Transcript of The Kawhi Leonard Trade Seems Imminent... | Hour 1 New

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You are listening to the Dan Levitan Show in partnership with the DraftKings Sports App, now live in all 50 states.

I want to play the audio of a child who doesn't want to be a Mets fan and explains why and how that child wishes to be a Yankee fan in What is excellent New York wine? I'm a Yankees fan.

Why? Why can't you be a Mets fan?

Because I don't wanna be the worst.

We're Mets fans in this house.

I don't wanna be the worst team.

So which team would you wanna root for?

Yankees.

Congratulations, Jeremy, you are no longer the most alienating audio and video product we had today.

Thank you.

A couple of other things that I wanted to get to, I don't wanna move too far from this Ja Morant thing, uh, so quickly, because you really have gone from the athletic team that was Ja Morant and Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson to Zach Edey and Cam Boozer. Like, the athleticism— and, and you've got Cedric Coward, who has to have the worst name in all of sports. Do we have a worse name than that anywhere in sports? Do we have anybody who's willing to nominate a name that's worse for an athlete than— than on the back of his uniform it just says Coward? Like, that's not great. That's not Great situation is a name. You've obviously got to change your name if you're Cedric Coward to Michael Coward.

Miroslav Šatan.

Yeah, that, that, that's a good one. He's not still playing. No, no. So among— it's a good one. It's a good— it says Satan on the back of his jersey and it's a good selection from you.

Chris Blewett, the kicker.

Yeah, there is a guy that's playing over in Europe that's scoring a lot of goals, but his name is Charlie Kirk and I always get the alerts for it and it's interesting.

There's a There was an Italian basketball player whose name was Gregor Fucska. Fucska is spelled F-U-C-K-A. Fucska though.

Coward, Satan instead of Satan. But coward is pretty— you're gonna have a hard time beating coward. The World Cup play yesterday, a couple of different things I wanted to talk about. Yes, a great day for upsets. Germany, a lot of people are now saying no longer a soccer superpower, and, and, and, but the people who are killing there's so many people killing the Dutch, the Netherlands, for playing a style that's different than the style that they always play. Like, they just, they went and got scared. They're sitting there playing 5-4-1 as a defensive strategy, and they are getting crushed by the idea that, um, they didn't play to their identity, that they played scared in the World Cup. And you've heard me say before, I've said this for many years now, okay, the goal in that sport is so valuable and so hard to get that I believe randomness can make an appearance as a measurement to provide you upsets in these rounds. But then when you go to penalty kicks after that, to me it's the equivalent of deciding the Super Bowl instead of in overtime, let's have the quarterbacks go out there and throw a ball through a swinging tire.

It's no longer soccer. It's something that's fun. I like it. I like it. I mean, put that pressure. They missed a ton of them yesterday and they're missing a ton because there's so much pressure. You feel the weight of the country on your shoulders, but it's not a good measurement on who the best team is. And it's no longer soccer when you decide it that way.

But then here's the fun part— or not the fun part, the interesting part— of yesterday. We were talking about this before the show, that Germany— obviously both Germany and Paraguay missed PKs. So you designate your first 5 to take those 5, but if it goes beyond 5, now you got to have, all right, who's next, who's next? And there's a rumor out there— I cannot say if it's founded or not— there's a rumor that the German vet players did not want to step up didn't take that, that opportunity, that responsibility. And so the player who ends up missing it had never taken a PK in his professional career before. And so now he's put in this position because no one else has the balls to do it. And of course he misses it. He becomes a scapegoat. But in reality, he's kind of a hero because he had the balls to step up.

Keepers are doing an incredible job. The scouting, they're guessing right a lot of the time. And also the mind games. There's this new uh, Skycam shot over the penalty spot that you could feel the frame of the goal shrinking as these keepers do their, their pre-kick antics. And you kind of get why they tremble so much. Like, the pressure in that moment is insane. Heel was unbelievable for Paraguay yesterday, and you could tell why no German player wanted to go high. The one player that had the balls to go high, the ball is still in the air.

It's, it's an incredible look at what are the most pressure-packed moments in sports. And, you know, as I'm I was watching this yesterday, and these are guys who play professionally in some of the greatest leagues and everything, but in that moment where it's like it's just you and the keeper, everyone's watching, and it's not just the 80,000 in the stadium, it's hundreds of millions of people. Hundreds of millions. Not 20 million, not 40 million, hundreds of millions of people are watching you. There's a point where it's like, yeah, all that I'm a pro, I get paid to do this stuff goes out the window.

Oh, but it's not that it goes out the window. This is what happens, and to me it's an interesting part about what is required in terms of mental mental strength. We won't remember this at all because the Knicks won the series, but Stephon Castle kept making important free throws. And the, the thing that I was watching at the end of that game with the pressure on Castle, a young, young player— and this, this pressure is so much larger— is it's actually the rare time that your practice and training don't help you, because they're the moments where you have to stop and think. The other times that you're playing sports, you're going with muscle memory, you're going with your training, you're not spending a lot of time thinking in the what you're doing because everything's moving so fast out there that there's no thought. But when you're standing in front of that keeper and you're expected to make the kick and you're thinking, oh my God, I've dreamt about this all my life, I'm now doing this for my country— thought does not help these people in these situations. Thought hurts these people in these situations.

And this is one of those times where I can acknowledge to Mike, the modern soccer fan, that this part is harder than it was back in my day, because back in my day Let's go. Let's just— I'm kicking, you're keeping. Let's see who beats who. And now with the video scouting and the technology where they are, it's like baseball managers, right? I'm just— oh, it's a lefty. All right, I'm gonna call up this guy over here to hit. Or it's so mathematically driven that you don't even know that, hey, I'm actually doing something that's algorithmically been detected. And as a result, the keeper has this information on the side. It is incredibly, incredibly hard. And everyone kind of looks at— oh, but the goal is 2 meters wide, right? How could you miss? But you know, it's not easy.

You'd be be really hard-pressed to find a penalty kick shootout that takes those types of twists and turns where Paraguay looks certain to be going through. All they have to do is put one away and they end up missing two, and you're like, wow, Germany escaped. And then Tah sails it and Paraguay just goes and buries it like the previous two kicks haven't happened before. He was amazing all three matches. When your worst match is a Brazilian stoppage time winner to avoid extra time you got something cooking. And that late-night match between Morocco and the Netherlands was as physical a World Cup soccer match as you will ever see.

How about these stats? As, uh, 10 penalty kicks have been missed, 10 out of 22, that's 45%. That's absurd. That's absurdly high. And it has to do with the pressure. And to Mike's point about how good the games are, the knockout games so far— Canada wins in stoppage time, Brazil wins in stoppage time, Paraguay wins in on PKs, and Morocco wins on PKs. Uh, at that point, we're in agreement, right? Not a a difference between what's happening there. That's not a great metric for measuring who's better. That's who's better kind of randomly at the end of games. I don't mean it as an indictment. It makes it great. All stakes make all sports great when you put stakes on them. But that's just randomness happening at the end of these games.

It is. But also, that's why Zlatan after the game said, that's why you don't let it get to PKs.

That's the strategy. Badou Wai probably goes into that match Let's try to get this to penalty kicks because that's how, that's how we win this match. So their strategy is defend like hell. We're not going to overextend ourselves. We're going to get this match to PKs. That is what the mentality is going into that match. And it's upon Germany, the far more talented team, to break them down. And they couldn't. And what resulted was arguably the single greatest knockout stage upset ever. In World Cup history. You can, you can offer up some other examples that maybe happened in the 1950s. There was a famous final back then, but all the other ones were either host nations, which is a great equalizer in these things. And South Korea had two of them when they hosted, one of which was mired in controversy because of the officiating. Russia versus Spain, huge upset. Russia was doping and a host nation. I think the talent disparity between these two teams was as great in an upset as I've ever seen before in the knockout stage.

Isn't this kind of strategy for like over 30 years now, going back to Schilvert?

Yeah, but they've had better— they've had better sides, guys that play over in Europe. And Sissoko is probably the only guy that—

that—

well, Gomez, who played here in Inter Miami, is playing for Brighton, which has had an okay season. But this is not a really talented Paraguay side, guys. Everybody was saying how much Paraguay sucked against the United States.

Yeah, because the United States beat them 4-1. That's why.

So Morocco also scored in stoppage time yesterday to tie the game, and of course they ended up going on and winning in penalties. But you saw, Dan, the guy for Netherlands that scored was a super dramatic story because his son— like, his, his wife had a miscarriage 2 days prior, and he scored the goal, which, by the way, that pass to him where he scored, buddy passed it while on his side on the ground and made this incredible pass to him. And then, uh, uh, Gakpo—

yeah, Gakpo makes an unbelievable hustle play. Yeah, chasing the play, ends up being at the right place at the right time because the sport often rewards that kind of hustle. And Dan, you mentioned why the Dutch fans aren't pleased with their style of play. It's not the same type of Dutch generation. They could afford to play a more beautiful, appealing style when they had better players. Gakpo is probably their biggest threat And he's coming off a very disappointing season for Liverpool.

Roger Goodell's got to do more with what he has.

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For 5 minutes I was watching everyone just like, nope, not letting you in, not letting you in.

So when I got up there, I had to say something and I said it.

Cheaters never prosper.

Chris Cody, my buddy, was saying, not today.

Yeah, but you're not today.

I think that was what he was adding.

Yeah, I'm telling you, the response I got from this guy, what I said was amazing.

Cheaters never prosper.

This guy yelled as angry as he could.

I ain't cheating.

This is the Dan Levatar Show. We've got an update.

Herb Ryan Winhorst, the Raptors and the Clippers have agreed on the player compensation for what's happening in a trade for Kawhi Leonard. He says it is Brandon Ingram who would be on the move to the Clippers. So you would send Brandon Ingram over to the Clippers and Kawhi Leonard over to the Raptors. He says that Kawhi Leonard would not be offered an extension by the Clippers at all should he stay in Los Angeles. The Raptors, of course, willing to offer that extension. He says they're haggling over picks at this point. He also noted that Anthony Davis is very unlikely to end up with the Golden State Warriors. They've reassured Jimmy Butler that he will still be a piece of everything happening there. So it seems as though Draymond Green and his opt-out is just trying to create space for LeBron James. And let's note, guys, that Draymond Green did post a Batman— no, not the Mexican Batman, but a Batman symbol yesterday, indicating that on the Draymond Green Show today there will be some sort of update.

Uh, I mean, Vincent Goodwill is saying on ESPN right now that Kawhi makes Toronto, uh, an immediate title contender.

Why?

What? Well, that was my reaction too. But he is better than Brandon Ingram. He's also a good deal older than Brandon Ingram. What are your thoughts there about Kawhi to Toronto, Amin? And what are your thoughts on Ja Morant going for so little to Portland when Portland has plenty of point guards and now they're going to be— they're going to have Damian Lillard and Ja Morant fighting for usage time.

So those are very wildly different topics. You should not have combined them. You should have just asked me about Toronto and stayed there.

But I'll do my job my way. You do yours your way. Thank you.

So Kawhi— the song of Kawhi is the same every year. If he's healthy, yeah, he's that good. He's incredible. And you put him in that lineup where they've got so many guys who are 6'7", 6'8", can switch, guys like Scottie Barnes and RJ Barrett and all that. Yeah, I think he absolutely vaults them into, hey, we're one of the best teams in the East status. Now, as we've seen in the last 8 or 9 years in the NBA, hey, if you're healthy, if you defend, if you could score and you're healthy, you can win the championship. You can absolutely win the championship. I don't think it's ridiculous that, oh no, no, not them. Having said that, that's a big if— if he's healthy. Now, he was healthy last year, so that's, uh, room to, I guess, be optimistic.

Wouldn't it stand to reason that then he wouldn't be healthy this year if he was healthy last year?

I don't know.

I'm just saying that, like, when someone says that about that team, we're saying if they're healthy. Obviously, when I say he could get hurt and they're still going to win it, that's not the case. Now, in the case of John Morant, Dan, you have to understand, they've been shopping this guy for the better part of a year and a half, and all of the offers— I use offers very loosely— were like, yeah, how many picks are you going to give me to take your problem off of your hands? The Ja Morant conundrum is thus: number one, just health. He has not been a healthy guy. He's never played more than 70 games or so in his career, particularly in the last 3 years. He's been hurt more than he's been healthy. Number two, his game really hasn't grown since he was an All-Star. He made it to the All-Star Game as this exciting, up-tempo, athletic guy in the open court, a great playmaker but poor shooter. The shooting never got better, and the league is now kind of— the book is out on him. We go under on screens, we force him to shoot and beat us from the perimeter, and he can't do that.

So it's like, okay, you're not available. When you are available, your game is kind of stagnated. And then the third part, obviously, is the off-the-court issues. So because of that, he became a very toxic product. They could give him away. Now, I think they actually did very well for themselves because Jeremy Grant and Chris Murray are guys you can flip. Those guys, they're not the guys for right now. They're for right— you know, they're not Mr. Right, they're Mr. Right Now. You can flip them and get assets, particularly as we get closer to the trade deadline where teams are going to have injuries. Oh my God, I need a 3-and-D wing. I got Jeremy Grant for you. So I think Memphis did really well for themselves. Portland is the interesting one because you mentioned Lillard and Josh. You forgot that you got plenty of Drew Holliday's there and Scoot Henderson is there and Shaden Sharp isn't a point guard, but he has the ball in his hands a lot. So you got 5 perimeter guys, short guys. How does that shake out? And the only thing I can think to myself is Drew Holliday, pack your bags, you're going somewhere else.

Yeah, they're talking about Jaylen Brown, a package that sends him back to Boston. I want to ask you this question, though. Ja Morant's 3-point shooting is worse than Russell Westbrook's. Is worse than Antetokounmpo's. He is a bad 3-point shooter, but he's, he's exactly the kind of player that I take a chance on because you do not find superstars in the discount bin when they're 26 years old. My question to you is, can Ja Morant become a shooter? He's worse than Westbrook and worse than Antetokounmpo from 3. Can Ja Morant fix this part of the game as all the great ones do When they evolve, they grow, they find the parts of their game that get better. Is that fixable?

I thought we don't want him shooting. Yeah, we don't.

Is it fixable? Technically, yes. Right. But one would think that a guy who's been hurt as long as he has would have the opportunity to become a better shooter. When Kobe Bryant early in his career broke his right hand, he just shot with his left hand in practice to the point where he was beating other players on the Lakers in horse. Shooting left-handed as they shot with their dominant hand, and it helped them. Like, when he came back, he became an ambidextrous scorer, really. I, I— there's nothing about Josh's shot that looks mechanically awful. It's not like Joakim Noah, for instance, so it's like, oh my God, you can't fix that. But the reality is we have a pretty big sample size of shots that he's taken. He does not shoot well. Even the best of his years at 34%, that represents below average in the NBA.

But if you can get back to that, like, you totally live with 34%.

I think you'd live with it, but then it would let you down at some point. I think at that point you still, you still hit this wall. And in part also because he plays a very aerial dynamic kind of style of play, but he's not a big dude. He's a little taller than I am. He probably weighs less than I do. So it's like, hey, you can't shoot, so everything has to be going towards the rim, and you're not big enough to take that kind of abuse over and over again and remain healthy. It's a really tough tough conundrum to have. I'm really curious what Portland's vision is.

You know, Mike brought up a good point that Avdija was incredible down the stretch, developed into a really nice player for them, and had the ball in his hands a lot.

Too much, too much. They didn't have point guards. They did last year, they did not have point guards.

But, but he, he was initiating the offense. He looked good, certainly against San Antonio. He ate. And I don't know how bringing in Ja Morant helps him out.

It's the old, uh, first class upgrade, right? Like, hey, Avdija, we don't have a point guard, you need to do all this stuff, so hey, come up to first class. Ooh, champagne. Ooh, lay-flat seats. And now we got a point guard. All right, go back to just standing in the corner and we'll run some stuff for you. Like, wait a second.

The reward is greater than the risk here when he's 26 years old and you can't get this kind of guy at this age in the discount bin. I take the chance, but I understand all the questions. He hasn't played more than 7 straight games since 2023.

That's insane.

Like, he doesn't— he doesn't play and he gets hurt a lot because the style of play that Amin is referencing, he can only be great if it's at the rim. And it hurts to be at the rim. It's hard to be at the rim. It's especially hard to be at the rim at his size. But to get that name at 26 for one of your bad contracts and no picks, like, that's just a crazy descent. And part of it is what Mike is saying, the joke— which shooting problem are you worried about with Ja Morant? Like, that's the off-court stuff is one thing, but the reason people didn't trade for him is the on-court stuff, and that he's not on the court.

For— exactly, he's not on the court is probably the biggest one. Like I said, the most games he's ever played is 67 games his rookie year. He's never played more than 67 games, and that was his rookie year. First 2 years, 67, 63, then it down to 57, 61, 59, 50, 20. That's absurd amount of time to be missing. If Ja had one of those things shored up, if he was like, I'm hurt and I have these off-the-court issues, but man, when I play, you can't stop me, kind of like Zion, or kind of like like, "Kwai, you could live with that." If it was, "I play a lot, but my game may be stagnated and I have this off-the-court issue," you'd be like, "All right, how can we get to the development part and get you better?" If it was, "I play a lot and I'm great and I don't have any off-the-court issues," obviously then it's like, "Yeah, give it to me," right? The problem is all three of these things are conspiring against him. And so the risk that you're talking about, Dan, when you say, "Well, he's only 26 years old," but that's a lot of risk you're inheriting on the off chance all of these things get solved, which by the way, we don't have any indication they have gotten solved.

Not him being healthy, not him being a better shooter, and definitely not him having reticence or kind of, or sort of, sort of a feeling of remorse of what he did. They're still kind of making a lot of excuses like, man, I didn't even get charged. I don't know why people make such a big deal. If that's your attitude about it, it's— that's still a red flag to me.

An update per Marc Stein and Jake Fisher: the Washington Wizards, who we've talked about with Anthony Davis, have interest in re-signing a several-time All-Star, a several-time MVP, Russell Westbrook, to pair with Anthony Davis and Trae Young. Also pointed out by Brian Winhorst, if the Kawhi Leonard for Brandon Ingram trade were to happen, it would put the Clippers in a space where they would have about $35 million in cap becoming a free agency player. But what I started to think about was, wait a minute, if they acquire multiple draft picks from the Toronto Raptors and they have one of their own that they could trade. Could they be jumping back into the Jalen Brown conversation? Because we said that they were a team that was interested in Jalen Brown about a week ago. And if they cleared $35 million, could they potentially opt in to their player option with Bogdanovich, take him and Derrick Jones Jr., ship them to Boston with a cacophony of picks, and acquire Jalen Brown in the runaround, and ultimately end up with Brandon Ingram and Jalen Brown in exchange for Kawhi Leonard? It's just a question I'm asking.

Is it a cacophony of picks or a cornucopia of picks. Is a cacophony— is a sound, is it not? A cornucopia is a holder for a variety of things, correct?

Why are you looking at me?

Um, I'm sorry, I was looking at you. Where's Jaylen Brown going to end up? Because now Portland— it seems like Portland can send Jrue Holiday, Scoot Henderson, Sharp— they can send that to Boston for Jaylen Brown.

I have to— Portland has to be making another move. It makes no— you're going to start Damian— a backcourt of Damian Lillard, Ja Morant. Do you want to play any defense at any point this season? Like, they're going to make another big move. So I do think that they're in on Jaylen Brown. I think Jaylen Brown's gonna end up in Charlotte. I do.

I think Charlotte's out.

Why do you say that?

Well, because I talked to Rod Boone for the Charlotte Observer on my radio show, and he said he knows everything.

Who'd you talk to, Zazz?

Who'd you talk to?

I'm just assuming, but he knows everything.

Yeah, I mean, he covers that team. He's pretty plugged in.

Cool. Yeah, people who cover, you know, Giannis, who said that it was going to be Boston.

Who was it?

He's here. I'm not gonna name names.

He's not gonna take a quiz, all right? He's just here to be Dad of the Year.

Rob knows everything.

Whatever. Celebrated today at 5 PM at La— well, you want to name the name of the bar? Mike's bar?

Las Rosas.

That's right. 5 PM, uh, Dad of the Year honoring— it's not even Dad of the Year, it's Dad of All Time.

It's always Dad of Honor.

And by the way, you have a really high bar to, to meet, reach, right? You know that, right?

For what? What are we talking about?

Last Tuesday they had a bunch of Scottish people in there. Oh, so now you gotta, you gotta You gotta meet that challenge.

Okay, I don't even know what that means.

You don't know what it means?

It was the biggest Tuesday in the history of Las Rosas, and they're following it up with Dad of Honor.

Why can't you get that right?

Because I don't believe it's a real thing. I believe that the nomination process has been contaminated by corruption.

I'm not going to explain this again. It is a very obvious grift to leverage his social media following to grow a concept I'm trying to get off the ground. In order to increase revenue on Tuesdays. What's so hard? Dan Levitar!

There's sunglasses in boxes today, but in my bed in the hospital, ending our lives all the same.

Jeremy Tatché!

It's the final nightgown. This is the Dan Levitar Show.

Avatar Show.

I want to, uh, play some sound here for people. Uh, for those of you who have been following Jeff Pearlman, he does a good job with storytelling. He does a good job on social media, sort of rummaging through, uh, these stories he's told in the past. He used to be a Sports Illustrated writer. He's the one responsible for that John Rocker story that ended up with the associations you now have for John Rocker. And Pearlman brought up something yesterday, and I want to discuss this with you guys because I think it's fair. Chris Johnson went on Good Morning America with Michael Strahan, and Chris Johnson talked about having ALS, and Jeff Pearlman is mad at the way Michael Strahan handled things. Listen to what Jeff Pearlman had to say. People who played football were 4 times more likely to wind up with Lou Gehrig's disease than people who don't. And the longer you play football, the more likely you are to wind up with ALS. Um, this was a peer-reviewed research paper. It wound up, uh, appearing in multiple medical journals, was cited by the American Medical Association. Um, its findings are ironclad. So look, there's a tie.

And the thing about Strahan that I was thinking of is you have Chris Johnson on this learning. And to me, if Michael Strahan were being genuinely inquisitive and genuinely at all journalistic— and I know he's not a journalist by training, but blah blah blah— there are a couple questions you have to ask. Number one, do you regret playing football? Looking at your life now, sitting here at 40, seeing the ties between football and AOS, the possibility that that game caused this, if you could do it all over again, would you play? And maybe he says, no, I would do it, it was worth it, blah blah. And maybe he says, no way, do it. Either way, that's the money question of a reasonable interview. That's reasonable criticism to me, and I believe it's reasonable criticism to file, uh, for the media in general not talking about these links. And you've heard me say before, John Skipper was the most powerful man in sports. Football does not want you talking about the violence causing early deaths or ALS or any of the risks involved with a sport that just keeps growing and growing and growing. And what you had was a story— was it NPR or PBS?

It was one of those. Yes, one of those outlets was doing the first reporting that there was of any kind on the link between concussions and the NFL and brain damage in America's most popular sport. John Skipper is the head of ESPN. He's got a partnership with the NFL. He partners with PBS on this reporting, and the reporting is being done by ESPN. ESPN is showing— it's shining a light on what CBS is doing. And Jon Skipper soon realizes, wait a minute, the conflict of interest here on journalism and my partnership with America's most popular league is me. I'm the conflict of interest. And so ESPN recuses itself from the concussion reporting. Michael Strahan has a responsibility in that instance to ask some sort of football-related question, and he did not do it. And he came under no criticism from anybody except Jeff Pearlman, because we don't actually want to No, we don't. Like, it's just too uncomfortable. You can't enjoy that thing the way you do every day of the week. Soon it'll be every day of the week, soon enough, as soon as they get all the Christmas days and everything else and they knock everyone else out of the way.

You don't actually want to know what it is when these guys are limping through the retirement homes to an early death.

Do you have to be a journalist to have a journalistic responsibility? And also, Jeff Pearlman went on to add, it's not just a GMA problem or a Michael Strahan problem, though that was the focus because he had the exclusive. Media in general ignored this. ESPN most certainly. And I gotta think the Super Bowl had something to do with it. This is the first Super Bowl ABC has had in decades. GMA is going to have a lot of access over there. ESPN, wall-to-wall, it's going to be the biggest thing for that network ever. I gotta think the tightrope that they have to walk with their, their partnership with the NFL had something to do with the interviewer and the line of questioning.

So what is— so is it more likely that Michael Strahan never thought to ask it, or more likely that producers told him, we're not asking this.

He's not a journalist, right? So again, to the original question, what's his journalistic responsibility there? I gotta imagine he's a natural fit to be selected by Chris Johnson to conduct that interview, and he is not held to the same standard, though Jeff Pearlman is trying to.

And in an ideal world where we don't have have all these corporate kind of synergies or whatever, his producers would be the ones say, Mike, you got to ask him this. Like, we don't— we shouldn't have an expectation that Strahan would have that top of mind. Like, like Mike said, Strahan's not a journalist, but the producers are.

So we're really talking about the— like, Jeff Pearlman is naming Michael Strahan, calling Michael Strahan a coward. Like, we're really talking about the producers there.

I don't think he called him a coward.

This is a Disney thing.

Is that the time and place though for it?

Like, yeah, but, but it's him revealing something. It's not it's him, like, I just feel like when he's telling— like, that's Chris Johnson deciding to tell the story, but we're gonna give him hard-hitting questions.

Well, Chris, it's a Q&A format. Like, he could, he could put out a social media video and say, I have ALS, respect my privacy. He chose to have a sit-down conversation such that it was.

And also, he's not— that's not a hard-hitting question for Chris Johnson. Like, that's, that's not a hard— it's a hard-hitting question from the NFL, it's like, "Oh, what are you doing? You're kind of messing up my thing over here." But for Chris Johnson, it's like he either doesn't regret it, and we've heard players say, "I don't regret it. I'd do it all the same," or he says, "Man, I wish I'd done things differently." But it's not like an uncomfortable question for him. He's the one. He's already got ALS. It's not— that's not gonna change anything.

I just want to add real quick, 'cause I don't want it to sound like I'm calling Michael Strahan a coward.

It sounded like you were calling him a coward.

You're right. It did sound like that. But Jeff Pearlman said here Chris Johnson is dying and he showed up to GMA to tell a story and Michael Strahan, one of the great cowards on TV in my opinion, sits there and pretends, yada yada.

So yeah, there's a lot that we don't know. It could have been coming from Chris Johnson. It could have been a condition for the interview. Sometimes when that's a condition for an exclusive like that, it is stated on the front end.

But you think it's possible Chris Johnson didn't want to broach that topic?

I'm saying I have to put that on your radar. I think a lot of people are assuming the NFL has something to do with this. When I've worked for Disney, there's a lot of self-governance there when it comes to minding their partnerships, and it could have been entirely a Disney call.

And also, we have to accept that maybe Jeff Pearlman was all about cowards like Cedric Coward. Not like him being a coward, but just a guy with Coward on the back of his jersey.

Let's be clear on something here. Uh, it's not a hard-hitting question. It's just a question. It's just a question. Like, that's not— the discomfort there is not Chris Johnson's. You just ask him. It's a curiosity. I'm curious. I'd, I'd like to know the answer to that question, but it makes me wonder what the audience does when it comes to discernment on what do you want there. Do you want just the access that gives you the exclusive story and the compromises that have to be made sometimes? With that access? Because the power of that interview is that this person in this condition with this resume— used to be the fastest player in the league— is in front of you and he cannot speak. He's computer-generated. Uh, he is having trouble moving because ALS can move quickly through all people, young people included. And what does the audience— what is the audience— what's the answer to my question? What does the audience want? Because to me, that seems like perfectly reasonable criticism, uh, and I don't think you have to call him a coward. I think that's excessive. But to be critical of not asking what to me is the elephant in the room question, because the only reason Chris Johnson is on there is not because he has the disease, it's because he played football.

Like, the reason Chris Johnson is being interviewed is because this is a former athlete of some name. They're not interviewing random people with ALS. They're interviewing this person. And so to neglect that question is an omission that I don't know why the omission is there, and I'm curious. And if you ask the question, you remove the hole in your interview by just asking a question. Do you think if football had anything to do with this? That's a kinder way. Do you regret playing football is a kinder way of doing it. I would have asked, do you think football had anything to do with this?

It's probably a question Chris has answered to friends and family scores of times. It's the number one question he had to have asked his doctor, right? Obvious, right? I'm sure it's an occupational hazard there. As Jeff outlined, you're 4 times more likely to suffer from this terrible disease if you play that sport in particular. So I, I understand being respectful of it, but I— in his personal life, there is no question that Chris Johnson has been asked this question. He's asked himself that question, no doubt.

As a viewer— like if I was sitting and watching it live yesterday, because I knew Chris Johnson was about to make a very serious personal announcement on GMA, and there was rumors that he was going to let everybody know he has ALS, I would be tuning in live wanting to know if Chris Johnson believes— just his belief, there's no scientific evidence— if it's because of football.

I think there is some scientific evidence when Jeff Pearlman is saying it's 4 times more likely to happen to football players with what we know so far about brain damage. What I'm I'm gonna ask the group of you though, in terms of what's wanted here. The reason he's on is to make the announcement, which is fairly shocking, that a young person, uh, who used to be the fastest player in the NFL is now trapped in the prison of ALS where his body has betrayed him and is fighting against him and he's trapped inside. That's why you're having him on to make the announcement. Announcement to do the interview. But if an interview is meant to get inside of a person's head, the thing that I want to talk to you guys about, and the thing that makes me genuinely curious about what Chris Johnson would answer the question, do you regret playing football? Almost every football player I have ever talked to, no matter their condition, says they would do it all over again. But I'm always asking before the nursing home. I'm always asking before the end? I'm asking a good deal before the end.

I'm asking 30 and 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds. I'm not asking 70-year-olds about your limping through pain all the time because of what it is that you did. It can be assumed because what you did contributed to how you're now living life. I'd be genuinely curious what Chris Johnson's answer to that question is, given the horrors of that particular disease at his age, because it's not supposed to be at the end when you're as young as Chris Johnson is, and it doesn't get any better from here. It— there's not a cure. It's only going to get worse from here.

The answer may very well be that he would still have done the exact same thing if he feels like it was worth it to set up his family to live comfortably for the rest of their lives without him. Like, that would be—

yeah, I've told you this story though. I've told the story here of being on a professional sideline with Ricky Williams about, I'm gonna say, 9 years after football, and I'm horrified by an NFL sideline. Like, everything out there is moving way too fast, and the sounds being made by the collisions are legitimately scary. And Ricky's standing next to me, and he just mumbles under the— under his breath, "What the hell was I doing?" Because his concept is warriors don't measure consequences, otherwise they wouldn't be warriors. Like, that— warriors don't sign up for the consequences. They sign up for the, the nobility, the glamor, the money, Whatever else is there, but consequences is not something— you don't choose to be a warrior if you know that these are the consequences. How many people do you think are— how many football players do you think are watching that and thinking, that can happen to me, like a knee injury can happen to me? How many do you think are watching Chris Johnson on GMA and saying, that can happen to me, I can be in my 40s trapped in my body, no longer self-sufficient, I need the help of all of my family in order to keep me upright and functioning?

I don't think a lot of football players are doing that.

Speaking of warriors, son of potential future warrior LeBron James, Bronny James Jr., has had his $2.3 million contract fully guaranteed.

Whoa!

That's big news!