat Riley's defense, years later, he would say that LeBron did the right thing. And also, years after that, he said on our program, and he got in trouble for this very famously. He apologized.

Cost him $25,000. $25 grand because he said on our show, drinking wine.

You only should pour 3 ounces. There's about 9 ounces in this glass. That was an answer.

I love that answer. That was an excellent answer.

I thought it was going to be a 9-ounce interview, and it's not. It's a 3-ounce interview.

He'd leave the key under the mat for him. I took that as he did the thing that we say he would never do with Michael Jordan, never do with Larry Bird, but it sounds like he did that thing with LeBron. Now, whether that turns into anything substantial, probably not, but the sentiment is out there, no?

He misunderstood my question and made the mistake of saying what it is that he said, and it got aggregated. It might have been the wine. That is correct. Uh, but when he said that, unlike with Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, it's because LeBron could still play and help him. Like, that's a different thing that if LeBron makes his team better, you don't have to be petty till the end. But Michael Jordan and Larry Bird won some games against Pat Riley that he will never forgive.

Well, if, if we want to break out the wine for our homework, it's fine. But I got some homework for you guys. Uh, first, a dictionary. Because the actual story we have to read was written by Pablo Torre, and I'm sure there'll be words in there that even the three of us don't know. Pffft.