Latest / The Regulars / LeBron Shocks the NBA World: The King Goes to Philly

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LeBron Shocks the NBA World: The King Goes to Philly · The Regulars

• 0:00
  Holy shit, LeBron James is in Philly!
• 0:03
  We're The Regulars. I'm Cody Decker. That's really all we're talking about.
• 0:08
  I'm Tanya Ray Fox. Cheers, let's do this, Cody!
• 0:11
  Cheers! Holy shit,
• 0:19
  Tanya Ray Fox, what a day! What a day!
• 0:22
  What a day! What a day! Holy shit, what a day! I was on
• 0:26
  the air live and then all of a sudden Everything went kablooey this
• 0:30
  morning. I don't know how your day was on a boat, but holy shit,
• 0:33
  what a day. Yeah, I was just sitting on a boat and,
• 0:38
  uh, someone texted me and I went to look at, uh, Threads and there it
• 0:41
  was, and I couldn't make any content about it, which was not ideal.
• 0:45
  So I have no posted content about the biggest season of,
• 0:50
  uh, story of the offseason. That's fine, we have a podcast tonight. That worked out
• 0:54
  well. Yes, it did. Get my thoughts out. You know, whatever. But,
• 0:57
  um, I was able to, you know, post a
• 1:01
  little bit of— I'm like cracking people up right now because as
• 1:04
  everybody knows, I'm very funny. I am a very funny person. You are.
• 1:08
  And I can't confirm, you know, listen, a lot of, a lot of people hate
• 1:12
  LeBron no matter what he does, right? You know, like, oh, oh, why don't I
• 1:16
  know? Yeah, so like no matter what. And so,
• 1:19
  you know, this guy is saying LeBron going, you know, goes through all the other
• 1:23
  options. LeBron going to all these other places would have been packaged as like this,
• 1:26
  this, that, and that. But if he's, you know, going to Philadelphia simply looks
• 1:30
  like ring chasing. And I commented, this is
• 1:33
  fair, the 76ers did just win a title in 1983.
• 1:37
  I know, like, this is ring chasing. Listen, we're gonna get into
• 1:41
  it in great fucking detail. I had a caller that called in with
• 1:44
  the exact same shit. He's like, he should go to a team that, that,
• 1:48
  that, like, he should go to a team that isn't ready to win a championship.
• 1:50
  Like, They're the fucking 76ers. Like,
• 1:54
  come on guys, keep it together. You would have said something about anywhere he
• 1:58
  went, and that's okay. Um, we're gonna have plenty to talk about.
• 2:02
  I'm glad that you've already talked about it because, oh, I got it. Um,
• 2:05
  you know, you have like, you have your thoughts settled. I'm all over the
• 2:09
  place. I generally know where I stand, but you know,
• 2:12
  I'm excited to get into it. We have a couple other things on the docket.
• 2:15
  We have Uh, the Dodgers White House visit and who did and didn't
• 2:19
  go. Actually, that's not— I, funny enough, I look forward to telling you what I
• 2:23
  think the actual story is. Okay, because yeah, no, and that's why I
• 2:26
  put in this. Anytime I put in an MLB story, I know you're gonna bring
• 2:29
  the heat. Um, I— Patrick Mahomes is looking like he might
• 2:33
  be ready for week 1. I have a couple questions about that, what you think
• 2:35
  about that. And we've got an interesting media corner today, actually.
• 2:39
  Um, and then then it's part 2 of
• 2:44
  talking about The Odyssey, Cody. So I'm looking forward to
• 2:48
  having that follow-up chat with you. I'm looking very forward to it too,
• 2:51
  because I thought you were Odysseus today. I was wondering where your fucking posts
• 2:55
  were about the LeBron thing. I was literally waiting with bated breath. It turns out
• 2:58
  you were stuck also on the fucking ocean. What are
• 3:02
  the odds of that? Fucking wild. You're, you're Odysseus, and, and I'm poor
• 3:06
  Penelope waiting for you to come home. Welcome to
• 3:10
  the show. So much to talk about, so fuck it, let's get right into it.
• 3:13
  Hey, it's time for headline number 1. Hey, Tanya, what could possibly be
• 3:18
  headline number 1 today? Guys, LeBron James signed with the 76ers.
• 3:22
  Uh, he announced his intention to not return
• 3:25
  to Cleveland or Miami to, quote, energize a
• 3:29
  new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time, end quote.
• 3:33
  He'll do so in Philly, where he will reportedly sign a 2-year, $8 million veterans
• 3:37
  minimum deal with a second-year player option. And where the 76ers have,
• 3:42
  uh, rocketed from play-in team championship, uh, or play-in team
• 3:45
  to championship contender, uh, in the span of a lot of the month. Because it's
• 3:50
  funny, when I originally went through and talked about this,
• 3:53
  Cody, when he announced that he wasn't coming back to the Lakers, I made
• 3:57
  a video talking about all the places that would be the most interesting for him
• 4:00
  to land. And I don't think I put the Sixers on there because it was
• 4:03
  pre-Jalen Brown. Um, that I made that video, and everything
• 4:08
  has changed super quickly. I had said, you know, I really
• 4:12
  don't think that the Warriors are the most interesting place that LeBron could land.
• 4:15
  And I think— you can tell me if I'm wrong or if
• 4:19
  you disagree— but I think this is the most interesting place that LeBron could have
• 4:22
  landed. And I think that for a lot of reasons. No, 100%. No, I,
• 4:25
  I even said on my show earlier this week, the show that Joe co-hosted with
• 4:28
  me, and we even just posted the clip about it because we were talking about
• 4:30
  in great detail each team that was like still on the odd
• 4:34
  sheet, and there were still 4 teams on there. The 4th team on the odd
• 4:38
  sheet was the Philadelphia 76ers. But at that point, I wasn't taking it all that
• 4:41
  much seriously because they were pretty much listed down at like 8%.
• 4:45
  And we get into detail about it. We're like, dude, this would be fucking awesome
• 4:49
  though. It really would be. This would be honestly the scariest team in
• 4:53
  the NBA. Tyrese Maxey, Edgecomb, you get a healthy Joel
• 4:57
  Embiid. Tyrese Maxey, who I have been adamant is
• 5:01
  a fucking star. So I really,
• 5:04
  I was saying, wow, could you just imagine he wouldn't need to play guard because
• 5:07
  they already got 2 of the best guards possible. And now he can just,
• 5:11
  honest to God, this would be an in-game load management for LeBron
• 5:14
  James. And if last year wasn't a great example of how he can easily
• 5:18
  fit into any simple rotation where he got to be the 3 on
• 5:21
  the Lakers, my God, like this is going to be nasty, dude. It's going
• 5:25
  to be a lot of fun too. And congratulations to fucking Adam Silver who can
• 5:28
  now make the schedule. I'm really, really, really excited to see Philly.
• 5:32
  On fucking every fucking major network this night,
• 5:36
  and clearly on Christmas, and it better be against the Celtics.
• 5:40
  Yeah. Oh well, listen, it's, it's the Celtics or the Knicks,
• 5:43
  and it's good. They're gonna put all those games on primetime as often as possible.
• 5:47
  I, I— so I saw, and I sent it to you right before
• 5:51
  the show, that, um, he's been working on buying property in New
• 5:55
  Jersey. Um, so this is not— a lot of people have speculated that like Oh,
• 5:59
  Miami blew it, like blah blah, which of course that's not the case. You don't—
• 6:03
  like, he's not going to decide that he's going to a different team because of
• 6:05
  a massive mistake like that. Um, but he's been planning on,
• 6:09
  like, to the point where he's been working on buying property with somebody. Now,
• 6:13
  do I think it took that long for him to find whatever the most expensive
• 6:16
  house in New Jersey available to him is? Probably not. But this
• 6:19
  is something that has been in the works. Um, we're going to talk about how
• 6:23
  this story broke when we— in Media Corner. But I, I'm gonna I'm gonna
• 6:26
  tell you the thing I find the most fascinating about this decision from LeBron.
• 6:31
  I cannot believe he's signing himself
• 6:35
  up for Philadelphia sports media. I, I actually
• 6:39
  respect him in a way that I didn't before because this
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  is not a normal ride into
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  the sunset choice to end your career in
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  Philly. And I say this with all due respect. To Philadelphia
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  media, who is insane and often racist but is very loud and
• 6:59
  dedicated to the craft. Very. Um, and the Philadelphia fans,
• 7:03
  who are not easy to please. This is, this is a city that
• 7:06
  has made it difficult for even Jalen Hurts to, to do
• 7:10
  his job without criticism. And LeBron
• 7:14
  has never played in a sports market like
• 7:19
  Philly. There's only a few in the country— you and I have talked about this
• 7:21
  before— where the sports, the local sports media and
• 7:26
  the beat reporting and the, the fandom and their investment in engaging in
• 7:29
  sports media and sports radio and all that stuff is, is as extreme as
• 7:33
  it is in Philly. Yes. He's played in Cleveland, which has a
• 7:36
  pretty good local media scene. They have a good— they do. That's probably
• 7:41
  this, the, the market he's played in that's had the most active
• 7:44
  local media. Miami, uh, sports media— all due
• 7:48
  respect to Miami, uh, and Dan Le Batard, but it's
• 7:52
  just not— it's not doing— but Dan Le Batard is in Miami.
• 7:56
  He's not Miami sports media. Well, he, he kind of is right now that he's
• 8:00
  like sort of back there, and like he sort of represents the most,
• 8:03
  uh, the most dedicated sort of Miami fan, I suppose.
• 8:07
  And then, yeah, yeah. And then as we've just discovered—
• 8:11
  I mean, Cody, you just helped launch the first dedicated sports radio
• 8:15
  station in Los Angeles. This just fucking happened in 2026.
• 8:19
  Yes, it did. Uh, Los Angeles is not a sports media town,
• 8:22
  and we talk about the Lakers and the Dodgers and these
• 8:26
  teams nationally so much that people don't realize that it's not a sports
• 8:30
  media town. Um, Fox Sports and ESPN
• 8:34
  and NFL Network all have their campuses here, and it's a thriving place
• 8:38
  to work in sports media But that's not the
• 8:41
  same as it being a Los Angeles media, uh,
• 8:45
  like local media scene. It's not. Yeah. Um, so he
• 8:49
  has not seen the kind of scrutiny that he is going to see in Philadelphia.
• 8:53
  And I fucking love that this dude was like, I could do the easiest
• 8:57
  thing possible and go to so many places where I would be embraced
• 9:01
  right away, they'd be happy to have me. And he's like, I'm gonna go somewhere
• 9:04
  where the second, the second I do
• 9:08
  anything that pisses them off, they are going to
• 9:11
  go fucking nuts. What a truly bonkers
• 9:15
  decision, Cody. I love this. I love every— I don't know what to say.
• 9:19
  I love everything about it. I really, really legitimately love everything about it.
• 9:23
  I, I think it's going to be a fun bet. I think it was the
• 9:24
  best basketball choice. I think it's the most intriguing
• 9:28
  choice. Uh, and here's the other thing that I, I mentioned on the show today
• 9:32
  that I feel like a lot of people aren't realizing, because everyone's like, oh well,
• 9:35
  he just— he's just ring chasing him place to place. I'm like, do you guys—
• 9:38
  I don't think you guys are seeing this properly. He brings the rings. You understand
• 9:41
  that? He's gone and won a ring in every city he's played in, and that
• 9:45
  is 3 cities. There are 3 players in the history of
• 9:48
  the NBA that did that. And by the way, he's the only one that it
• 9:52
  was centered around. If he does this in a 4th city,
• 9:56
  congratulations. LeBron once again is one of fucking
• 10:00
  one. No one's ever done it, let alone done it as the
• 10:04
  guy. Robert Horry did it, yeah, but was Robert Horry the guy?
• 10:08
  No, he was a guy on really good teams. He was an amazing guy,
• 10:12
  but he wasn't the guy. He wasn't Kobe when he won his title there in
• 10:15
  LA. Like, it's just, it's a different thing,
• 10:19
  man. Arguably LeBron won't be the guy. Yes,
• 10:23
  you could say that, but he has historically. Sure. And I mean,
• 10:26
  he'll be— I, I can't imagine that he— I, I, you know,
• 10:30
  I've wanted to see him be a like super sub. I've wanted to see him
• 10:34
  be a 6th man for a long time now, like a couple of years,
• 10:37
  and the stars have not aligned to like really make that
• 10:40
  possible. On this team, it actually would be possible.
• 10:45
  I don't think that that's what they're going to do, but like, that would be
• 10:49
  pretty sick. Um, it— like, you know, he is not— he's
• 10:54
  not going to be the statistical leader in like, you know, points and rebounds on
• 10:58
  a— no, no, on a title team, right? But he
• 11:02
  will be the biggest star because he's the biggest star wherever he goes.
• 11:06
  I love this basketball fit, um,
• 11:10
  for young players like Edgecomb and Maxey.
• 11:13
  What a, like, massive opportunity to play with LeBron.
• 11:16
  Everybody acts like LeBron's a clown, and yeah, he certainly clowns around
• 11:20
  as a person. Like, you know, we understand that he's not too self-serious
• 11:24
  in some of these situations, and he can be goofy and corny, but as far
• 11:28
  as a basketball mentor, you get to play with LeBron James. He is incredibly familiar
• 11:32
  with playing with Joel Embiid because they played together on Team
• 11:35
  USA, uh, won a gold medal together, lots of play— playing time
• 11:39
  together. That was the last time Embiid looked like the
• 11:43
  real— like, first, for a couple weeks, we were
• 11:47
  like, holy fucking shit, this is what you get when you get healthy Embiid.
• 11:50
  And it was remarkable. I mean I,
• 11:53
  I'm fired up. I can't wait to see this, dude. Healthy Embiid is so remarkably
• 11:59
  fucking good. Like, and then, you know,
• 12:03
  people keep forgetting that he won a fucking MVP. This team's got multiple MVPs
• 12:07
  and a guy that was really up for an MVP as well. I,
• 12:11
  I'm just blown away how just like the entire like
• 12:15
  landscape of Boston and Philly just fucking Freaky Friday'd each other.
• 12:19
  This is fucking wild to me. It's crazy. And fucking— this is— it
• 12:24
  makes the Celtics look so bad, dude. So fucking bad. Like,
• 12:28
  this is the— now they don't care, right?
• 12:31
  Like, the ownership doesn't care. They don't fucking care. Uh, but I can tell you
• 12:35
  right now, Brad Stevens has, has explosive
• 12:39
  diarrhea. He might as well have eaten the poop lettuce because there is no way
• 12:43
  that Brad Stevens is is handling this day well.
• 12:47
  This makes the Celtics look awful. It puts them in an incredibly difficult
• 12:51
  position. They do not have a roster to compete with this
• 12:55
  current— even if Joel Embiid's not healthy,
• 12:59
  they have a title-contending team,
• 13:04
  the Sixers, even without a healthy Joel Embiid.
• 13:08
  So we're going to add in if we have a healthy MVP.
• 13:12
  Uh, the, the Knicks are still the Knicks. The Miami
• 13:16
  Heat just added Giannis Antetokounmpo,
• 13:20
  and the Celtics are sitting there with their fucking hands on
• 13:25
  their dicks doing nothing. Just doing— just
• 13:29
  holding their flaccid, empty dicks. Just Bad News
• 13:33
  Bears. So that's the saddest flaccid
• 13:37
  dicks they could possibly be holding. Truly. I mean, like,
• 13:41
  no, no shots to Jason Tatum, but who the fuck is he playing with?
• 13:44
  It's gonna be tough, man. It's gonna be tough. I, I just feel so— I,
• 13:48
  I want to feel bad, but I don't. This is, this is fucking hilarious and
• 13:51
  I love it. I mean, Philly is always— someone was like, oh, Philly's gonna be
• 13:55
  so insufferable. And the guy was like, they're gonna start being insufferable?
• 13:58
  What do you mean? Like, this is Philly. They, they're prepared to be insufferable at
• 14:02
  all times. And the reality is that, like, they just got every opportunity
• 14:06
  to just be, you know, like, I love how you're talking about how, uh,
• 14:10
  Lakers fans are pretending that they're not pissed, you know? Yeah, what a
• 14:14
  horrible fan base to have to deal with now because like you can't pretend you're
• 14:17
  not pissed to Philly fans. They will fucking rile you up, you know what I
• 14:20
  mean? Dude, yeah, no, dude, I— listen, I do firmly
• 14:25
  believe a lot of Laker fans are very happy that LeBron is gone. He was
• 14:28
  not appreciated here by Laker fans, period. Stop. I'm a Laker fan. I don't even
• 14:32
  think I fully appreciated him, and I did actually kind of appreciate him,
• 14:36
  but even I was like, I'm okay if I see the LeBron era end kind
• 14:39
  of here. And honestly, I feel good about it because it kind of ended on
• 14:42
  like good terms. We're all, we're all cool, and he's not in the Western Conference
• 14:45
  right now, so I'm more like, yeah, go with God, do your fucking thing,
• 14:48
  my guy. Uh, but dude, the vitriol that he is still
• 14:52
  getting in LA, it's just fucking wild to me. Like,
• 14:55
  I had one caller only one caller that called him and that actually
• 14:59
  like kind of made sense. And even D-Fish was like, okay, I can handle that.
• 15:02
  He was mad about his bitching. Like, he's like, he just— it's always
• 15:06
  about him. And he's like, Luka too. He's like, I have the same problem with
• 15:09
  Luka. It's just he's always complaining on the court. You guys are just talented enough,
• 15:12
  just fucking play. And that's when even D-Fish is like, okay,
• 15:16
  that's an argument I could at least like listen to, but all the other shit
• 15:19
  is just nonsense. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's a problem with
• 15:24
  NBA stars in general right now. I think that's
• 15:28
  why people really liked Jalen Brunson this year, was because
• 15:32
  he isn't the type of player who does that. He just plays through everything.
• 15:36
  But the bitching on the court, I mean, talk about with Shai, we talk about
• 15:40
  it with Wemby, we talk about it with— it's just a thing.
• 15:43
  And I certainly would love for
• 15:47
  LeBron to just be like, I'm 42 years old, ball out, play through it,
• 15:50
  and just shut the fuck up. Yep. Uh, but it's not something where when
• 15:55
  I watch him it stands out to me as uniquely egregious based on
• 15:58
  the way people play now. Uh, so my,
• 16:02
  you know, a follow-up question here is,
• 16:06
  uh, do you— so I had said, I had said in the
• 16:10
  beginning of this saga when he announced he wasn't coming back to Lakers,
• 16:13
  why wouldn't he play for the veterans minimum? Like, I don't understand why everybody was
• 16:17
  so afraid that he was gonna be like looking for a major contract.
• 16:21
  Like, he's gonna be looking for a ring. Like, that's the whole point,
• 16:25
  is to get a fucking ring. Um, you and I never understood why Cleveland
• 16:29
  would be the place that he would go to win a title. That didn't make
• 16:31
  sense to us. Um, the,
• 16:36
  the thing with Miami, with the accidental
• 16:41
  post of the LeBron reveal that never happened What
• 16:47
  led Miami to believe that they would
• 16:51
  get LeBron if he's been buying a house in New
• 16:54
  Jersey? What was going on there, Cody? Any theories?
• 17:00
  I really don't. Yeah, I, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm trying—
• 17:04
  I've been trying to think about it like all morning. Like,
• 17:07
  it obviously crossed my mind going like, did that perturb LeBron
• 17:11
  a little bit? Because hear me out, During the decision, if you remember during the
• 17:14
  decision that was very, very lauded and honestly turned a
• 17:18
  lot of people, including myself, against LeBron, just the whole outrageous
• 17:23
  pageantry of the entire TV special of it was
• 17:26
  what even turned me against him for a little bit there. I loudly rooted for
• 17:30
  the Mavericks in that finals that year. That being said, like he
• 17:35
  said during that, like I had a different decision this
• 17:39
  morning and I changed my mind. Like he said that that close to
• 17:43
  his actual television national decision that he changed
• 17:46
  his mind that morning. Has it ever been reported what team
• 17:50
  he was originally going to? I don't think so. I'm assuming— honestly, I am
• 17:54
  assuming— I'm assuming Cleveland, but probably not. There was like weird bad blood
• 17:58
  at the time. It was like a weird whole fucking thing. But I'm telling
• 18:01
  you, man, like, is it close enough to this that he
• 18:05
  just buy a house in the last day and a half in Philly? Because I
• 18:08
  mean, LeBron James has so much money, he could easily pull off buying off— buying
• 18:12
  a house within a couple of hours, it's crossed my mind
• 18:15
  that that was a thing that just gave him a little irk to turn
• 18:19
  left and take— make the best basketball decision. Amazing.
• 18:23
  It's the best one I got. I got nothing else because nothing
• 18:27
  else makes sense. You have to remember, the decision was 16 years ago.
• 18:31
  He was a much younger man. Like, that's— that was a man in his 20s
• 18:34
  where, like, LeBron's a different— he's a different businessman now.
• 18:38
  He's a different adult now. Um, He has— he has— is gonna
• 18:43
  be, you know, um, like,
• 18:47
  he's gonna be closing out his career in the place that he's
• 18:50
  going. And I don't think it's the same level of whim
• 18:56
  that you can apply to that. Like, he knows this is the end.
• 18:59
  He's called it his last decision. He's not pretending
• 19:03
  that he's not retiring. He's retiring with the Sixers.
• 19:06
  You know, that that is what's going to happen. I tend to believe that that's
• 19:11
  not a decision where you're like, okay, I thought I could win a ring in
• 19:14
  Miami, but they posted this YouTube video too soon and now they ruined my whole
• 19:17
  plan. Maybe there's a business element to
• 19:21
  him— to it that really irked him enough to make this change. Yeah,
• 19:25
  perhaps that's the case. Um, but man, that would
• 19:28
  be a really— that would be really surprising to me,
• 19:32
  I'm not gonna lie. Maybe, but Truly, do you have anything else?
• 19:36
  Because that's literally the only thing I got. I truly— they
• 19:41
  were told because the date on it was July 27th. It was
• 19:45
  specific. That's why I believe this was done. Like,
• 19:48
  yeah, I have a theory.
• 19:53
  I think Pat Riley is a troll and
• 19:58
  it— and he did it on purpose. To sabotage
• 20:02
  it, or just because he knew he wasn't coming? Because he knew he
• 20:06
  wasn't coming. He knew he wasn't coming. Like, I don't— like,
• 20:09
  there, you know, you know, uh,
• 20:12
  and I think he was like, well, what if,
• 20:16
  uh, we stole a little bit of LeBron's thunder and made it look like an
• 20:19
  accident? Hmm. Pat Riley is a sociopath.
• 20:23
  Do you know how much— listen, there was some bad blood there when,
• 20:27
  when LeBron left. He did not leave on great terms with the
• 20:31
  Heat. And I could see, I could see a little bit of
• 20:34
  gamesmanship, a little bit of middle finger, a little bit of fuck you. And I
• 20:38
  like to imagine that there's a— that that slick old, uh, uh, you know,
• 20:42
  Italian man or whatever the hell he is, uh, is, is, um,
• 20:46
  is pulling some— is just pulling a little bit. It's too big of a mistake.
• 20:50
  It's too big of a mistake, Cody. I don't know, man. Tanya, I'm not
• 20:54
  gonna lie to you, I just It's as sound as any fucking
• 20:58
  theory that can exist. Exactly. It's, it's,
• 21:01
  it's so fucking weird that I truly don't know.
• 21:05
  I truly— like, I normally have like 10 theories and each one
• 21:09
  of them would usually be plausible. I got fucking nothing. Your theory is
• 21:13
  as good as anything I could possibly have come up with. I, I got nothing.
• 21:17
  So this is the— I think we'll probably agree this is the
• 21:21
  best roster, uh, especially for the— you know, I don't know completely
• 21:25
  how it's filled out in terms of the bench, but this is the best roster
• 21:28
  that LeBron's had since— I agree— they won the title in 2020, right? I completely
• 21:32
  agree, man. It's, it's, it's, it's— I, I'm really, I'm excited to
• 21:36
  see it. I really— I'm actually fucking Philly. I'm rooting
• 21:40
  for a Philly team this year. Can you— I was already—
• 21:43
  I mean, listen, you know, I was all— I'm always— because of Jaylen Brown too.
• 21:47
  Yeah, I'm out on the Celtics. I'm root— I'm always rooting for Jaylen Brown.
• 21:50
  Um, I'm always rooting for Jayson Tatum too, but like, I, I Like, I,
• 21:54
  I have a real uncomfortable relationship to how
• 21:57
  they handled all that and like giving them any of my money. Uh,
• 22:01
  I'm not gonna go so far as to buy a Sixers jersey, but I
• 22:04
  root for LeBron. Like, I just do. I have.
• 22:07
  I rooted for LeBron on the Lakers when I— as a Celtics fan. This is
• 22:11
  not— this is nothing new to me. Ever since, uh, you know,
• 22:14
  ever since he returned, my— where my turning point was with LeBron as
• 22:18
  a fan, because I was a hater Um, during the Miami
• 22:22
  Heat years because they were rivals to the Celtics and the Celtics were still in
• 22:26
  their Big 3 era. Ray Allen goes to play with LeBron. I had absolutely every
• 22:30
  reason to not like LeBron. The turning point was him going back to Cleveland with
• 22:34
  Kyrie. Um, it was, it was like, this is fucking
• 22:37
  sick. Like, he was just— how many times can you,
• 22:41
  can you go to Cleveland and do something that seems impossible
• 22:45
  Um, and he kept doing it. And so to me— where'd you
• 22:50
  go? Right here. Oh, you just disappeared on my end. So I just— well,
• 22:53
  that was my fault because I was trying to go to your one shot and
• 22:56
  it turns out your one shot is not in here. That's okay. I was like,
• 22:58
  I just want to make sure I wasn't talking into the ether. Nope, I just
• 23:01
  made him— I made a mistake. I miss you. Hey, listen, that's okay.
• 23:05
  We all make mistakes. Nothing to worry about. Um, but so I would say
• 23:09
  it's been a decade of me being a LeBron fan and I'm going to close
• 23:12
  it out strong, whether he You know, whether he's on a rival team or not.
• 23:16
  That's just the case. Like, I'm gonna be rooting for LeBron. Now, I don't know
• 23:19
  how my heart is going to feel when the Celtics play the Sixers. I don't
• 23:23
  know what my— what my body and brain are going to do. But I can
• 23:27
  tell you that I will— I will
• 23:30
  be thrilled, thrilled if Jaylen Brown and LeBron win a
• 23:34
  fucking title in Philly. That would be fucking awesome. It would be very fucking
• 23:38
  awesome. So there you go. LeBron sweepstakes
• 23:42
  officially over. And I can't believe it, we're all fucking kind of
• 23:45
  excited about it. Like, pretty good, pretty good. I cannot
• 23:49
  wait for Philly media and LeBron. I think this is—
• 23:52
  I can't, I can't tell you how much this is— this is the thing I
• 23:55
  am so hyper-focused on. It's gonna
• 23:59
  be nuts. Pretty, pretty good. I'm, I'm pretty
• 24:02
  good. I, I just got nothing else. Pretty good. I'm really, really fucking fired up
• 24:05
  for this. Okay, it's, it's cool to feel excited about something like this.
• 24:09
  That's all. Like, I was, I was fully expecting to not be excited about
• 24:13
  this. If you went back to Cleveland, I'm like, all right. If you went to
• 24:16
  Miami, I'm like, all right, it is what it is. I honestly had no
• 24:20
  excitement to that whatsoever. Um, Golden State, yeah, I'll watch
• 24:24
  it, but it wasn't going to be like, oh boy, I can't— this actually excites
• 24:28
  me. I think this is gonna be fucking cool. Okay, well then we're on the
• 24:31
  same page. We are. Look at that. I dig that. Headline number 2,
• 24:35
  the story that you're going to say, but the story that
• 24:38
  I think it actually is. Tanya, go ahead.
• 24:41
  Okay, the 2 Dodgers who, uh, got the most heat for going to the White
• 24:45
  House visit last time, uh, because I paid attention because these are
• 24:49
  both former Red Sox, 2 players I really, really like, so I was, I was
• 24:52
  really following this story. They decided to skip the White House, uh, visit this year
• 24:56
  along with Magic Johnson, who also skipped it last time. So he's skipped,
• 25:00
  skipped, uh, 2 consecutive years. Um,
• 25:04
  the stated reasons for absence were Mookie Betts said
• 25:08
  he skipped the event to spend a scheduled off day with his family following the
• 25:12
  birth of his 3rd child, noting the decision was not political. Uh,
• 25:15
  Quique Hernandez missed the visit due to a minor league rehab
• 25:19
  assignment for a left oblique strain, though he noted he would likely not
• 25:23
  have attended even if active. And just for a
• 25:28
  little bit of clarity's sake for everybody, um, Quique probably
• 25:31
  got— I would say It— people were pretty disappointed in Mookie,
• 25:36
  but I think Kike got the most heat in terms of being
• 25:39
  there. Um, just, I think, you know, uh,
• 25:43
  the Puerto Rican of it all, and just there was a lot of— there was
• 25:47
  a lot of people who were frustrated that he was there in the first place.
• 25:49
  So it was interesting that he said he might not have gone anyway. That was
• 25:52
  a pretty interesting thing to say. Go ahead and ask me the question. Would I
• 25:55
  have gone? No, I wouldn't have. Oh, Cody, imagine if I
• 25:59
  was like, Cody, would you have gone to the Trump White House? As if I
• 26:02
  don't fucking know that. Oh my God, I— listen, you would have—
• 26:06
  you would have been a great, a great professional baseball player. Has anyone
• 26:10
  ever told you that, Cody? Could have been, would have been, should have been.
• 26:13
  You could have been a contender. Well, you know, we'll never know, will we?
• 26:17
  We'll never— so what do you think the, um, what do you think the actual
• 26:19
  story is here, Cody? Oh, I— did you notice that the Dodgers
• 26:23
  brought in this whole fucking, uh, grand, grand thing, brought in both World Series
• 26:27
  trophies and even presented Donald Trump with a World Series ring.
• 26:31
  Wow, Donald Trump really earned that World Series ring. He's a huge baseball fan,
• 26:35
  you know. He referred to Shohei Ohtani as a really good outfielder. Um, and outfielder,
• 26:40
  yeah, he's really known for his outfield play. And, uh, you know, all whatever,
• 26:44
  the guy doesn't pay attention to shit. It doesn't matter. The guy's an old man,
• 26:46
  his brain is melted. Um, anyways, um, the point of the matter is,
• 26:50
  uh, I would like to read you this. In July of 2026,
• 26:54
  reports revealed that federal prosecutors of U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern
• 26:57
  District of New York, alongside the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC,
• 27:02
  are investigating several financial and insurance entities controlled by
• 27:06
  Mark Walter, the majority owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. So the
• 27:10
  owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Guggenheim Group are currently under federal investigation,
• 27:14
  and they go to the White House and present Trump with a golden World Series
• 27:18
  ring. I wonder if we're going to hear anything about this investigation going forward.
• 27:22
  Tanya, take it away. I didn't know this.
• 27:26
  I had no idea about this. Yeah, so I just,
• 27:30
  I just wonder if we're gonna see this investigation ever mentioned ever
• 27:35
  again. The answer is likely no, because somebody got the ring.
• 27:39
  I, I would have— I think they probably wouldn't— we wouldn't have seen it go
• 27:42
  anywhere anyway, probably. But definitely now that
• 27:46
  someone's got a ring. Yeah, you know, it's funny
• 27:49
  because I don't think— like, I'm like,
• 27:53
  this is the one time— and this might be controversial,
• 27:56
  you can tell me if, if this is controversial— but I don't think Biden
• 28:02
  or Obama would have done anything about this either, to be honest.
• 28:05
  Like, that— these guys don't get in trouble for shit like that. White-collar crime is
• 28:09
  not something that— oh no, no, no, no, I want to make this abundantly clear.
• 28:11
  This would have probably gone away no matter what. Would have paid some little fine.
• 28:14
  You know, that's what happens to the rich, really rich people. Oh, there's a problem?
• 28:17
  Here's a little fine. No problem, goes away. Well, how about instead here's
• 28:21
  a ring? Fun. Yeah, no, it is. And also,
• 28:25
  uh, just back to the, like, the point about,
• 28:28
  uh, Mookie and Kike, I personally believe that
• 28:32
  no matter what Mookie Bits says, he just did— he was like,
• 28:36
  this is not worth it, I don't want to deal with the Trump bullshit again.
• 28:39
  Like, I probably— that's what— if he— don't tell me it wasn't
• 28:43
  political, because, because it is political. Now the political might be you
• 28:47
  don't want to deal with political backlash, but that's still political,
• 28:51
  Mookie. Don't tell me that it was a scheduled day off to hang
• 28:54
  out with your third child. I don't— sorry, I'm not buying it.
• 28:58
  Um, good family man. He's a good family man. I believe
• 29:01
  he wants it. He loves— big wife guy. Mookie's a wife
• 29:04
  guy, which I do love about him. Um, excellent,
• 29:09
  wildly cute kids. I would like to hang out with Mookie's kids.
• 29:12
  But if he really wanted to be there, he'd be there. Um,
• 29:16
  I do— my heart is warmed by Kike just
• 29:19
  being like, you know what, no, not again.
• 29:23
  Now, I do— I like that he went the last time and said what he
• 29:26
  said. I do not. It still bothers me. But I like a person who learns
• 29:29
  their lesson. I like a person who receives criticism
• 29:34
  from fans who are disappointed in him and then makes a different decision.
• 29:39
  I like that in a person. It doesn't mean that
• 29:43
  I'm gonna vote for them if they run for office. It does mean that,
• 29:47
  like, good, I'm glad to see that, you know? Like, I'm glad to see
• 29:50
  that there was a different decision made by both of these people who— I
• 29:55
  mean, there was nobody else last year that, that got more
• 29:59
  criticism than the last time that they went than
• 30:03
  those 2 players, right? I mean, because everybody else is kind of Listen,
• 30:08
  this is just an is what it is topic. I, I don't— teams keep going
• 30:12
  to the White House, they're going to do it, and I can either choose to
• 30:15
  respect them or not respect their decision. You know where I stand
• 30:18
  on this. Teams are going to continue doing it. Well, it's not just that,
• 30:22
  it's not about the teams. The teams are always going to be doing it,
• 30:24
  right? So like, players can make the decisions they want to make. We,
• 30:28
  we, we know you're, you're We
• 30:33
  know Magic Johnson isn't going because he's Magic
• 30:36
  Johnson and he's very smart, right? Like, yeah, he ain't dealing with this.
• 30:41
  His optic— his, his ability to understand optics is like
• 30:45
  impeccable. Um, you know about my Magic Johnson theory,
• 30:48
  right? About how I think he's been intentionally— you know how he, um, always tweets
• 30:53
  and like posts the most basic— like,
• 30:56
  like he'll be like If the Dodgers want to win this game,
• 30:59
  they've got to score more home runs than the other team.
• 31:03
  Did you know that Magic Johnson's been known for this forever? I did not know
• 31:06
  that. Okay, so Magic Johnson for years and years and years has been
• 31:10
  like— he tweets Captain Obvious level. Like, it's a, it's a thing everybody— I,
• 31:14
  I have seen a couple of them where he's seen— it's like, it's so just
• 31:18
  like, it's, wow, it's super basic, super milquetoast.
• 31:21
  You can't— you literally— someone will win this game tonight.
• 31:25
  Yeah, and you can't draw any take from it. There's nothing—
• 31:29
  you can't say it's wrong, you can't say it's interesting. It is literally
• 31:33
  just words that are objectively true, and that's
• 31:37
  what he shares. And I've had a theory for a long time that he does
• 31:40
  it completely on purpose to troll the
• 31:44
  media, like that he's literally like, you will never get
• 31:48
  me to say something controversial on the internet. No, you never will.
• 31:52
  And, and he does it like literally fully knowing what he's doing because he's too
• 31:56
  smart. Like, to me, Magic's too smart, too charming,
• 31:59
  too like charismatic, too completely understands who he is in the world. And I
• 32:03
  think that's the same reason that he never— you're never going to catch him.
• 32:05
  Like, whatever his relationship is to politics, we're not going
• 32:09
  to catch him at the Trump White House because he's too smart. And I do
• 32:12
  like that he's on brand all the time. Well, I would also like to,
• 32:15
  uh, mention, uh, going back to number 1,
• 32:19
  Apparently there is talks that Bryce James might be transferring
• 32:24
  to Villanova. Bryce might be? Yeah,
• 32:28
  that's— I mean, listen, it would be really
• 32:31
  funny. So is Bryce going to graduate next
• 32:36
  year? No, no, Bryce is at Arizona right now. He redshirted his freshman
• 32:40
  year. Okay, so he could play a year and then,
• 32:43
  and then go into the NBA. Holy shit, that would be the funniest fucking
• 32:48
  thing ever. It's not— I have to assume it's not gonna happen, but holy shit,
• 32:52
  that would be— what do you mean you have to assume it's not gonna happen?
• 32:54
  On what planet do you have— he's on an actual— he's on an actual contending
• 32:58
  team this time. It's, it's LeBron.
• 33:02
  Cody, it's LeBron. It is not impossible. Bryce to
• 33:06
  be on that team. It is not impossible. That's all I'm
• 33:10
  saying. It's not impossible. Nothing's— nothing is impossible,
• 33:14
  Cody. Anything is possible. Anything is possible.
• 33:19
  All right, headline number 3. Headline number 3. This will
• 33:23
  be a quick hitter. I just want to, uh, have a quick little, um,
• 33:26
  it's kind of a pulse check on where we're at in the NFL offseason
• 33:29
  because Andy Reid has confirmed that Patrick Mahomes has been cleared
• 33:33
  to fully participate. He tore his ACL in December, we talked about that, and missed
• 33:36
  a few games at the end of the year. Um, Chiefs did not make the
• 33:40
  playoffs. Uh, he's been doing great with his rehab.
• 33:43
  Everybody's basically saying he looks good to go to play Uh,
• 33:47
  in week 1. So none of this is surprising. None of this on
• 33:51
  its own is a topic that needs to be discussed. Patrick Mahomes,
• 33:55
  whatever. Uh, the only interesting part about it is just how fast people recover
• 33:59
  from Achilles and ACL tears now. But like,
• 34:02
  you know, someone— I think— I, I don't know who it was, but someone had
• 34:05
  posted like, uh, like, and you thought that anything was
• 34:09
  going to keep Patrick Mahomes off from week 1? And I was like, honestly,
• 34:12
  nothing. No, nothing makes me think if you get injured one season, I expect you
• 34:16
  back basically the next season to start at this point. That's how recoveries go
• 34:19
  these days. So that part's not surprising to me. Patrick Mahomes is pretty tough.
• 34:23
  Um, and so whatever. My question is,
• 34:28
  um, what are— what should
• 34:32
  we be expecting for the Chiefs with a healthy Mahomes? Because this—
• 34:37
  they're in a unique position right now where because there are
• 34:42
  a few teams that have leapfrogged them in the national discourse, specifically Josh
• 34:46
  Allen and the Bills. But there's a love affair people have with
• 34:49
  Joe Burrow and the Bengals. There's still the conversation around
• 34:53
  Lamar Jackson and the Ravens. They have a new head coach, like, but they are
• 34:56
  projected over, over 11.5 wins, like, so they are expected to
• 35:00
  compete as well. Like, well, they're always— of course, like, uh, make the playoff
• 35:04
  team. I don't think you could ever expect that they're not going to make the
• 35:06
  playoffs with a healthy Mahomes, right? But like you last
• 35:10
  year, I know, and I, you know, maybe it's changed, but I know that
• 35:14
  your whole thing is like, I'm not counting out the Chiefs, the Mahomes-era Chiefs,
• 35:19
  until they really give me a reason to. So in your head,
• 35:23
  does healthy Mahomes mean Super Bowl contender automatically? It does. I— it
• 35:28
  does because it has every single year. Yeah,
• 35:31
  that's why. No, based on everything I've seen,
• 35:35
  I can be that contrarian guy who's like, oh, I gotta see what it is.
• 35:38
  Dude, a lot of people come back from fucking knee injuries like it's nothing.
• 35:41
  And you just already talked about the time how quickly guys are coming back from
• 35:44
  the knee injuries just as strong, if not like nothing ever happened to them.
• 35:47
  Uh, the only way that it would go backwards is if he's somehow
• 35:51
  hesitant to push off that knee. But based on the Patrick Mahomes that we have
• 35:54
  seen for years, I don't think there's going to be an ounce of hesitancy to
• 35:58
  the guy at all. So me as a Raider fan feel just as awful as
• 36:01
  I always did. And not to mention, the entire AFC West is going to
• 36:05
  be nasty. This year. Yes, we're gonna overrate the Chargers.
• 36:09
  The Broncos are going to be weirdly good for— in weird stretches for no reason.
• 36:13
  Um, the— I agree with you, and I'm glad. Like, I do
• 36:17
  think that maybe because I was a fan of the New England
• 36:21
  Patriots for so long, but— and it was a similar thing where it's just like,
• 36:23
  it's, it's Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. Yeah,
• 36:27
  if they are there and Patrick Mahomes is healthy and
• 36:30
  they even have a semblance of a serviceable, uh,
• 36:34
  roster around him, he's probably going to the AFC
• 36:37
  Championship Game. Completely agree. Like, do I— am I gonna go to the Super
• 36:40
  Bowl? Not necessarily, no. But if you told me— I— if, if I was
• 36:44
  a betting man, which I'm not, but if I were, I'd be putting— I'd slot
• 36:48
  them into the AFC, uh, Championship Game with no fucking questions asked.
• 36:52
  Completely. Until proven otherwise, healthy Mahomes is making
• 36:56
  an AFC Championship game. I couldn't agree
• 37:00
  more. That's it. I, I wish— I want to be contrarian because
• 37:04
  I, I'm more interesting. Yeah, it would be more interesting for us to fucking disagree
• 37:08
  on this, but no, we don't. I, we just don't. I, I'm terrified
• 37:12
  of a healthy Patrick Mahomes. Okay, period.
• 37:15
  Let's do, let's do some fun. Let's do some fun podcasting. What— so
• 37:19
  let's slot, let's slot Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs back into the
• 37:23
  AFC Championship Game. They're back in it. Now we have to deal with them being
• 37:26
  back in the mix. Okay, who's gonna slay the dragon? Who would
• 37:30
  you like to see the Chiefs go up against in the
• 37:33
  AFC based on what we know right now? Go up in the AFC Championship?
• 37:39
  I want to— no, I want to see Lamar Jackson in the AFC Championship.
• 37:42
  The other, uh, that, or I would also— you
• 37:46
  want a narrative? If it's not Lamar, uh, I want to see Josh Allen in
• 37:50
  that game so Josh Allen can have his fucking slay the beast moment so
• 37:53
  we could stop pretending that Josh Allen— like, we could finally agree with what everyone
• 37:58
  is saying about Josh Allen. Um, yeah, it wouldn't even— it wouldn't even
• 38:02
  help me though because Josh Allen's already lost to Mahomes so many times that I'm
• 38:05
  like, I don't even care. Sometime— I mean, uh, and Manning kept losing to Brady
• 38:09
  until he— until he didn't. But he had to go to the— he had to
• 38:12
  go to Denver to do that. I mean, he did— he did beat them with
• 38:15
  Indy, but like, it was really Denver where he started fucking and kicking the shit
• 38:18
  out of the Patriots. Um, the, the,
• 38:22
  you know, I— Lamar getting to the Super Bowl and going through
• 38:26
  the Chiefs to do it, of course. Yeah, of course I want that.
• 38:30
  Would love to see it. It would shut so many fucking people up. And I
• 38:32
  will say, I'm ha— I've had a tough— I've had a tough little stretch as
• 38:36
  a sports fan. It's not the toughest stretch. In fact, some people might tell me
• 38:40
  to shut the fuck up because I'm from Boston, but I wouldn't
• 38:44
  hate to see— I wouldn't hate to see the Patriots versus the Chiefs again if
• 38:47
  I— but you know what's interesting about me, and this is true, and unfortunately people
• 38:51
  hate me for it. If I had— if you gave me the choice, Lamar Jackson
• 38:56
  or the Patriots, I'm going Lamar.
• 39:01
  I am too. And I need it. But also, but, but Mike
• 39:05
  Vrabel has a dog now, Tanya. The— you sent
• 39:09
  me the dog video and I was like, he— this is so fucking funny.
• 39:13
  Nice. So funny. Yeah, it's— guys,
• 39:17
  I have a puppy. I love animals. How could you hate me?
• 39:20
  Like, bro, as we, as we have
• 39:24
  once said on this podcast, as Cody once so eloquently said on
• 39:28
  this podcast, Hitler had a dog. Hitler had a dog. These are facts.
• 39:32
  You can't— I'm sorry, I don't love— I love your dog. Don't love you.
• 39:35
  You can't— you, you don't get the love that I
• 39:38
  have for your dog. You don't get that. You don't get that. It's not yours.
• 39:42
  It doesn't belong to you, man. Hate the man, love the dog. Period.
• 39:45
  Stop. I've said that always. It was my college dissertation.
• 39:50
  Anyways, let's get over to Media Corner. Okay,
• 39:53
  so back to LeBron, because of course this is a LeBron-centric episode.
• 39:57
  Um, the trading card company Topps broke
• 40:02
  the news of LeBron James' free agency decision.
• 40:06
  Now, Topps is, uh, owned by Fanatics, and they
• 40:10
  hopped into the NBA news-breaking business today announcing
• 40:14
  that LeBron James would be signing with the Sixers via a social media post
• 40:18
  displaying James' first autographed trading card in a 76ers uniform.
• 40:22
  Timestamps on the post from James,
• 40:25
  Topps' X account post, and ESPN's Shams all
• 40:30
  popped at 11:30 AM, but users received
• 40:33
  Topps' post notification first indicating that Topps sent its
• 40:37
  post, uh, seconds before the others. It's particularly of note because
• 40:41
  parts of this, uh, parts of the Sixers organization were apparently surprised by James' decision,
• 40:46
  with a team source close to the process telling The Athletic
• 40:50
  that they did not learn of his choice to accept their offer until minutes before
• 40:54
  the social media alerts. According to the company, this marks
• 40:57
  the first time a player move has ever been announced via trading
• 41:01
  card. You know why this happened, right? Michael Rubin?
• 41:05
  Yes, but you know why specifically it happened, right?
• 41:10
  Um, sure, go ahead.
• 41:13
  Fanatics Fest was last week. They wanted my— they wanted him to make
• 41:16
  his announcement then. He didn't do it, so they made it for him literally seconds
• 41:20
  before everybody else. I think that was a petty move on their part.
• 41:25
  Um, okay, like, I don't— I don't know, that doesn't really move
• 41:28
  me, but I will say I think it's really interesting
• 41:32
  how— again, I put— this is why this is such a good Media Corner story.
• 41:38
  The, the business interests of these athletes,
• 41:42
  the owners, the conglomerates they are
• 41:46
  sort of, um, in bed with, and because of social
• 41:49
  media and because of the access people have, just continue over
• 41:54
  and over again to make sports media news
• 41:57
  breaking irrelevant. Because what
• 42:01
  you're essentially saying here is you coordinated with ESPN and
• 42:05
  Shams along with Topps to release
• 42:09
  this information at exactly the same time. It was supposed to be 11:30,
• 42:12
  right? They— to your point,
• 42:16
  Topps edged out, or their notification may have just somehow gone
• 42:21
  out a few seconds Early somehow.
• 42:24
  Either way, that is the undermining
• 42:29
  of— like, this is not— we are living in a world where in
• 42:34
  no way, shape, or form are we in the Woj days.
• 42:38
  In no way, shape, or form do insiders actually have
• 42:42
  any clout or credibility in the news-breaking space.
• 42:47
  Shams was handed the
• 42:50
  story, not because he's Shams and because he broke
• 42:54
  it. LeBron and Rich Paul and
• 42:58
  Michael Rubin went to ESPN and Shams and
• 43:01
  said, here's the news, you're going to break it when we tell you.
• 43:05
  Just so we're very clear, that's not news breaking, guys.
• 43:09
  That's not reporting. That's not journalism.
• 43:13
  We— I don't know that people fully understand how insane
• 43:18
  it is that we have basically been given evidence
• 43:24
  that the news-breaking element of Sham Charania's
• 43:28
  job is literally him being handed information
• 43:33
  purely as a PR move. He is a public relations
• 43:37
  person. Yeah,
• 43:42
  Cody's— Cody's doing puppetry for anybody actually,
• 43:45
  in case you were wondering. In case you're wondering that this is— this is Rich
• 43:48
  Paul and here is Sham Sherania.
• 43:53
  He is turned into Rich Paul's Muppet. And listen,
• 43:57
  if that's the career, that's the career you have now, and that's fine because
• 44:02
  you've, uh, unfortunately— which I know is not Sham's like
• 44:06
  goal of any kind, but it's unfortunately really kind of damaged the
• 44:10
  idea of what journalism— there are no journalists anymore because
• 44:14
  journalism doesn't pay. Um, being an insider pays,
• 44:17
  being a social media figure pays. And I,
• 44:21
  I truly hate that we have monetized every
• 44:26
  aspect of this to this point now. And it's, it's really,
• 44:31
  uh, it's really just exhausting, man. It's fucking exhausting.
• 44:34
  Like, I, I just— I got no other thing to say other than it's gross.
• 44:37
  It's exactly where everything's going. Uh, you know, I've been watching the predictive markets.
• 44:41
  I'm wondering how many people were able to manipulate said predictive markets. I'm wondering how
• 44:44
  many people who actually knew were able to place anonymous bets in
• 44:48
  multiple, multiple places. I'm just— I, you know, the whole thing
• 44:53
  is just now have— has turned into a, a casino,
• 44:57
  a fucking full-on just pull
• 45:00
  the lever, sit there and play the slot machine every single fucking day.
• 45:04
  And I am fucking exhausted by it.
• 45:07
  If there is any justice in the world, we will at least, at the very
• 45:11
  least, find out who bet on LeBron that had inside
• 45:15
  information, because someone did it. To your point, God, yes, someone did it. There's just
• 45:19
  zero doubt in my mind that someone did. And, you know, as far as
• 45:22
  the news breaking of it all, the really funny part of it, and And I
• 45:26
  do agree to some extent that Shams going into this industry didn't decide he wanted
• 45:30
  to be a PR puppet for ESPN, but he's getting paid very well to be
• 45:33
  up here. He's definitely getting paid very well to do it. So hey, get your
• 45:36
  money, guy. But it's very funny because boy was Rich Paul
• 45:40
  yanking that poor shit around. Because a couple weeks ago
• 45:43
  he's like— he's— because he was trying, he was trying his best to
• 45:47
  do the insider thing. Well, you know, uh,
• 45:50
  so-and-so and blah and Draymond Green just opted out
• 45:54
  and they're trying to lure LeBron James to the Warriors, and he's got all
• 45:58
  the inside scoop that Rich Paul had very clearly fed him,
• 46:01
  right? We called it out at the time. And it's just
• 46:04
  like, there's— he never planned on going to the fucking Warriors.
• 46:08
  You— God, it's, it's just, it's almost depressing. Like,
• 46:12
  it— like, you're right, it really is almost a bummer.
• 46:16
  Because as much as, like, I, I don't
• 46:21
  have a ton of respect for these insiders who don't really do any
• 46:24
  journalism. Uh, I do think
• 46:27
  if you gave them the option, they would prefer to
• 46:31
  not be the puppet of LeBron James' agent and
• 46:35
  the PR mouthpiece for ESPN. I do think he would prefer to
• 46:39
  do the job he dreamed of doing when he was graduating college and
• 46:43
  inheriting Woj's Rolodex at Yahoo Sports, you know.
• 46:48
  Man, I, I, I just— yeah, listen, I know it's not their
• 46:52
  goal. I, I know. And I have— listen, I— you know how little respect
• 46:56
  I have for this industry. It's just— I— it is what it is. It's just
• 47:00
  this industry has— is— it's all pro wrestling now.
• 47:05
  And, um, I hate the pro wrestling industry, and I hate that the sports industry
• 47:09
  is now the pro wrestling industry. Well, did you give that to me just as
• 47:13
  a perfect segue to our next media story? Not on purpose,
• 47:16
  but that's how fucking good I am. Okay. Well,
• 47:20
  I really appreciate that because, uh, my— this entire
• 47:25
  story to me, um, I put in the notes, is really a perfect example of
• 47:28
  the WWE-ification of sports media and how
• 47:32
  that really— it's, uh, we've talked about it on the show, it's a part
• 47:36
  of the sort of ethos of our show. And also there are
• 47:39
  certain stories that highlight it in a way that really
• 47:44
  is, is undeniable. And there is a
• 47:49
  current, um, somewhat Dave Portnoy-manufactured
• 47:53
  beef, uh, with— between Dave Portnoy and Tom Brady,
• 47:57
  um, going on right now. That is also a beef
• 48:01
  about Tom Brady's beef with Logan Paul,
• 48:05
  which is clearly leading into some sort of WWE storyline.
• 48:08
  So there's the real WWE of it all Yep.
• 48:12
  And then there's the WWE kayfabe
• 48:17
  outrage that Portnoy is putting on about Tom Brady.
• 48:22
  Uh, so here, here's, here's what's happening.
• 48:26
  Now, to be clear, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear
• 48:28
  you, Cody, later be like, I don't even care about these guys,
• 48:32
  this is stupid, because the whole point is that it's stupid. Okay, we get it.
• 48:36
  Now The tension has peaked since Tom Brady's appearance
• 48:40
  at Fanatics Fest, uh, where he did a staged mock slap with Logan
• 48:44
  Paul. It was a really bad one too, like it really— oh,
• 48:47
  I didn't think it was. I thought it could have been a lot worse.
• 48:50
  I thought it was really bad. Oh, that's funny. I really— I was actually like
• 48:54
  a little bit— because Tom Brady's a bad actor, so like I thought it
• 48:58
  was better than I would have anticipated from Tom Brady.
• 49:01
  Oh, it's awesome. That's neither here nor there, um.
• 49:05
  He, uh, Portnoy went on this like long rant during his Wake Up
• 49:08
  Barstool claiming that Brady's transition into a lowbrow entertainment and WWE
• 49:13
  dude is one of the great downfalls of an icon.
• 49:16
  He blamed Fanatics' Michael Rubin for lame-ifying Brady and turning
• 49:20
  the former quarterback into a marketing puppet. Portnoy also noted that his
• 49:24
  criticism was made easier by the fact that Brady had already distanced
• 49:27
  himself from the New England Patriots. He called him cringy.
• 49:31
  He went all the way in. Um, now if that's
• 49:35
  not the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is. I— the
• 49:40
  general reaction to this on social media has been,
• 49:43
  only Dave Portnoy could make me take Tom Brady's side.
• 49:47
  So it seems like the general public is like,
• 49:50
  no one likes Tom Brady, but people hate you more, which I think is really
• 49:54
  funny because Agreed. No arguments.
• 49:58
  Like, zero arguments on that. Zero. I agree. And also,
• 50:03
  Portnoy is not entirely wrong.
• 50:07
  He's just like an absolute— like, he's just Dave fucking Portnoy.
• 50:11
  He can't be the messenger of this. Like, you don't get to be a cringy,
• 50:17
  bigoted, MAGA-adjacent, orange,
• 50:21
  disgusting human being and then be like, ugh, I can't
• 50:25
  believe Brady's abandoned all his morals and ethics and he's no longer cool.
• 50:28
  Like, fuck off. Fuck off. Literally fuck
• 50:32
  all the way off. Um, no, like,
• 50:36
  nobody thinks Brady's not been like a cringy sort of cyborg
• 50:40
  for years. It's been— it's been— it's— I'll admit it's
• 50:44
  gotten way fucking worse, but at the very least, he has one thing that
• 50:48
  Portnoy doesn't have, which is he has become a
• 50:52
  better broadcaster. The very least, when he's
• 50:56
  calling games, yes, we get like a decent, you know, actually him doing
• 50:59
  his job. He's not doing the cringy things, whatever. He has one tiny little
• 51:03
  sector of his work, public life, where we get a
• 51:07
  version of Tom Brady that we want. That doesn't exist with Dave Portnoy.
• 51:12
  There is no version of Dave Portnoy that we have ever wanted. That we
• 51:16
  will ever want, and he's not talented at anything.
• 51:19
  So that is always— he's always going to be a bad
• 51:23
  messenger for these conversations. Uh, another insufferable
• 51:27
  media personality weighs in. Shaq defends
• 51:31
  his friend Tom Brady to Dave Portnoy. Again,
• 51:35
  another person who said— he said, I'd be glad if someone punched Dave Portnoy
• 51:39
  in the face, and I hope it's Tom. Dave talks a lot. He's one of
• 51:42
  these lucky guys who had a lot of success, so he thinks he's— his views
• 51:45
  are important. A lot of these people, because they have success, they think that they're
• 51:49
  celebrities and they think that their word matters. But for him to
• 51:53
  even mention Tom Brady, what Tom Brady is doing— what you've got to understand about
• 51:56
  Tom is he knows exactly what he's doing, and he's doing it so well.
• 51:59
  You got idiots like Dave Portnoy expressing their opinion, but his opinion
• 52:02
  doesn't matter, and it never matters. I don't care how successful you
• 52:06
  are with selling your company or buying it back for a dollar. Whoop-de-frickin-doo,
• 52:10
  you're a rich man. Now try being nice. But again,
• 52:14
  I'll be glad if someone punches him in the face. He talks too much,
• 52:16
  and you can tell him I said that. Iconic, iconic takedown.
• 52:21
  I will give Shaq that, with the exception of one part. With the
• 52:25
  exception of one part, I do not believe Tom Brady knows
• 52:28
  what he's doing right now. I think Tom Brady is going to get very weird
• 52:31
  advice. That being said, everything else I agree with 100%. I— but
• 52:34
  I will say, so I think it's twofold. I think Tom Brady gets weird
• 52:38
  advice. I don't think it's necessarily Michael— he is weird friends with Michael Rubin,
• 52:42
  but a lot of famous people are weird friends with Michael Rubin. Yeah, I can't
• 52:45
  pin it on that. I'm not gonna— yeah, but, but, um,
• 52:49
  so to some extent, like, yes, I do think he
• 52:52
  doesn't quite know how he's being perceived all the time.
• 52:56
  I also like Tom Brady's been like this.
• 52:59
  Like, he was like this long before people realized he was like this, this sort
• 53:03
  of like corny,
• 53:06
  try-hard, right? Like, there's a try-hard energy to Tom Brady,
• 53:10
  which I think that we get frustrated with. Um, it's the same reason people
• 53:14
  get frustrated with LeBron James, is like, we don't want to see our GOATs be
• 53:18
  try-hards. We want them to be effortlessly cool, aloof,
• 53:22
  and, and sort of like— that's like something that we
• 53:26
  really like. The difference between Brady and
• 53:29
  LeBron is that like when LeBron go— like,
• 53:32
  if LeBron appears in a movie, he's like good,
• 53:35
  right? Like, like LeBron making it, he's good, he's funny,
• 53:39
  he's like whatever. Like, Tom's not— like,
• 53:43
  Tom, you're not good at this. And you're— and to
• 53:47
  also, is Tom Brady
• 53:51
  gonna stop? Is he gonna stop with the face?
• 53:54
  Are we gonna stop changing the face? No, Tanya, I don't know why
• 53:58
  you're just noticing this. I've been saying this for years, man. What I didn't
• 54:02
  even just notice it, but it's been years. What part of what I just said
• 54:06
  made it sound like I had just noticed this? No, no, no, no, no.
• 54:09
  I have been watching his face change since 2005, you absolute fucking crazy person.
• 54:13
  I've been tracking this for longer than you have
• 54:17
  even fucking thought about Tom Brady. It has been happening the entire
• 54:21
  fucking time. That proceeding hairline is
• 54:25
  impossible not to see it. Because that thing was
• 54:29
  receding in 2001 and it's been proceeding
• 54:34
  ever since. It's, it's, it's like marching on fucking Russia.
• 54:38
  It's fucking insane. Gonna connect with his eyebrows soon. At some
• 54:41
  point it's just gonna be fucking all the way down to his eyes. Like,
• 54:45
  it's fucking weird. This— and the, and the, like, the continued sort
• 54:49
  of, like, the jaw just keeps going forward. Like, it's— he
• 54:54
  looks like a character from Ren and Stimpy now. Like, it's fucking He
• 54:58
  need— is— and the answer is no, he's not going to stop. No,
• 55:01
  he's not going to stop. And so we're going to end up like— we are
• 55:04
  what, what would you say we're about? No, I'm gonna be— I'm gonna be dead
• 55:07
  serious with us trying to estimate this. I think we're about 8
• 55:11
  to 10 years away from him being looking like Mickey Rooney.
• 55:14
  Mickey Rourke. Mickey Rourke. We'll get there.
• 55:18
  Yeah, we're gonna— right? Like, I mean, he's— he's gonna Mickey Rourke it.
• 55:22
  Yeah, that is— yeah, he is. And by the way, this is a crazy thing
• 55:25
  for somebody who was considered traditionally like handsome.
• 55:29
  Mickey Rourke here, by the way. So was Mickey Rourke. Mickey Rourke starred in
• 55:32
  a movie called Johnny Handsome. He was Johnny Handsome.
• 55:37
  It's crazy the dysmorphia these guys fucking have. And at least Mickey Rourke was
• 55:40
  like a movie star where it's like, okay, I understand you have facial dysmorphia,
• 55:44
  you've been whatever. Like Tom Brady, you're, you're 6'4, you were an NFL
• 55:48
  quarterback. Like, you— and by the way,
• 55:52
  not a bunch of fucking competition on that front. NFL quarterbacks,
• 55:56
  like, they— well, they're more handsome now than
• 56:00
  they were when we were younger. When we were younger, we were getting a lot
• 56:03
  of like Farves and, um, like, who was— who was
• 56:07
  like the hot quarterback when we were like in high school, college age, like when
• 56:10
  we were coming up? Steve Young, maybe. He was a decent looking— he was retired
• 56:14
  by then, so I think it was Tom Brady. Warner. Kurt Warner was good.
• 56:17
  Yeah, he was handsome. Yeah, but he was also always a little too weird and
• 56:20
  Christian, so He was, he was. You weren't like allowed to
• 56:24
  say he was handsome because I think that that was like against the Bible or
• 56:27
  something. Oh, well, I— yeah, I did read that, that passage. You're not allowed to
• 56:31
  say that someone else's husband is handsome. Oh yeah, yeah, I read that. That's it.
• 56:35
  It's well known. That's why I won't let you— that's why I won't let you
• 56:38
  hang out with Chris anymore because you're constantly talking about how hot he is.
• 56:39
  Well, it's punishable by like stoning, I believe. All right,
• 56:42
  well then sign— line up because you, you know— well,
• 56:46
  I could, I could take a hit. Anyways, yeah, this Tom Brady thing
• 56:49
  is— it's not about that, like, I hate everyone involved.
• 56:53
  I do, but that's not the point. It's just this whole thing is just fucking—
• 56:57
  it's just really weird. Like, it just— it seems like,
• 57:00
  what are you actually doing this for? Like, because you're not doing it to keep
• 57:04
  yourself relevant. In fact, it's like— it's honestly making— I,
• 57:08
  I never thought the world would come that, like, why do I feel bad for
• 57:11
  Tom Brady? Like, this is like I know what you mean. I know what
• 57:14
  you mean. It is the move of someone who's losing relevance and
• 57:18
  trying to gain it back, right? It's— this is the— some— this is something that
• 57:21
  like Donald Trump was doing in the '90s to stay relevant.
• 57:25
  He would go to the WWE. And so I understand what you mean because
• 57:28
  it feels more pathetic than he needs to be. And,
• 57:32
  and he's objectively still one of the most famous, successful former
• 57:37
  athletes in the country, if not the world. I'm trying to
• 57:40
  figure out what the deal is. He just seems to be so empty inside and
• 57:44
  constantly trying to fill it with more things to sort of attention,
• 57:48
  which is a bummer. Um, it's really interesting too because on the sports media angle
• 57:52
  of it, he's doing this, he's doing these stunts with, uh,
• 57:56
  Logan Paul, who's an objectionable fucking loser of a human,
• 58:00
  getting into like, you know, in the headlines with Portnoy
• 58:03
  calling him out an objectionable loser human. Getting defended by Shaq.
• 58:08
  And this is one of our main sports broadcasters
• 58:12
  for football, for NFL. He is an A-team NFL broadcaster.
• 58:17
  The other A-team NFL broadcaster from CBS just got arrested for
• 58:20
  a fucking DUI. So like, Tony Romo is,
• 58:25
  is, you know, getting arrested, can't, can't do a
• 58:28
  field sobriety test. Tom Brady's slapping Logan Paul
• 58:32
  in WWE stunts. Mark Sanchez is going to prison, apparently,
• 58:36
  right? Well, luckily he was never an A-Teamer. He was just a dude who ESPN
• 58:40
  paid a lot of money. So to your point, ESPN's just
• 58:44
  laid off a bunch of pretty, like, reliable fucking journalists. Really good people,
• 58:48
  man. Really good people. We are staring down the barrel of some
• 58:51
  ugly shit, man. And I'm not saying that the broadcasters
• 58:55
  of yesteryear were, uh, were model
• 58:59
  citizens. Right? Like, that's not what I'm saying at all.
• 59:02
  But DUIs and, uh,
• 59:06
  and public WWE beefs with Logan
• 59:09
  Paul— you couldn't even WWE beef with like a real
• 59:13
  WWE star. Like, you're— because you're so desperate for
• 59:18
  the attention of 20-somethings and early 30-somethings, you need to
• 59:22
  do Logan Paul. Couldn't even be— could even— you couldn't pull Roman Reigns.
• 59:25
  You're Tom Brady, you couldn't pull Seth Rollins? You're Tom Brady, you couldn't pull
• 59:30
  Brock Lesnar? Anybody but Logan Paul?
• 59:34
  That's a bummer, dude. That's kind of a bummer.
• 59:38
  It's a bummer. It's like, it just makes me sad. Just makes
• 59:42
  me really— our heroes are all lame asses. They all suck.
• 59:46
  They are all lame asses, man. Well, you know what's not lame?
• 59:49
  Let's talk about it. You finally saw it. You saw The Odyssey.
• 59:53
  Did you see it at IMAX? What, what form did Because I have yet to
• 59:56
  see it in IMAX, and I'm trying, trying to see it specifically in IMAX 70mm,
• 1:00:00
  which by the way is the, like, what it was exactly shot in. So that's
• 1:00:04
  supposed to— and there's only so many IMAX 70mm theaters in
• 1:00:08
  the country. I believe there's only 2 in LA. I believe I
• 1:00:12
  might be wrong on that, but I think there's only 2 in LA. There's the
• 1:00:14
  Universal CityWalk, and then there's, uh, the Chinese Theater also has a 70mm,
• 1:00:18
  uh, IMAX. So— oh, I didn't realize. I'm trying really,
• 1:00:21
  really hard to go see it in that format. It's completely
• 1:00:25
  booked up for the next 2 weeks everywhere I look. Of course. It's like,
• 1:00:28
  I— yeah, I want to see it so bad, but I, I might just buckle
• 1:00:32
  and go see it in regular IMAX. Oh, poor me. Uh, but man, I,
• 1:00:35
  I really would like to see it in like the very best possible
• 1:00:39
  visual format. Um, we saw it in a—
• 1:00:42
  like, it, uh, Showcase has their own version of
• 1:00:46
  like a really big screen. I don't know what it's called. It wasn't 70mm
• 1:00:50
  IMAX. I don't care. I'm in Massachusetts. They're not going to have that here.
• 1:00:54
  Uh, but we saw it, um, in a very good theater.
• 1:00:57
  Great sound. To your point, we— the sound was sounding.
• 1:01:01
  We had— we were feeling exactly all the, all the work that Nolan
• 1:01:05
  put into that element of the film. Um, the picture
• 1:01:09
  was great. I thought it was— I— all in all,
• 1:01:12
  Christopher Nolan made a gorgeous film.
• 1:01:16
  Like, I mean, as far as filmmaking is concerned and epics,
• 1:01:20
  you know, like historical epics, uh, period pieces,
• 1:01:24
  all that stuff, like there's nothing you can do,
• 1:01:28
  um, to critique any of it. It should, it should win all the awards.
• 1:01:32
  The cinematography I thought was outstanding, and I thought that the
• 1:01:36
  work that he did in the water with the ocean, um, like so many
• 1:01:40
  of those scenes Like whether it was the ship while it was like falling
• 1:01:44
  apart, whether it was him out on the raft. Um, I thought the water
• 1:01:48
  scenes were particularly compelling, which I think is obviously smart to
• 1:01:52
  sort of give the ocean its own, um,
• 1:01:57
  character and personality because of the Poseidon of it all.
• 1:02:00
  So that was something that really, that really drew me in
• 1:02:04
  and then I, that I, I felt pretty connected to. And,
• 1:02:08
  um, the idea that the Cyclops was
• 1:02:12
  practical is fucking nuts, by the way. Oh yeah, very— I had,
• 1:02:15
  I had no idea that the Cyclops was a, uh, giant puppet.
• 1:02:20
  Giant puppet and then put in post with the actor. It's just brilliant.
• 1:02:24
  Brilliant. Really, really cool. I thought the coloring on the film was great. Sometimes I
• 1:02:28
  don't like the filters that are put on films like that. Um,
• 1:02:31
  like, I understand why he filtered Dunkirk, which I think is an incredible movie,
• 1:02:35
  but it can be a little bit like tough. Uh, it can be monotonous to
• 1:02:38
  watch the movies that are sort filtered that way. I thought the colors were amazing.
• 1:02:41
  Like, it just— it was a really incredible film
• 1:02:45
  with one genuinely massive flaw
• 1:02:49
  that affected my ability to
• 1:02:53
  come out of it feeling blown away.
• 1:02:56
  Hmm. I gotta tell you, man, it's one
• 1:03:00
  of the best. Like, there, there are— you don't want to know what the flaw
• 1:03:03
  was? You're just— you don't have any question, any, any follow-up questions?
• 1:03:06
  Oh, I know what it— I know what it is. It was all the DEI
• 1:03:09
  hires. I know what you're really leaked all about. I've seen your— all
• 1:03:12
  the internet posts. You're just mad and you're just really excited for the historically accurate
• 1:03:16
  one that's going to be done by Elon Musk's AI. Yeah,
• 1:03:20
  the one with, um, with like the Paul Newman lookalike.
• 1:03:24
  Yeah, so historically accurate to ancient Greece.
• 1:03:28
  Also, the story never fucking happened.
• 1:03:34
  So here's the thing. Um,
• 1:03:38
  the acting wasn't good. What acting did you not like?
• 1:03:41
  I'll tell you who I did like off the top.
• 1:03:45
  Um, I thought John Leguizamo was fucking amazing. Fantastic.
• 1:03:49
  I thought Robert Pattinson was fucking amazing. Fantastic.
• 1:03:53
  Um, in their small roles,
• 1:03:56
  uh, Zendaya and, um, and Lupita
• 1:04:01
  Nyong'o, fantastic, fantastic,
• 1:04:04
  fantastic. Um, I thought Bernthal was pretty good. I like,
• 1:04:07
  I like what Bernthal does, and I think that that character matched what he
• 1:04:11
  does pretty well. Um, it's just sort of a classic Bernthal, but I think that
• 1:04:15
  the casting was smart. I agree. And I actually, and I actually thought that,
• 1:04:18
  um, I actually thought that, uh,
• 1:04:22
  Tom Holland was a little weak to start and really grew
• 1:04:26
  into that role over the course of the film.
• 1:04:29
  I, I really enjoyed his performance. He felt like Spider-Man early on,
• 1:04:32
  he felt like character development later on, which I think was
• 1:04:36
  intentional, so I can appreciate that. I would have liked a lot
• 1:04:40
  more of— I forget what the actor's name is, but,
• 1:04:43
  um, Odysseus's number one, his like number one,
• 1:04:47
  uh, guy out on— oh, I love him. He was the star of the movie
• 1:04:50
  yesterday. Um, Himesh Patel. Yeah, he was fantastic
• 1:04:54
  in this, and I would have liked more of him. I feel like he was
• 1:04:57
  like a little bit hamstrung because the things I did get to see from him
• 1:04:59
  were great, but like I didn't get as much of him as I wanted.
• 1:05:02
  Um, Charlize Theron was just
• 1:05:05
  Charlize Theron. Like, I— that was— it was fine, I guess. Like,
• 1:05:09
  she— I think that could have been played by any beautiful actress. I agree,
• 1:05:12
  I agree. I think— I, I do think— I don't think she phoned it in,
• 1:05:15
  but I didn't think she really put anything more in. And I think that that
• 1:05:18
  might have been the writing a little bit. Yeah, I think it was just she
• 1:05:20
  put out what was on the page, and I— it was fine. But, but I
• 1:05:24
  didn't— that was the one— Calypso was the one character I didn't get much
• 1:05:28
  of a feeling. Yeah, yeah, really. And then, um,
• 1:05:31
  and Charlize Theron's an amazing actress. She's a great actor. And like, all these people
• 1:05:34
  are great actors. Uh, Matt Damon and Anne
• 1:05:38
  Hathaway were just not good. Boy,
• 1:05:41
  I disagree with you. I know, I know, I know you do. And,
• 1:05:45
  and I like— I didn't do it. So for me,
• 1:05:49
  Matt Damon, I had a really hard time. He's extremely one-note
• 1:05:53
  through the whole movie. And The Odyssey specifically is
• 1:05:57
  meant to sort of like— it's supposed to evoke
• 1:06:01
  this long, like, horrific struggle through
• 1:06:05
  all these things and this, this inevitable journey back home.
• 1:06:08
  And at no point for me was, uh,
• 1:06:12
  Matt Damon ever really evoking the— like,
• 1:06:16
  like his— there was a flatness to his, um,
• 1:06:19
  the whole scene with Calypso on the beach where he's like remembering and he's
• 1:06:24
  like remembering exactly what he's been through and whatever else.
• 1:06:27
  That was the same affect he had as the affect he had when
• 1:06:31
  they were landing on the beach and they had— they were dealing with giants
• 1:06:35
  or the Cyclops. Was the same affect he had
• 1:06:39
  in all of these different scenarios. The 2 scenes that Chris and I
• 1:06:42
  decided were where he really brought his A-game and actually elevated
• 1:06:46
  it and told the story, because I actually had a hard time understanding
• 1:06:51
  what, uh, like what Odysseus wanted because, because Matt
• 1:06:55
  Damon was so flat. Like, I, I really— like, I was actually having a hard
• 1:06:58
  time following some of the plot because he was so one-note.
• 1:07:02
  But the, the scene with Circe where he is getting his men back,
• 1:07:07
  where he is, um, convincing them, convincing Circe to—
• 1:07:11
  I thought that was a really good— I thought that was his best
• 1:07:15
  work in the movie. Um, there was like a desperation but
• 1:07:19
  like this calm on the front, but there was a little bit of frenetic energy
• 1:07:22
  to it. It was like the best of what he was capable of
• 1:07:26
  doing. And, um, and I thought that
• 1:07:30
  his chemistry in the scenes with Tom Holland was, was the
• 1:07:34
  best chemistry that he had with anybody in the movie. Oh, I thought it was—
• 1:07:37
  I thought they were great together, the scenes. Yeah, I actually— so I, um,
• 1:07:41
  here's why I disagree with— it's not that your take's wrong, it's, it's whatever
• 1:07:44
  you take away. It's a take, it's whatever you take away from the film.
• 1:07:47
  I really found his underplaying
• 1:07:51
  of the character incredibly interesting.
• 1:07:55
  I, I, I, I fucking— I would say it was underplaying it
• 1:07:59
  if that weren't how he plays everything. Oh, see, I,
• 1:08:02
  I, I firmly disagree. I really do. I thought he played this character with
• 1:08:06
  a certain, um, specifically he played it with like,
• 1:08:10
  it seemed like a certain PTSD. Like he, you know what he did? It felt
• 1:08:14
  like he played it exactly like Oppenheimer at the end of the movie. He know
• 1:08:17
  he broke the world, and that's what he was struggling with through
• 1:08:21
  the entire journey home. And I thought that was like an internal battle that
• 1:08:25
  I was watching the entire time. And I have to say, okay, so I personally
• 1:08:28
  loved it. To your point, had, had that affect been only
• 1:08:32
  post— like, I actually think that that would be a great takeaway
• 1:08:37
  if he had showed a different level of
• 1:08:41
  like, uh, of character in the moments
• 1:08:46
  with Penelope before he heads out, in the moments when there
• 1:08:49
  was still some hope on the beach before the Trojan War?
• 1:08:52
  I thought he did, especially in his hunting scenes.
• 1:08:56
  What hunting scenes? The hunting scene at the beginning of the movie where he was
• 1:08:59
  kind of showing he was almost a happy-go-lucky leader Odysseus.
• 1:09:03
  He was telling him that was— that was 30 seconds. Yes, I know,
• 1:09:07
  but I, I found it to be very effective. By the way, This is also
• 1:09:10
  something that is commonly argued about as
• 1:09:14
  a down note on most Nolan films— the, the under— like,
• 1:09:18
  the lack of character development early on in establishment of the main character
• 1:09:21
  of certain of those movies. Um, it happens sometimes,
• 1:09:24
  but I will say I, I, I just firmly disagree. I thought the visuals and
• 1:09:29
  the kind of low-key performance of Matt Key— Matt
• 1:09:32
  Damon— I thought was exactly what the film needed. I will say he looked great.
• 1:09:36
  He was built well. He— his, um, fighting scenes all
• 1:09:40
  looked— I mean, I know he probably had stunt doubles for certain things, but like,
• 1:09:43
  he looked great doing what he was doing physically. I could believe
• 1:09:47
  that he was this sort of like, uh, old man with
• 1:09:51
  the skills still intact, which I think is great. I think that
• 1:09:54
  was important that he'd be able to pull that off. Um, but I
• 1:09:58
  didn't— once he was back with Penelope and he was explaining what was going on,
• 1:10:01
  it just— it, it didn't move me at all. Like, I truly had No
• 1:10:05
  emotional tie to Odysseus. If anything, I felt really annoyed by him,
• 1:10:09
  and not in a way where he even angered me, but more just like
• 1:10:12
  bored. I was really bored of Odysseus at one point. Um,
• 1:10:17
  and the plot, uh, at— by the
• 1:10:20
  end, what kept me intrigued was what's he
• 1:10:24
  gonna— how is he gonna make sure that, like, is he gonna get to see
• 1:10:27
  the dog? Is he gonna— is, is, uh, John Leguizamo gonna
• 1:10:31
  be okay? How is Tom Holland going to get through this in that battle up
• 1:10:35
  there, whatever? All of the characters around Odysseus were
• 1:10:39
  what really made me care about what happened to Odysseus.
• 1:10:43
  And that's fine if that's what Christopher Nolan intended,
• 1:10:47
  right? Like, that's— if that's what he intended was for Matt Damon to
• 1:10:51
  be boring, um, that's an interesting
• 1:10:55
  choice for The Odyssey because the, the character of Odysseus actually is
• 1:10:59
  a very layered, interesting character. Um, in a way that like it could have
• 1:11:03
  been a choice. It just wasn't for me. That doesn't mean
• 1:11:06
  that I was bored by the movie. I just was bored
• 1:11:10
  by his performance in a lot of ways that I didn't necessarily,
• 1:11:14
  um, that I didn't necessarily, uh, like I
• 1:11:18
  wasn't like, oh my God, fuck this movie. I just wanted a
• 1:11:22
  little bit more, and I think he's capable of a little bit more, and I
• 1:11:24
  think that you can still do the sort of broken, I've fucked
• 1:11:28
  the world up thing in a much more interesting,
• 1:11:32
  layered way. It's the screen. This is not a— like, it has
• 1:11:36
  to translate, and it didn't translate for me. I, I understand.
• 1:11:40
  I, I'm very disappointed it didn't. It really did for me.
• 1:11:44
  However, that doesn't mean I'm right either. I, I kind of,
• 1:11:48
  I kind of found his performance to be more of a, a very classic like,
• 1:11:52
  like a very classic, like, lens acting performance. Like, there was almost
• 1:11:56
  like, uh, I felt like there was so much here. How about like another under—
• 1:11:59
  undersold kind of performance that I, I compare it to, which is a weird comparison,
• 1:12:04
  so I apologize for that. Okay, but have you ever seen, um, the movie Drive
• 1:12:07
  with Ryan Gosling where he almost says nothing the entire movie? It's a lot
• 1:12:11
  of— I haven't because I think, um, Chris told me that it's too violent for
• 1:12:15
  me. It is definitely violent. The violence here, the violence is not like like a
• 1:12:19
  lot in the movie, but when the violence happens, it's very violent. Yeah. Um,
• 1:12:23
  but I will say, like, there is such an underplayed performance
• 1:12:26
  there by Ryan Gosling to where it's actually fascinating. And I love—
• 1:12:30
  but isn't he mostly alone in that movie?
• 1:12:33
  He's interacting with some other— a lot of other people as well, but there is
• 1:12:37
  a lot of alone on-camera acting as well. It's just— I kind of— I kind
• 1:12:40
  of took that away from it. Like, I really can do an underplayed
• 1:12:44
  performance. I can do— I don't need overacting. If anything, I mean, you and I
• 1:12:47
  talked about how I hated the overacting of Sean Penn in One Battle After Another.
• 1:12:50
  Yeah, it was very over the top. So over the— oh, the overacting doesn't have
• 1:12:54
  to happen, but I think there has to be a happy medium, and I personally
• 1:12:57
  don't think he reached it. I also, uh, I had a huge— I
• 1:13:00
  had trouble, um, escaping into the
• 1:13:04
  character of Penelope with, um, Anne Hathaway, and I don't
• 1:13:08
  think it's her fault. I think that she did a great job as
• 1:13:12
  an actor. I think that she acted Well,
• 1:13:16
  I have a— she has a very specific vibe,
• 1:13:20
  and her like typecasting has been such that like she doesn't
• 1:13:24
  disappear into a period piece for me. Like Matt Damon looked like he could be
• 1:13:27
  Odysseus. I wasn't worried about that. It was the acting. But for her, I'm like,
• 1:13:30
  that's just— that's fucking Anne Hathaway. Like, like, my brain can't— she
• 1:13:34
  doesn't do the thing. She doesn't do the thing that, um, some other
• 1:13:39
  actors that I think are slightly better caliber Uh, than her can
• 1:13:43
  do. Um, what's her name? Uh,
• 1:13:46
  Rose from Titanic. Oh, uh, yeah. Uh,
• 1:13:50
  what's wrong with me? Fucking— what is going on with our brains? What's wrong
• 1:13:54
  with me? Fucking— she's won multiple Oscars now. Uh, the fucking—
• 1:14:00
  the reader. Come on, fucking reader. What the fuck's wrong with me? And someone in
• 1:14:03
  the chat— All My Children. Can someone please Oh my
• 1:14:07
  God, what is her name? I'm really mad at
• 1:14:11
  myself. We can't have 2 ADHD people. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It'll come to me,
• 1:14:15
  it'll come to me, it'll come to me. I promise. We got, we got this,
• 1:14:17
  we got this. It is, it is Kate Winslet.
• 1:14:27
  Kate Winslet's a great actress. Anyway, someone like Kate Winslet,
• 1:14:31
  um, I think disappears into roles really, really well despite
• 1:14:35
  how famous she is. Um, and for whatever reason, I just couldn't
• 1:14:39
  do this, uh, with Anne Hathaway. But on the flip side,
• 1:14:43
  I thought that she brought the right level
• 1:14:47
  of acting chops to the performance that was enough.
• 1:14:51
  Um, I just wish I could have forgotten while I was watching the movie that
• 1:14:55
  it was Anne Hathaway the whole time. Yeah. And I just couldn't. I, I understand
• 1:14:59
  that. I totally understand that. There's a— that's— she is one of those
• 1:15:02
  actor— actresses or actors that tend to have that about them. Yeah, so it's
• 1:15:07
  so weird too because like I can watch a— like, you know,
• 1:15:10
  like One Battle After— I can watch like Leo in a movie and
• 1:15:15
  be like, it's Leo, but I can fall into the character. It's like, I know
• 1:15:19
  that's— that guy's so fucking famous, he's so Leo in everything he does,
• 1:15:22
  but for whatever reason Yeah, so overall
• 1:15:26
  I think that the movie was a really stunning cinematic achievement.
• 1:15:30
  I know that to your point, Christopher Nolan has— he does
• 1:15:34
  have, uh, criticisms around his,
• 1:15:37
  like, his script writing and plot, uh,
• 1:15:41
  character development that I think definitely showed up here, that show
• 1:15:45
  up in a lot of his films. They're not deal breakers for me generally.
• 1:15:49
  They're not deal breakers for me. The miscasting for me of
• 1:15:52
  Odysseus is real tough. He didn't miscast Oppenheimer.
• 1:15:57
  He didn't miscast anybody in The Prestige.
• 1:16:00
  He didn't miss— like, he— this was tough.
• 1:16:04
  This one is a— this one is a, a tough one for
• 1:16:08
  me. It— to the point where I'm not sure how rewatchable it's going
• 1:16:12
  to be for me, which is— hey, listen, yeah, I hear you. I, I can't
• 1:16:16
  wait to go see it again. I look forward to seeing Matt Damon's this performance
• 1:16:18
  again. I hope you see it again, and I hope— yeah, I mean,
• 1:16:21
  and if you do see it and you see like some other layers and whatever
• 1:16:25
  else and something that you feel like, I do actually think you should go back
• 1:16:28
  and watch this, I absolutely would. That being said,
• 1:16:31
  I totally agree with you on Charlize Theron, the character of Calypso. I do
• 1:16:35
  also appreciate what they were using Calypso as and kind of using her as more
• 1:16:39
  of a narrative device to be narrator of the story. I just kind of— that
• 1:16:43
  was the way you were with Anne Hathaway, I was that with, with with
• 1:16:48
  Charlize Theron. Yeah, I just was like, oh, Charlize Theron is here, and that's
• 1:16:52
  Charlize Theron just reciting lines to Matt— to Odysseus. And I was
• 1:16:56
  just like, I, I wanted a little bit more out of that, but that was
• 1:17:00
  really my only complaint about it. Xerxes was great though. Oh my
• 1:17:04
  God, stole, stole the movie, possibly. Yeah, like, what a performance.
• 1:17:07
  I do think John Leguizamo stole the movie. So good. Um,
• 1:17:11
  but she's a close second in terms of a smaller bit part. Um,
• 1:17:15
  I would love to see Leguizamo nominated. I thought he was fucking amazing. I really,
• 1:17:19
  really did. I didn't— he's gonna get nominated. I think he's a great actor,
• 1:17:21
  but I didn't expect him to be one of my favorite takeaways from the film.
• 1:17:25
  Um, and he was. And, and Robert Pattinson, man, he's,
• 1:17:28
  he's, he was fucking good. He's a good villain.
• 1:17:32
  He is. So I— yeah, overall there are other
• 1:17:36
  performances that are slimy and, um, and I— listen,
• 1:17:40
  fucking Tom Holland. Let's get this guy into
• 1:17:43
  more serious stuff. I loved it. I love it. Yeah, everything you
• 1:17:47
  guys are like pretending to do with Chalamet, do with Tom Holland. Yes,
• 1:17:51
  yes, you can just hear it. Let's move Chalamet. My mom
• 1:17:55
  told me that they're gonna cast him in Holland. He's gonna be Fred Astaire.
• 1:17:59
  Oh, that's a— that's an A+. That's A+ casting. A+.
• 1:18:04
  Yeah, a fucking plus. So Listen guys, uh, we went
• 1:18:07
  a little long today so we can't get to the bloody sock yet again.
• 1:18:10
  And I know you're feeling all nostalgic because after all that I charged my whole
• 1:18:13
  ring light. I know, and now we're out of power. We're out of power.
• 1:18:17
  That's why we can't talk about the bloody sock because you're fucking— I have to
• 1:18:19
  get up close like, like we're telling a ghost story. Oh, I love that.
• 1:18:22
  I love, I love a campfire story. We can't talk about the bloody sock,
• 1:18:25
  probably for the best because again we yapped our asses off. Um,
• 1:18:29
  the re— the Red Sox winning streak is over anyway.
• 1:18:32
  So yeah, you guys had a great run, by the way. You're still holding on
• 1:18:35
  to one of those wildcard spots, so it's gonna be interesting what happens in the
• 1:18:38
  trade deadline. You guys gonna go for it? Probably. No, God no, no. They're gonna
• 1:18:41
  do the stupidest shit. You know they're gonna do the stupidest shit. And you know
• 1:18:44
  what? That's what we deserve. Because at the end of the day, whether you like,
• 1:18:48
  share, or subscribe to The Regulars or not— and I think you should— we,
• 1:18:52
  we deserve this because fuck Kurt
• 1:18:56
  Schilling. I've always said this. Fuck Kurt Schilling. We're The Regulars. Like,
• 1:19:00
  share, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.