Hour 1: A Real Piece of ****
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This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast. This is behind the bit. This is behind the bit. This is behind the bit. For the past 20 years, you've seen and heard bits on the Dan Levitar Show. You may have wondered to yourself, what are these bits? What's wrong with these people? ♪

Benny in Fort Lauderdale. You're on 790. Hi, this is Benny from Fort Lauderdale. We've established that. I want to say that the 72 Dolphins are so special because they won every game and then they won all the playoff games. That's a pretty good call. Who is this?

Is this your favorite show caller? Oh, my God. That is a perfect sports radio call. Comedically, the timing on, hi, this is Benny from Fort Lauderdale. We've established that. Stu Gantz has never been sharper. To then follow that with the single most obvious point that you can make, which is that the underdog

defeated Dolphins won all their games in the regular season and then the postseason. That is a perfectly stupid call to encapsulate all sports radio caller wisdom. But then to have Hawk on the back end kind of finish him off, finish Benny off. You know, it's like the biggest compliment. We've been fortunate to have two super smart executive producers who are also very funny guys. They know funny when they hear funny. I remember saying we've established that and seeing Hawk

burst out in laughter in the other room. And for us, it's like the highest compliment because if Hawk is laughing, if Mike is laughing, if Chris, Billy, if they're laughing, Roy, the audience is laughing because those guys don't laugh at much. So we know they're laughing and we hit all the notes. It was perfect. What he had to say was the 72 Dolphins was so special because they won all the games. Like, oh, come on, man.

This is why we don't take calls anymore, because of that. Dan always had an open disdain for the traditional sports radio caller and established rules pretty quickly. Don't ask me how I'm doing. You don't actually care. It's just filler. Just...

get on the show, give me your point and leave and we can go on to the next one. Now callers eventually became a huge part of our show with fakes and songs and we established quite the top that nature with calls and calls can actually be good.

And Benny from Fort Lauderdale, when he was screened, did not necessarily fit the mold of a caller that would get through on the air with Dan. Very traditional sports take. If you hear the call, it's not really a topic we'd say yes to. But I remember in the screening process,

Benny from Fort Lauderdale sounded so unique and so funny that we thought that if we put this caller on the board, magic might possibly happen. - That was one of the original calls we took.

want to be that show. We were that show for about eight months taking calls, but that was within those eight months. And Dan had rules with the callers. He wanted you to get right to your point. He didn't care. Like, you don't care about how we're doing. We don't care about how you're doing. I mean, we do. Get to it. Get to it. Get to it. And so Dan established these rules. Don't give us your name. Don't give us your location. Just get to your point. Just go.

Hey, it's Benny from Fort Lauderdale. And my point is the Dolphins were undefeated because they won all their games in the regular season and all the games in the postseason. How the f*** did that call get through? It's really amazing.

They really milked this one for content, right? Yeah, the most famous thing we did was the Elton John parody. I wouldn't say parody. We just put Benny from Fort Lauderdale in and from Benny actually saying his name and location and replaced it with Benny from the Jets. That was all we did. Benny from Fort Lauderdale. Benny from Fort Lauderdale.

So we had a top that nature when it came to calls and all the callers found Benny from Fort Lauderdale funny and it became canon. Essentially, people would be fake Benny from Fort Lauderdale, fake Cuban Benny from Fort Lauderdale, and they would just replicate the call. You're listening to the Dan Levitt Show. Spanish Benny from Fort Lauderdale. Spanish Benny, you're on 790 The Ticket. Hola, I'm Benny.

Establish that. That's it. What is happening? Eso es un bueno caller. ¿Cuál es su nombre?

It had quite a few legs. We were laughing at Benny from Fort Lauderdale for quite a few years after that call. I'm glad this bit exists actually so we can revisit it because that is certainly one of the more well-known calls in our show's history. - You cannot do better than that in its stupidity, in its simplicity.

But Benny was right. Yes, he was right. He's right forever. If you love our show, there are certain staples to the show. And I will safely tell you that Benny from Fort Lauderdale, if you've been listening since day one, that is a top 10 moment for you all time, I think. Yeah, it's pretty high. Did he ever call in again?

No. No. We went looking for him. No, we went looking for him. We never found him again. Benny was a one-time only appearance forever. Had we found him again, he still would have tried to hammer home the point. 72 Dolphins, greatest team undefeated. I miss Benny.

I do. A real one-hit wonder, Benny from Fort Lauderdale. Let me just hear the call here again because I think all of you, I think this is the rare voice where all of us will conjure something similar in terms of a visual image. I don't think a lot of us will have different visuals on what this person looks like when they sound like this. Benny in Fort Lauderdale. You're on 790. Hi, this is Benny from Fort Lauderdale.

We've established that. I want to say that the 72 Dolphins are so special because they won every game and then they won all the playoff games. That's a pretty good call. Who is this? He's pink, right? That person is pink. That person has gotten too much sun. I see him leathery.

Okay, either way, too much sun. Yeah, too much sun. I don't know if it's the best caller in show history, though, because I believe Lombardo was the best caller in show history. I don't have a better caller than this in my memory. Al, you're on 790. Yeah, hi, Lombardo. Dan, I can't believe how accurate you are on this obvious point. Well, how...

Slow on the uptake. The other guy is. It is so obvious. I mean, you take a look at golf. Someone who has the yips. Sam Snead, my God, in the late 50s, he had to go to side saddle. Then they had to change the rule. You couldn't go croquet. He still went side saddle the opposite way. Both feet to the left.

of the ball. You see guys like Bernhard Langer that have had the yips and went to the long putter three different times. You've got guys like Ian Baker-Fitch, who was one of the greatest putters in the world, won the British Open, got the yips, went to the long putter, couldn't even putt again, quit the game, became an analyst. You go to

to a pool or no a better example you go to bowling are you trying to tell me that if Mark Roth is starting to miss a lot of tent pins in the channel or hooking it too much that he isn't going to go smart enough which he eventually did to a lighter ball

A 14-pound ball, sometimes it'll look like a little child's speckled ball, your local bowling alley, so we can move cross alley and throw it up to make 10 pins at the 95% rate you're supposed to on the PBA tour. Or if you're shooting pool and you have the closed bridge that all great players have, like Jimmy Chiara, who was the 1943 champion of the world who broke me. Although he did say I had a choke stroke for the money, and he was right, I was a better three-cushion players player.

If you can use an open stroke like Joan Rivers on bad acid, if you get the job done, get the job done. It's all about whatever works, works. It's just like life. If you want to go through life trying to fornicate with the most beautiful woman in the world that you can while also have a main squeeze and four or five mistresses on the side, rock on, and then try to keep

trading up. But then once you're lucky enough to find that foxy angel of your life, if you're not smart enough to grab on to her and hold on to her for 14 years while you enjoy your summer home in Lake Garda for six weeks every year, then you're a dummy. But what works, works to guts, you lame uptake. That's not real. It is real. And when I met him one time, his cologne was coffee and cigarettes. Unsurprising, I know.

That scenario at the end was way too specific. It really was. He also sounded like Taffer midway through. He did. The 95%? He sounded a lot like Taffer explaining why beer at 36 degrees is the optimal temperature, but at 38 degrees, you're getting 50% of the keg as opposed to 95%. Did you see that Taffer tweet the other day?

Tony, you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Where he's on the private jet and it's kind of like a profile of him and it's like a bar hates to see me coming. Oh yeah, coming, yeah. I thought of you both immediately. Oh man, that guy's great.

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forget about it. You know what else you can do with Peloton? Oh, I can't believe we just blew that game. How am I going to sleep? Boom. Peloton has classes for sleeping. Just put it on and fall asleep. Find your push. Find your power with Peloton at one Peloton.com. Don Levitard. I don't like smutty either. Stugatz. Women stay home in the kitchen where they belong. This is the Don Levitard show with the Stugatz.

I did that to my wife the other day. She said something Taffer. She said I was doing something Taffer related. And then I looked around like the Christmas tree, you know. Your Christmas tree's up? The imaginary Christmas tree. The way that we say Taffer talks to people. My Christmas tree is not yet up, but I don't think it's inappropriate to buy a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving. Put it on the poll, please, Juju, at Levitard Show.

do you think it's okay to buy a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving? Because especially if I'm buying, I've had the last couple die on me because they're not cut right at the bottom. So they become these dry things that represent sadness in the middle of my living room. But if I'm going to get Christmas,

The pain in the ass of putting this in the car, on the car, getting it home, making a mess of my car, all of that stuff. I want to enjoy it for more than a month. I want to keep it up a little extra on the front end, and I want to keep it up a little extra on the back end, because I've got to be honest with you. Don't enjoy decorating the Christmas tree. Don't enjoy any of that. Enjoy having one. Enjoy having one, but don't enjoy the process of decorating it. Are you like...

Beating a rush or something? Buying this tree the week before Thanksgiving? I want it the maximum amount of time. If I'm going to get a live Christmas tree that I then have to take care of, if I'm going to bring a living thing into my house that's going to shed, it's going to be something that is difficult to get into my house, it's big, I'm going to be sticky after I put it in the house. You could also be describing a horse. Dan, this is...

for Americas. Yep. Because there are those of us that don't celebrate Christmas, so it's like everything you're describing is just some foreign concept to me. The idea of you get a tree and you gotta take, I didn't even know you had to take care of the tree. I swear to God. You get a fake tree. It's got a water. No, I thought the real tree, it's in a pot.

Yeah. I thought the real tree just stood up like in the corner. I thought it was balanced. It just like stayed like perfectly cut. Yeah, like they slice it in a way where it's like flat and then they put it up there. You thought a tree could last for two months without any water, totally dehydrated, just sitting in a corner of my house without any foundation. It's evergreen. That's the...

It's not, though. Mine, the last two years, have turned brown because the water isn't being absorbed from however it is that the bottom of the tree is supposed to be cut. Also, those pots have screws in it with rubber stoppers that you can actually straighten a tree with. Yeah.

So what is too early for you to, uh, see Christmas decorations anywhere? I'm talking about outside. Like I understand that you're saying that these aren't your religious beliefs, but, um, I've told you guys before Christmas music makes me happy. I like, we don't have a change of seasons in South Florida, even though it's going to be possibly in the high fifties this, uh, this weekend, we're all a little scared of what, what cometh this way, uh,

59 degrees a possibility. But I that's the season change to me when I see lights and everything else because not every year do we get the 59 degrees. I love when you bust out your old English. This time of year I think we're we have a late Thanksgiving this year, right? Like it's the 28th. I think it's

We're starting to see it out in public places, right? It's okay right now. Dan, you said Christmas music makes you happy. Do you have a specific favorite Christmas carol? Little Drummer Boy. Really? Yes. I bought these gifts for you. Do you have a favorite? I do. I thought that you didn't. This is for America. It's music, but I like music.

I think decorations. I like decorations. I like lights. I don't like decorations. I think that's a hassle. But I do love this song, I Want Hippopotamus for Christmas. You ever heard that one? I have, yes. I think we have it here. But I don't think that that would classify as anyone's best Christmas carol. That's the best Christmas carol.

Oh, there's two. One from The Temptation, Silent Night, you know, when everybody sings, Merry Christmas. And Donny Hathaway, This Christmas. Those are the two. Donny, what about Mariah Carey, All I Want for Christmas is You? Meh. No? Overrated. James Brown, Funky Christmas? Oh, that's good. What about... Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto. Christmas in Hollis? Run DMC, Christmas in Hollis? Does that count? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Christmas is in the name.

It's Christmastime in Hollis, Queens. It's in Hollis, Dan. You don't like Hollis? I just don't think of Christmas carols being hip-hop. I don't think of Christmas carols being racist. I wonder why I don't associate Christmas carols with hip-hop. All the hippopotamus will do.

You just associate it with hippo pop. This can't be the best of Christmas carols. It's a fun song. Have you ever seen the video? She's got a music video. We know the answer.

It's DJ Laz's Un Burrito Sabanero. Period. Period. It is pretty good. Springsteen Santa Claus is coming to town. Second Springsteen reference of the show. It's not here, buddy. No, no, no. It's Jackson 5. Can you guys get for me? Are we allowed to play what it is that Tony is referencing there? Un Burrito Sabanero? Of course. DJ Laz edition, yeah. I don't know the DJ Laz. We need the Big Booty Bass mix, though. You think locally that... Wait, there's a remix?

It's the Big Booty Bass remix. No, there isn't. They only played that one on Power 96, though. Cynthia, if she's out there, she knows. Bass. Let's see if we can find that. Speaking of Miami, incidentally, I want to tell people again that today is Give Miami Day. Let's go to GiveMiamiDay.org because among the people that I would give to, all of this is tax deductible, and

Pelican Harbor, if you're looking for charities and don't know which ones to choose, the Pelican Harbor Seabird Station does good work. The Miami Waterkeeper does good work. And Guitars Over Guns does good work. If you're looking to raise money for some people locally here who are trying to help in good and pure ways, if you have some disposable income and want to help Miamians, GiveMiamiDay.org is where you go.

I don't have any Christmas decorations in my apartment currently, but when I picture putting up Christmas decorations, Dan, it's the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I'm watching a NFC North game on Fox. It's like Bears-Vikings. And the da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da.

Is on the TV. Is that a Christmas card? Well, I'm like, yes. When they do the, like, sleigh bells version? Yes, oh my God. When they do the graphics with, like, the little ornaments and, like, the little Frasier furs. And the robot comes out with a Santa hat on. Cletus. And he does, like, a spin move. Oh, it's the greatest thing. This is how you get ready for the season. Oh, wow. Three Americans.

The reason I think I'm allowed to put up a Christmas tree before Thanksgiving is because I believe we're getting football weather this weekend. I believe it's going to be snowing in Lambeau. And once you throw the snow on Lambeau's field, I'm allowed to put up my Christmas tree. Am I not? Like, isn't that... It's frozen tundra is the... I mean... That's the go-ahead? It's 49ers-Packers, too. Big game. Big game with the snow, Dad.

People keep saying this isn't a good NFL weekend. I disagree. We've got a lot of good matchups this week. We got the Har Bowl Monday night. I can't wait. Can you guys tell me, because I want to go through here, what is happening in a couple of different locker rooms? And I'm curious, I mean, specifically how it is that you react to what's happening in the 76er locker room. So...

In the locker room of the New York Giants, Daniel Jones has been benched. And there are a couple of people in that locker room who are mad at their own organization for benching Daniel Jones, messing with his money on top of...

You know, making a decision that might not be a football decision to save some money on Daniel Jones and his injury risk. And also Thibodeau for them had said, or is it Thibodeau? I always get those wrong. I always put an H in there with both the coach in New York and the defensive end in New York. I think Thibodeau is a defensive end.

No, Thibodeau's the coach. I think they're both Thibodeau, if I'm not mistaken. But it's not Thibs, it's Tibs, and I think it's supposed to be pronounced Thibodeau. No, they pronounce it Thibodeau, but much like Kristen Pulisic, Thibodeau does not pronounce his name right. They've Anglicized it because people reading it in English as T-H makes a th sound, but it's a French name. T-H is a th sound. It's Thibodeau correctly pronounced, but...

He doesn't pronounce it that way, so we go along with things and call him Thibodeau. Okay, so the Giants defensive end Thibodeau, though, did say before the season, said it to anybody who would listen, put his name on it. We should have paid Saquon before we paid Daniel Jones. And I want to ask you, those financial issues that players are thinking about and talking about before I get to the 76ers,

How problematic is it? I know it's normal, but how problematic is it that your players are looking at the organization with distrust on how they spend money? And this is a unique kind of transaction that's for, hey, we're destroying our bodies for you.

Company. Company that pays us. And we don't agree with how it is you're spending the money. We thought that Saquon should have been paid before Daniel Jones. You let Saquon go. You made us worth. And now because you paid Daniel Jones, you're trying to save money on Daniel Jones. How much of an infection is all of that? I mean, it's...

massively detrimental to morale, but I think the more interesting thing is that they would frame it that way. Usually players would say, "We shouldn't have let Saquon go. It ain't up to me to figure out the money parts. We should not have let him go." Was usually how they say it. For them to say it specifically, "Hey, you should have paid him before you paid that guy." Now you're a little bit of, within the locker room culture, pocket watching.

That speaks. Isn't everybody though? They don't usually talk like that. Usually they try to, they tend to avoid counting other people's money or how they got their money or when they got their money. It's usually, like I said, it's usually expressed as we should have never let Saquon go.

And now implicit in that is like, we should have paid him before we paid the other guy. But you don't say that part out loud. You just let people connect the dots from there. So that is weird. But then it's also weird that having said that, I'm still going to stick up for Daniel Jones when he gets benched because that's kind of shiesty what's happening to him too. It is, I mean, it's not great and it definitely does not feed belief in the people running this thing, right? I don't trust management.

And maybe I don't even trust my coach either. To make matters worse, too, your QB2, who you benched Daniel Jones, you have Drew Locke. All that situation is he has incentives in his contract of playing time. If he plays a certain amount of percentage of games, if he's got a certain amount of yards, touchdowns, all these different things, he makes money. So it's like we're not even going to QB2. We're going to QB3, who we swore...

You would never see again. And now the return. Please save us, Tommy DeVito. I'm not sure about this because I'm still learning in these circumstances all the time. I think shysty is a slur. I don't think that that's something that we should be saying. I don't know about Irish goodbye. I do know that that's a stereotype, but I will learn with the audience as we go and get correct.

wherever it is that I need to be corrected on that because when I heard that, to my ear, it feels like a mistake I've made before that you're not supposed to say that. - It's also what we call ski masks now too. - Ski masks, which is again used because people rob people when you wear one of those. - I understand, I'm just telling you I don't know. I'm not even saying that I know that, I think it.

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The other locker room I wanted to talk to you about, though, more interesting, is the 76ers locker room. They are now 2-12, and they lose again last night. Paul George hurts his knee. And Joel Embiid is mad and feels betrayed about the fact that his 32nd meeting with Maxie was reported as a leak, as being called out by Maxie.

And he's portraying it as this is a 30 second conversation. And the part that he's angry about is not Maxie calling him out. It's that it leaked. It's the same thing that Draymond Green and the Warriors were mad about, where all of a sudden the video of Poole getting punched is everywhere. These are communities that believe in us against them. And when stuff gets out of the locker room, it ends up with Joel Embiid saying, quote,

Whoever leaked that is a real piece of shit. It's bad to call someone a piece of shit, but when you put the real in front of it, a real piece of shit...

- Damn. - You're extra angry. Like it's not enough to call that person a piece of shit. You want it known on the front end that that's a real piece of shit. It ain't one of those fake little dog poops you put somewhere. And my thoughts here, Amin, are that that locker room is in a distrustful place

And Joel Embiid is the kind of superstar that if you do not properly appreciate what it is that he's doing for you, it feels like he could get into his feelings about, well, why don't I go do this somewhere where they will appreciate what I'm doing for them instead of where it is that I'm presently breaking my body. It just seems like an escalation of things that have been happening since the summertime. All these things are building up on Joel Embiid. But Dan, like,

I feel him, man. I'm with him on this. Look, I wear two hats. One hat is this job that I'm doing right here. And yes, I like to hear that story and that gives us content for the week and content on Oddball and on NBA radio. So many places I can go and talk about this.

But the other hat I wear as a basketball guy, I'm disgusted. We barely got out of that room. We barely got out of that room. And someone's already, ooh, you'll never believe what happened. Like, it disgusts me. And this is the part where, again, I've been told in the past, I mean, you can never come back because the way you do things, I'm a dinosaur. Because I would literally round up everybody in the room and be like, phone's out.

I need to, right now, I won't say anything. Once we get a world, everyone who's in the room is in the room right now, phones out. We're going to find out who leaked that shit. Because there is, it's not just about sacrosanctness or sacred ground or whatever. This is our internal issues as we are internally trying to fix it. And someone's out there thinking this is a good thing to tell anybody on the outside, let alone a newsbreaker. So,

Him being irate like that in the same way that Draymond was irate about and the worst of words. And you guys were like, well, that's not I'm like, I'm telling you, this thing only works if we all believe that we're together on this. If someone is running around, running their mouth about what happens here, it all falls apart. And you know what the irony is, Dan? It reminds me of a different story, completely different story.

the Adam Schefter, Ray Lewis to FAU report, right? That was instantly like kiboshed by a bunch of people. Can I see that one? Or is that one a little... It's sacrosanct is the other word you were looking for. I know. Kibosh. I was doing a cinephile reference when I did that one. That's right. But anyways...

What's Cinephobe? Oh, I'm glad you asked. It is the podcast where Zach Harper and I review movies that are poorly rated on Rotten Tomatoes and try to ascertain whether they're accurately rated. Maybe they didn't get a fair shake. It's Cinephobe. It's produced by Anthony Majig. You can wherever you get podcasts. This week, Batman Forever, starring Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Dent and Jim Carrey as the Riddler. It's the one with the nipples and the bats. Yes, Val Kilmer. Val Kilmer as Batman.

But I guess. Tommy Lee Jones was Harvey Dent in that one? He was Two-Face. Two-Face. He was Two-Face, yeah. And trust me, his rendering, a little bit different from Aaron Eckhart's. You definitely want to catch this episode this week. Is that where you soured on Jack Nicholson?

In that movie, the way that or where he played the Joker, how he played the Joker. He did it great. He did a great. He did a good job in that movie. I'm more about like the run of Jack Nicholson movies from like 1990. Everything from Wolf on, basically. Like, come on, guys. As good as it gets?

It's Jack Nicholson with a midlife crisis or whatever. Midlife crisis? Whatever it was. With a tick. With a tick. With some sort of... Anger management? Sneaky good. No, it's not. Yeah, like OCD. That's right. An OCD tick. I digress. So, Ray Lewis, right? This report comes out. It's immediately squashed, right?

And but it's squashing away saying, look, there has been no direct communication between Lewis and FAU, meaning maybe it went through some intermediaries, maybe some feelers were out in whatever direction.

But again, the fact that someone is like, hey, you know, FAU is asking about Ray Lewis. Oh, word, okay. Adam, you'll never believe what happened. Like, just shut the F up for five seconds. Let life happen. There's no value for you to be the first to tell Adam Schefter this. You think Adam Schefter is going to get you a job one day because, oh, this guy is a lead candidate to be head coach or whatever? Like, it's so dumb that people are selling out their people, their quote-unquote friends, right?

For what? For fleeting? Are you allowed to do what Amin would do in this situation as an HR violation? Absolutely not. Am I allowed to say, hey, everybody, your phones? No. No. But Amin is basically saying that what he wants in the locker room environment is an employment violation. This is, I treated this with the utmost supreme respect.

level of alertness. Like this is our top priority is whatever happens in here. You like it, you don't like it, you hate some whatever, it stays in here. - You can't have distrust. - You can't have distrust. And there's one thing to say, oh man, coach is terrible, I don't like coach and it's been leaking that the guys don't like coach. Like okay, it's another thing where like, hey guys, we're having a meeting about this stuff that we're trying to fix.

And literally within 30 minutes of the meeting being over, it's already out? The details? Because Shams had the meeting happened and Maxie stood up and said,

held and being accountable in front of everybody, Sam Amick and David Aldridge had the direct quotes. So someone, either multiple people were talking or someone was talking to multiple people. That is such a gross violation of the privacy of what we're doing here and counterproductive. That's the other thing. It is counter to what we're trying to do here. You are trying to actively destroy and cause division. So not only is someone just a chatty Cathy,

But you might be an op. You might be working against what we're trying to do here. I don't want you in my locker room. If I found out, if I were Nick Nurse and I found out if it was a staffer, I'm firing him. If it's a player, I'm trading or cutting him. You're good on Chatty Cathy.

Thank you. Izzy, why is it Chatty Cathy as opposed to Chatty Charles or Chatty Charlene? I'm seeing that Chatty Cathy was a doll back in the day. I guess it was a talkative doll. Spelling Cathy would have seen the situation. Amin is a child of the David Stern regime, though, right? Like...

I mean, do you feel like if Stern was still doing it, that you would have these kind of things? Would he make a phone call? How would that work with Dave Stern? Well, Stern can't control an individual locker room. This is a Sixers problem. This isn't an NBA problem. So it would be fine. Stern is more some of the other things, like what we talked about with Izzy yesterday. You're going to find a guy for saying no homo, which is radioactive in a sense.

The same amount of a player who shoved

a media member like no way no way dude like that's not how that works a three game suspension for physically accosting someone and again we're not going to get into the specifics of why he did it i said it on the day it happened i was like look i get it i understand and he understands too he said i don't care what the consequences are meaning i understand i'm going to get in trouble for doing this but i'm gonna do it so we're all good on that but the fact that the the the fine is the same as

As saying words that as Izzy pointed out. It's not exactly the same because Embiid lost a million dollars in salaries as well. Because he got suspended three games, but three games I didn't feel like was enough. So there's things like that. There are a bunch of things. My big thing is whenever NBA players question whether the refs are on the take, David Stern would put them under the ground. And we've been getting slaps on the, a $35,000 fine. Bullshit. You just said everything we're doing here is fake.

How are we supposed to present a product

to the masses that is believable if the people in it are saying it's fake, it's not real. And you might, oh, I was just angry. Well, shit, be angry, say some other shit. Don't say that. So he wouldn't say anything about the newsbreakers getting news and all these things that would be just kind of like states issues, teams issues, like you guys deal with it. I'll tell you the only time they were upset was when the draft, like people were tweeting out the draft picks before they happened because now you're messing up our TV product. But in terms of like, yeah, the Sixers, no, like that's not, David Stern would be like, yo, you got to get your house in order.

But, you know, this all goes back to Dan, something that I want to talk about earlier, which was Nick Wright saying threes are why the ratings are bad. And I said, no, it's not threes and it's not load management and it's not wokeness or whatever. The NBA at its core has a marketing problem. We allow stupid ass ideas to take hold and be like, that's our reputation instead of

controlling it instead of like Stern did. Keep it under wraps. We create our narrative. We call our narrative. We let anyone just say anything. So everyone's like, Kawhi Leonard doesn't want to play. And meanwhile, we find out what? This dude's knee is made out of Doritos. He's not playing because he's hurt.

Joel Embiid is not playing because he's hurt, not because he doesn't feel like playing, but we allow this thing and we allow Stephen A. Smith and we allow Shaq and Kenny to say these things with certainty. And so all of this erodes confidence in the product. That is really interesting what he is saying there, because I do believe that if I just wander around and ask people,

People who aren't even sports fans, but also sports fans. Hey, are athletes lazy and don't actually care that much in the NBA? The fact that that stereotype has gotten out there when it's asinine, like that nobody can play at that level just sort of like flippantly. Those people have to care crazy or they're going to lose their money because somebody's going to take.

everything that they've dreamt of. Like the idea that load management has become something that we are now allowed to assign the stereotype of black guy lazy because it's always the black guy. Black guy lazy. That that has taken hold forever.

My God, is that not just offensive, wildly inaccurate and disrespectful to how hard it is to do what those people do to be great. You're so right on the idea of the narrative getting grabbed and becoming something that becomes or feels like fact or perception and then it becomes reality even though it's just baked in stereotypes. And the irony of it all is the only player that doesn't care a little bit is Jokic. Yeah.

He never gets accused of that. He never gets accused of not caring. But I mean, we've even sort of participated in this. Yes. Where we fat shame Zion Williamson. No, but like we're talking about work ethic and laziness and he won't, you know, stop eating whatever. Why is Jimmy not playing? Right. We've done it. I think there's a difference between making jokes about someone's weight

and making hard analysis about, well, clearly you don't give a shit. I think there's a difference there. I speak for myself. I've made a lot of Zion Wade jokes, but I've made a lot of Dan Wade jokes. That's what I do. I'm a jerk in that way. But when stories come out about Zion...

Not taking his diet seriously, like reported stories like that's different. Right. And there's a reported story here that Embiid just doesn't show up on time to things. Sure. Sure. But like, that's not the same as he doesn't want to play.

which is what many of the accusations are. And to me, so one of the things is, like I said, Nick Wright came out and said, oh, it's because they shoot too many threes. And I said, man, Nick, I could sit down with you and watch a game from 2003. I guarantee you, you're going to find it offensively

offensive to watch. Not offensive, offensive. I don't think, though, it's any one of those things. No, it's the marketing. But it can be all of those things. Like, it doesn't have to be any one at the top of the list. It can be all of them because numbers are down. The numbers are down, but it's not because of those things. The fact that we allow those things to be the explanation is my issue. That's why I say we have a marketing problem, right?

Dude, the NBA is fantastic. I love this game. This was the...

how we sold our game in the 80s and 90s. Like, I love it. And now it's like this weird thing where everyone's trying to be too smart. I'm like, well, actually, I'm like, look, man, it ain't hard. Like, if we sell our thing with joy, it's joyful. The NBA Cup is a great example of this. Look, they let us all know, hey, man, this thing is real and it's serious and we don't want to hear a bunch of stuff about how this is fake and it's made up. And so we all bought in. And guess what's happening? We're getting great games in NBA Cup games.

And so it's becoming a thing. And I believe that applies to everything across the sport. Howdy, loyal listeners. It's Mike Ryan, and we're getting pretty close to wishing folks happy holidays. I'm sure many of you are already in the planning stages of opening up your homes and hosting holiday get-togethers.

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