Share & "Retire" & Tell with Dan Patrick and Dan Le Batard (and LeBron's Hands)

Pablo Torre: Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

[Sound of a dramatic, climactic noise]

Dan Le Batard: I'm sorry, did you climax? Right after this ad.

Dan Patrick: Did I talk too much?

Dan Le Batard: Why can't I just let it go? We should stop. We should stop. We should stop. We should stop. We should stop. Take a breath.

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Pablo Torre: Good afternoon. Look at that restrained, classy, punctual, flanneled journalist. I used to be one of those. I don't know how it happened that I became the third-ranking journalist on this, in terms of just journalism-ing. Just a guy wearing a clown nose.

Dan Le Batard: Alongside two members of a Mount Rushmore of reporters. Correct.

Pablo Torre: Yeah. You sold your soul, Dan.

Dan Le Batard: Sold your soul.

Dan Patrick: You know how Dan Patrick refers to our show, Pablo? He says, "You talking and somebody next to you dressed like a parrot."

Dan Le Batard: Yeah. It just screams out 60 Minutes. The voice. The voice emanating from the flannel. I don't get tired of it.

Pablo Torre: My Dan. Other Dan. I don't know how I'm going to do this today.

Dan Patrick: Wait a minute. Which one is your Dan? Hold on a minute. What did you just do there?

Pablo Torre: He's my Dan. He's other Dan.

Dan Patrick: But yes, his voice sounds like polished, professional television. It's f***ing infuriating. Infuriating.

Dan Le Batard: It's pipes. They call them pipes. Yeah. Mine are rusty and filled with sewage. His sound like a flute and angels singing. Just don't let your wives answer the phone when I call.

Dan Patrick: It sounded both like a lullaby and a threat. Both of them. "Hi. Is Pablo there? Pablo who? Look out, Liz."

Dan Le Batard: Hi. Hi, Valerie. Now you better knock that off. You better back up, Valerie. I'm here too.

Pablo Torre: Are we recording?

Dan Le Batard: I mean, we started. Yeah.

Pablo Torre: This is what journalism is like. Welcome. I wanted to start beyond the truly mellifluous, guttural noises of Dan Patrick. Beyond even that, I did want to address my two Dans. What an honor to confuse the audience by me calling both of you by your first name without explaining your dynamic, which I think is a little bit obvious now. But for people who don't know how you guys know each other, why you guys like or dislike each other? Can you explain? Can one of the Dans please explain how it is that we're all here today and how you guys have gotten together?

Dan Le Batard: Well, do you want the brief version? I can do that. But if you want the novel, then your Dan can do that.

Dan Patrick: Go ahead, Dan. Pablo gave us over an hour to chop this up, so why don't you wax poetic?

Dan Le Batard: I would say that Dan is one of the few people who I've become friends with late in adulthood. I have not done that with a whole lot of people. I admire him for a lot of reasons. He's a little bit of a loner and does things his own way. Gave us a lot of permission to do the things that we do. Gambled on himself. Did some things that I really admire. I've genuinely felt like I've gotten to know him a little more than most people because he's a bit guarded, not with his radio audience that gets the most intimate him, but a bit guarded. I feel like he's let me see a little more, and I've appreciated the access to that vulnerability.

Dan Patrick: [Making a face] Dan Patrick is already making the face of someone who's like, "Are we about to do therapy with Le Batard again? Is that what I wandered into? What is happening here?"

Dan Le Batard: No, I think it's having somebody that you can talk to. I think Dan was going through a tough time. His brother was sick. Then his brother died. I was going through health issues. So I think we found it cathartic in a certain way. We crossed paths, but it's weird to have friends or become friends when you get older because I'm six months from being 70. I'm not collecting friends. I'm usually losing friends because they die. But we just kind of hit it off, and conversations have been rewarding.

Pablo Torre: I was going to jump in by just pointing out that I see you guys as having occupied, during truly like peak ESPN, that broad arc of the company's history, two different sides of the company. Dan Patrick, I grew up with watching on SportsCenter for those who are too young to remember what that was. Televisions were a device that you could use to watch sports, and there was Dan Patrick and the aforementioned vocal cords. Then Le Batard, I mean, I worked with you, obviously. People know that part. The way in which your sweat and your sweat equity funded my entire enterprise here, that's obvious. But you guys were different sides of the thing.

Dan Patrick: But Dan and I didn't know each other at ESPN. I don't think we crossed paths at all at ESPN.

Dan Le Batard: I didn't even know you were there at ESPN until Pablo just told me that you were at ESPN when I was there.

Dan Patrick: I may not have been. Our times might not have matched because when I think of Dan giving us permission, I think of him doing stuff on television on his own where his producers are going into a confessional box and doing things during the breaks and doing things that I had not seen television people doing with a radio show. One of the many places that Dan and I connect is he really respects radio, just really respects the intimacy, the connection to the audience, the idea that he has to remind his guys even after 20 years, "Hey, we're a radio show. Make sure that we're not talking over each other. We're not a video product." There are just a number of places where Dan lit candles along the way that allowed us to take some chances that weren't chances because he took them first.

Dan Le Batard: I plagiarized Dan Patrick's show, I feel like. That's another way of saying he lit candles for us along the path.

Pablo Torre: I wonder if Dan Patrick feels any of that part of it.

Dan Patrick: No, not at all. Because people will say, "Hey, McAfee's show looks just like yours." I go, "Good." I couldn't care less. If he wants to showcase his show that way, he's doing a TV show. I'm still doing a radio show that's on TV. It's different. Our approach is different. I tell the guys that I work with, the Danettes, that you have to explain everything. You can't expect somebody to know what you're talking about because it's visual, because it's not. It's voyeuristic. I wanted to create voyeuristic radio where you get to watch what we're doing. Even during the commercial breaks, I have 13 cameras in there. I wanted you to be able to see. Like this is one of those reality shows, Big Brother, whatever. You're all living in a house for three hours. That interested me. I just couldn't get anybody to buy into the concept, so I kept waiting to get somebody. I finally got somebody at DirecTV, Chris Long, who said, "I get it. We'll just put all these cameras in there and we'll just shoot everything." I said, "Exactly." I've had the most fun. I think when I did SportsCenter with Keith Olbermann, that was fun but really challenging because you had to make it greater the next night. When I left ESPN, I said, "I'm just going to do this in my own words, in my personality." Because when I was at the mothership, it was an echo chamber. They wouldn't let us have guests on who weren't ESPN related. I wanted the audacity of me. I wanted to have Peter Gammons on. And they were like, "No, you can't. He's not ESPN." I go, "But he's Peter Gammons." Then I wanted to have Rick Reilly on. And they said, "No." You had to have people in-house. I just fought them on that. When I got out, I just said, "We're just going to do it this way. Let's just go to work and have fun." I've been very fortunate to have the guys that work with me.

Dan Le Batard: It's one of the reasons that I like this platform more than any of the others. It's because the connection that he makes with his audience is real. The connection is born of they feel like they know him beyond the television veneer of being a polished person on television. When he shares with them a softness that doesn't get seen when he has to be professional anchor guy. That connection is something that you see in a fractured media today is more and more valuable because the audience comes with him because they've been with him in a way that makes an allegiance that's even deeper than it would be to four letters. It's not four letters. It's a human being. It's a human being who left four letters and now connects in his audience in a way that travels. It's the specificity of the medium that does that. The space to be, it's not 50 minutes competing with who can be more clever, me or Keith Olbermann. It's three hours a day, flaws and all. Here's us making mistakes. Here's us having the confidence to sink into the mistakes. Here's the veneer of television taken off so that you can see something more clearly, ironically enough, that isn't even meant to be seen.

Pablo Torre: All of this drives me to this point when I am hearing about Dan Patrick declaring, also, "I'm going to retire soon." So where are we on that? Where are we in the countdown clock? Other Dan, can you catch everyone up on where that is?

Dan Patrick: I didn't realize it at the time, but I had signed for four more years and I said, "That'll be my last contract." Well, immediately people went to the end of the four years and like, "So you're retiring in four years?" And I go, "Yeah." But it wasn't meant as an announcement other than, I'm going to be here for four more years. That'll be the last contract I sign. All of a sudden, then it became I'm retiring. And I said, "In four years." It's not the rollout that you should have. I wish I could have taken it back and not said it that way. But I got two and a half more years before I retire from this day-to-day show. I made a promise. I didn't want to be laughed at unless I was laughing at myself with you. I can tell where I'm slowing down a little bit, not as sharp on things. I'm a perfectionist. I can't put up with that. I want people to notice the difference between polished, professional, sculpted person on television who is slightly scripted and has room to be glib and clever, but what you get televised to you, even though you think you might know Dan Patrick, is a stick figure. It's one-dimensional. It has the range that television can provide, but it's in confined range.

Dan Le Batard: What he's talking about there is all sorts of humanity that you only get to see once he moves away from the confines of broadcasting into doing it his own way and doing like you, Pablo, now following his curiosities. What's interesting to me? Do I get to be the barometer on how this is successful because I'm simply chasing things that are just interesting to me and showing my audience more of me than they ever got when I was on the biggest sports program there was? But what other Dan just said, what Patrick just said was, when people are laughing at me and not with me, that there is something of an inflection point to acknowledge and address.

Pablo Torre: And Le Batard, I suppose this is a convenient segue to me pointing out, no one's ever described you as a stick figure.

Dan Le Batard: I'm a little too round to be a stick figure.

Pablo Torre: That's a fat joke.

Dan Le Batard: That is wrong. Thank you.

Pablo Torre: This is why you're a moral epicenter that speaks on behalf of the media and Pablo's a podcaster.

Dan Le Batard: That's right. That's right.

Pablo Torre: But hold on, though. The question of, for Le Batard, do you need to be laughing at yourself while others laugh at you? Because no one leads the league in more "shoot arrows at my flesh" than Dan Le Batard in terms of make fun of me, his crew of people. They are rude. They are actively disruptive. They get off on making fun of him. I just wonder for Le Batard, when did you make peace with the fact that your threshold for what you need to also be laughing at is different from Patrick's?

Dan Le Batard: Well, there are a couple of things here. One, I didn't grow up with television. I've been a fat kid all of my life. As soon as I got to Pardon the Interruption, they beat everyone to the joke with, "We know he's not wanted here. They want Wilbon and Kornheiser." So they beat everyone to the joke. Whether I wanted it or not, that was the route that we were going. But the other thing that's important, I've never gotten better at this part. I have never, as a professional communicator, gotten better at the fact that when my tone goes bad, my message totally gets lost. So if I'm going to be obnoxious, if I'm going to be self-righteous, if I'm going to be strident, good to have the softener as a tool and a formula. Let everyone make fun of you so that you don't come off as always thinking you're the smartest guy in the room, even though you often do think you're the smartest guy in the room. You let everyone else undercut you and it becomes a design. It's something I say around here. This is not a problem that Dan has because he's got a very good control over his environment. But I'm not in a position with this group of people that it serves me in any way to just be doing a show with Jeremy Taché or Chris Whittingham or Mike Ryan, where we're always the ones talking and it sounds like a sermon or a lecture, as opposed to the guy in the parrot costume who's there to soften everything up so that I can be my natural, organic a**hole.

Pablo Torre: Organic is also not a word I think people often use to describe Le Batard's asshole. I feel like there's a lot of inorganic stuff coming out of it.

Dan Le Batard: Actually, it's more organic than it's ever been. Dan and I connected over organic food when he was just eating mushrooms. So, more organic than you might imagine.

Pablo Torre: Wait a minute. Hold on. What was Dan Patrick's mushroom diet like? What was that about?

Dan Patrick: Oh. I had this inflammatory, an autoimmune, and we could not figure out how I got it, how to get rid of it. Felt like you have the flu every day. You weren't nauseous, but you were just beaten down. My wife, God love her, she was like, "Let's try this, and let's try this, and let's try this." Then all of a sudden, she wanted to find one of those special health doctors. He said, "How about you have steamed vegetables and purified water every day?" I said, "For how long?" He goes, "The foreseeable future." So I go, "Okay." I said to my wife, "All right, you wanted me to go to this doctor. He said we're having steamed vegetables, purified water every single meal. Nothing. He couldn't waver. No beer, no snacks. Nothing." So I did it for three months and Le Batard saw me. I had lost 20 pounds, but I still had this inflammation. We went out, he brought his show to, I think, Gramercy Theater and was going to do a show up there. We went to lunch and I had, I think I had mushroom soup and water that had to be room temperature. Thank God my wife got me a trip to Normandy for Christmas because I was doing this for three months. I get a hold of the doctor and I said, "Hey, I'm going to France." He said, "For how long?" I said, "10 days." He said, "Well, then enjoy France." I never went back to steamed vegetables or purified water. It was full speed ahead. But yeah, all I did is lose weight. But Dan saw me. I was kind of sickly. I was going through some treatments at a hospital for special surgery. Once a month, I'd go in. It was a 12-year period. I was going to give up. I'm thankful I had the job to go to. I just didn't want to go to the job because it hurt. I had a guy who had to follow me up the steps in case I fell back. We moved all my clothes to the basement. I couldn't climb steps. It was really bad. But I had the show to go to, and that was the most important part of all of it. I'm doing better. I did stem cell, went to Panama, did stem cell, and maybe turned the corner here.

Dan Le Batard: Pablo, people have no idea how tough this human being is. I will not betray any confidence.

Pablo Torre: I didn't know any of that.

Dan Le Batard: No, I won't betray any confidence. I didn't know that. Well, he doesn't share this part, and he shared more there than I've heard him share because I've grown to learn that he is very good at stuffing down all of those feelings into the basement of his nether region. I do believe that part of our connection is at least in part, some small part, because I will get a crowbar in there and I will ask Dan questions to make him talk about that stuff. But he doesn't want to do any of this. He doesn't want people—

Dan Patrick: Well, only if I can help people. My wife said, "Maybe you can help people." And I said, "OK." But even now, I don't want this to be a testimonial or something. All I do is turn on a microphone. I'm lucky I get an opportunity. I'm very, very, very, very lucky I get to do this. So we all go through like Dan when he lost his brother. I tough love it. I'm like, "Damn it. Make your brother proud. Stop. Stop mourning. Stop crying on air, Dan. Stop crying on air."

Pablo Torre: I want to ask Patrick if he had the same thought that I had, which is I was astounded and worried and then ultimately unsurprised, despite my initial reactions, that Le Batard went and hosted his show the same day that he found out that Dave died. Because what I'm doing here, by the way, I lured both of you in with talk of LeBron, and now we're plumbing depths that I didn't necessarily intend on. But it's all in the context of when do people know when to f***ing hang it up? When do you know when to stop going to work? Le Batard, his instinct was, "I need to go right to work at the very bottom of my personal trajectory." I'm wondering if Dan Patrick saw that and had a thought that was anything like what I just described.

Dan Patrick: I needed to go to work. I just couldn't sit home even though I would have been by myself. I had to go and just somehow plow through it. I was just gonna get through it. It was three hours. "All right, let's go. Stop being a wimp." I saw Dan, it was defeating him. I kept thinking, "Think of your brother. He doesn't want you to be this way. Don't be this way." I kept reinforcing that to him because I could see where he internalizes, holds on for dear life. Here's my emotions. They're right there. You can see them. I was telling him to move past that. Just make your brother proud that you move past it with respect to him because he would hate to have that impact on you. We can joke and say, "Oh, I'm sure he'd love that you were crying over." No. I was being sincere with him. I said, "Make him proud by showing him how strong you can be because you saw how strong he could be in the hospital."

Dan Le Batard: Here specifically, you and I are built differently because I do remember those conversations, and I remember there being some balm in the idea that you were mocking me inside of that, and there could be laughter there. But where you are seeing, because you come from television and you come from CNN, "don't make yourself the story" and ESPN's imprinting of "don't make yourself the story, don't be different." You're seeing weakness where I was seeing strength. I did not see me breaking down in front of my audience as something that was blubbering weakness. To me, it's like, "No, this is what you get." And you know this, Dan, you know this part, because when you came in sick, even though you weren't talking for the 12 years about how much pain you were in, you did share with your audience more than you ever would have on television. "Look, this is what I'm dealing with, and this is why maybe I'm not as good right now as I would like to be, because I'm undergoing—" I don't want to make excuses, because you're not going to make excuses, but you told your audience on the front end, "Look, I'm going to show you this much." I'm more comfortable showing my audience more. I don't think that's a weakness in me. I think it's part of the whole thing.

Dan Patrick: Sharing your emotions on your show was not a weakness. Off the air, it was consuming you. That was the part where, and it's not a weakness. It's just, it's not a strength. The strength to be able to share with your audience how you truly feel, something I never thought that I would do. But it was empowering because now I got a connection with you. Especially if you're listening in your car, I'm just talking to you. Maybe you've gone through this. Maybe somebody else has gone through this. Now you have more of a connection with me that I'm not that guy who was sitting on SportsCenter and wearing a suit and tie. Like, "He's talking to me." That was the goal. But I would never ever say what you did on the air. It was just every time I talked to you, it felt like it was holding you back.

Dan Le Batard: Agreed, because I was broken, and in some ways I'm not healed. I'm healing but not healed still, and don't know that I'll ever be healed because the pain is a perpetual reminder. But the place that you and I are probably most different, Dan, I think I can say this, is you're very much "move on." Move on. I don't know that I've heard two words more from you than "move on" about you. Like, you're like, "Stuff it down and move on to the next thing."

Pablo Torre: Le Batard, I have Dan Patrick talking to you like he's a basketball coach. He's really tough.

Dan Le Batard: He's tough. He's really, really tough.

Pablo Torre: I was not telling you any of the things Dan Patrick was telling you. We don't have the same relationship in that way. But I also was somebody who just isn't that tough either. But the thing that I'm getting to here in this conversation around retirement, the illusion of it, the desire for it, the countdown towards it in public. I'm trying to figure out whether either of you motherfuckers is going to retire. So far, this conversation has been one in which you express a justification for the emotional vulnerability that Dan Patrick will not permit privately. He will permit it publicly. He's also just kind of walked back his desire to even talk about the fact that he is in fact retiring allegedly. That was like the first thing he said. And Le Batard, him going to work on that very traumatic day, told me this guy's going to be hosting this show until the very end. I don't know whether either of you guys have credibility on the question of "I actually want to stop working."

Dan Patrick: Well, I'm going to stop. I'm going to stop after the Super Bowl in Atlanta. That's it. I'll do other things, but I have a broadcasting school at Full Sail University, and there's some other things that I'm involved in. Once again, I want to be great or the best that I can possibly be. I'll be 72, almost 73 when I retire. I just don't want to be not as good, not as sharp. I'd rather go out early than go out late. I made a promise to my wife. I was selfish for, we've been married 38 years. I've been in TV since I've known her. It was always about me, always about my career. She raised kids, four kids. I'm the one that, "Hey, I'm on TV. Hey, I'm going to the NBA Finals." All of those things. I told her that I'm going to retire so I can still, if I'm healthy enough, that we can actually do things. That's important. That's the most important thing, having a couple of grandkids. I have to come to grips with that. I haven't yet. So if you hear me not being really declarative, you're right. I have two and a half years to convince myself.

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Pablo Torre: So how do you guys feel about the fact that the entirety of our industry started getting invested in what turned out to be an alcohol advertisement?

[Sound of a dramatic, climactic noise]

Dan Le Batard: Well, everyone's on pins and needles across the country.

Dan Patrick: You ready to go, LeBron? Where's the powder? Left it at home.

Dan Le Batard: LeBron, fans want to know where you're taking your talents this year. What's your decision?

Dan Patrick: In this fall, man, this is tough. In this fall, I'm going to be taking my talents to Hennessy VSOP.

Pablo Torre: When you sent me one of the storylines of what we were going to talk about, which we're finally getting to—

Dan Le Batard: Yeah, I know.

Pablo Torre: —I went, "There's no story there. That's going to be something for Amazon, something for T-Mobile, something."

Dan Patrick: It was more cringeworthy than I thought it was going to be. I had a friend who bought tickets to the last regular season game of the Lakers.

Pablo Torre: Oh, he actually was one of the—

Dan Patrick: Yeah, yeah. I kept saying, "Don't do it. Don't do it." Kobe went out against the Utah Jazz and LeBron could go. I said, "Don't do it." Then the announcement comes out and he goes, "Hey, it's okay. It's all right. I didn't spend that much, but I got good tickets for the Lakers and the Jazz." I go, "Okay, congratulations. Start drinking Hennessy right now."

Dan Le Batard: It is lame. It's lame. It's Michael Jordan wearing your dad's jeans. How is it that somebody becomes the oldest player in the league after 15, 20 years of real groundbreaking and pioneering? The initial thing that they did was quaint, at least in part, because it could be flaws and all, somebody trying to change the game. This is the opposite of that. This is taking those same feelings that you have spun on your finger forever, teasing it, and then monetizing it in a way that's commercially grotesque. If I were the brand, I would be offended to be associated with what it is that they did there.

Pablo Torre: Commercially grotesque.

Dan Le Batard: Oh, come on. Like, it's just, like, what are you doing? Just, what are you doing?

Dan Le Batard: You have been such a good caretaker for all the things over your 20 years. At the end, the punctuation is going to be just sell out for dollars here and there.

Dan Patrick: Hold on, though. I think the takeaway that I have here is that we're not close to the end. Like, I think there was a framing of this because, of course, it was meant to sort of troll us into thinking it, that we're at the end and he's going to truly come full circle. And that equity, his sweat equity, was going to be cashing in on something meaningful and momentous on a day that happened to be Amazon Prime Day. That's a total clear side note. Instead, what he's like telling us is, I'm not going anywhere. Which is fine, but he doesn't have to tell us that. I hope he continues to play the way he's played. He's great content. I just, everybody criticized the initial decision. It was handled poorly. And then you're going to double down on it and bring it back as if we go, boy, man, I'd certainly love to see a modern day version of the decision, a second decision there. If you're going to do it, then get Jim Gray.

Pablo Torre: I was going to say, my one critique is I wanted Jim Gray to be back. I don't think we've talked enough about Jim Gray as basically the avatar for us in that dynamic. Levitard, I mean, you, and this is your account, but Jim Gray being the guy to break the chapter of sports history open is endlessly funny to me.

Dan Le Batard: I don't even know if you guys really know Jim Gray.

Pablo Torre: I don't. I know of him, but it's just hilarious that he was the guy who did it.

Dan Patrick: I've gotten to know Jim a little bit, a really unusual and diligent person who has carved out one of the most amazing broadcasting careers there has ever been. On the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he's got a star.

Pablo Torre: He does?

Dan Patrick: Yes, he does. And that was all his idea. That thing that you say, both of you say, I think, was poorly handled, but I didn't think it was poorly handled. I just thought it was groundbreaking and way ahead of its time.

Dan Le Batard: Yes, it fooled with and toyed with sports fans' feelings. That's the part about it that I think most people found offensive. But the idea that it was all the brainchild of Jim Gray and that Jim Gray would have a connection point anywhere with LeBron James to make that happen doesn't even make sense.

Dan Patrick: Jim, I would consider a friend, and we've talked about this. He went to Maverick. He went to LeBron's people and thought, you know, we can do this. And you're right about it being groundbreaking. The problem I had is ESPN wanted this to be an hour-long show. That was the problem. And I thought it was poorly constructed because Jim is out there and talking to LeBron about the powder and you're biting your nails and like that's not who Jim is. Jim's not a, hey, chummy, chummy, small talk. Jim gets right to the point when he asks questions, when he's doing interviews. It should have been, let's make the decision. Now let's deal with the fallout. Like the show should have been, LeBron makes the decision. Now we get reaction from South Beach. Now we get reaction from Cleveland. Now we get reaction from the commissioner of the NBA. Other players. Like, I think they could have framed it in a way that they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. It was just drawn out. And I felt bad for Jim because it lost its momentum. Like, they kept going, okay, we're going to go to break. And when we come back, and then go to break and come back. And then, well, when we come back, and I go, oh my God. Just tell us, please. Now I don't care.

Pablo Torre: It is important to remember how much of a troll job the original decision was. That is in keeping with the second decision that we just watched together. I remember talking to Matt Ricard about this, and he said, we would not do that the same way if we had a second chance at it. I did not necessarily foresee the second chance at it being a Hennessy ad, to your point. But it does remind me that when LeBron is being asked by Jim Gray, do you still bite your nails? What I was doing in this video was really focusing on the hands that are in this commercial. Do we have the... Because on the left is what is presented as LeBron James' hands in the ad. On the right is LeBron's actual hands. And I'm just here to tell you that Pablo Torre Finds Out has completed an exclusive investigation in which we tell you those aren't LeBron's hands in the Hennessy ad. LeBron definitely didn't do any of the things involving the close-up on his actual hands. And the fingernails are just one clue. The other part of it might be the fact that they don't look anything like each other. So, how much work LeBron did is, I think, an active investigation here.

Dan Patrick: As the husband of a woman who used to be a hand model, I can tell you.

Pablo Torre: Oh, my God.

Dan Patrick: These things do happen. And my wife was a hand model while she was in college at NYU. One of the great hand models. She was the Gisele of hand models.

Pablo Torre: Oh, it was very, put her through college.

Dan Patrick: But she would see these ads where they would have the model, and then my wife would have to put her hands up holding the product.

Pablo Torre: So I can't speak from experience that I married a model, just a hand model. Who's gorgeous by the way.

Dan Le Batard: I mean right exactly the wrists also must be reckoned with.

Pablo Torre: The wrists are incredible, they get underrated in the discussion in the hands.

Dan Le Batard: But this is what you're doing with our money and our journalism Pablo, you're exposing the Hennessy ad fraud hands of LeBron James. This isn't exactly you know Kawhi and the Clippers here.

Pablo Torre: I mean look at this. What are they? Do they think we're fools? We have on the left LeBron James, in quotes, shuffling a deck of cards. And then on the right, you see the actual, you know, six foot eight, six foot nine specimen we've come to know and watch. The hands that look like they've been dunking on rims and left in a bit of disarray from dunking on rims for a long time, as opposed to the left, the hands on the left, which may very well be the hands of a hand model because those are perfectly manicured hands. They're perfect. They're perfect. They're smooth. They are worthy of... Look, I'm not here to play matchmaker, but I imagine that Sue, those are hands she approves of just as a matter of, like, game-recognizing game.

Dan Le Batard: Manicure is really the key, she said.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, gotta have the nails done and just letting you know some of the tricks of the trade there with a hand model.

Dan Patrick: Does your wife wear gloves around because she must protect.

Pablo Torre: She used to wear gloves. No, the investment for a long time. The moneymaker. Yes, absolutely. And then I started to make some real money at ESPN and I said, hon, you can quit your hand modeling career.

Dan Le Batard: The thing about this commercial and the way that this all is connected to you guys and the story of you guys and your friendship is that-

Pablo Torre: Finally getting around to this here.

Dan Le Batard: This is, you know, handcrafted this segue.

Pablo Torre: Dan. The irony of Dan Patrick lamenting that Jim Gray and ESPN teased something out when Dan Patrick might not know that all of Pablo's Kawhi reporting is like in the 45th minute of every episode because he's just sitting there yammering the entire time before he gets to the news.

Dan Patrick: Get to the point.

Pablo Torre: Foreplay is a very important tenet of modern journalism. And neither of you old guys apparently respect what it is that we're doing here. Because the climax, I would argue, is in this sentiment.

Dan Le Batard: Oh, for the love of God.

Pablo Torre: It's in this sentiment. We're living at a time where Tom Brady is the case study. He is the one who's lit these candles, these lamps for other athletes to follow. And all I'm here to say is, yes, there may be a day when LeBron James does the thing that Dan Patrick is clearly conflicted about, which is the retirement tour, in which he gets the rocking chair made of baseball bats or the various signed lithographs that Kobe Bryant got, and on and on and on. We may get to the point where he actually stops playing basketball. But what both of you guys are very clear about to me, and what LeBron is very clear about to me, watching this stupid ad, is that you and he and they aren't going anywhere. Tom Brady is more everywhere than he's ever been. You think LeBron James is going to disappear? LeBron James has channels. Everything you described about what it is that you do, this thing that's everything, and yet nothing, LeBron's going to be doing that in the way that Tom Brady's going to be doing that. I subscribed to Tom Brady's newsletter. Dan Patrick, you're telling me you don't have designs on what that afterlife is going to look like?

Dan Patrick: It's going to be... I'm not adding, I'm subtracting. And you're right. You know, Tom and LeBron have a lot of opportunities. LeBron will probably end up owning a team. Tom, you know, has a minority stake in broadcasting, and LeBron will be active. I hope he is active with the game. But no, I'm subtracting. I'm not. I don't want to be out there. You know, when I was at ESPN, and that was in the mid-'90s, we were everywhere. We were. ESPN had exploded. SportsCenter exploded. I was told by SI they were going to name us the Sportsman of the Year one year. I mean, it got crazy. And you just felt like I sold my soul here. In retrospect, you look at it, and I just hated the feeling. We went from being that underdog hey kind of a fraternal channel that you turned on. And then all of a sudden, you know, they had the ESPYs. Not that we needed it but we had the ESPYs. And then, you know, I meet Sandler and he puts me in a movie. And Darius Rucker and Hooting the Blowfish put me in a video. Like it became too much. I didn't say no. And it was all there for the taking. So, no, I know in my little world, being overexposed too much, certainly aware of that. I always have that in my memory bank.

Dan Le Batard: Pablo, though, the thing about Dan, right, when I tell you that he's unreasonably competitive, when I think of Tom Brady and these conquerors that you're talking about that aren't going to be able at 40 to just put away the competitive, because however competitive Dan is, and Dan is wildly competitive by the standards of our industry, that industry is a whole other thing. Like Peyton Manning is taking on a media company and he wants to compete against whatever it is that LeBron and Tom are doing just in media, just off to the side in media.

Pablo Torre: That's my point. LeBron and Tom Brady are coming for you guys.

Dan Patrick: Yes, but I'm... Oh, they can have me. I'm not going to be here when they come for me. I won't be. That's I'm fine with that. And it's a young man's game. Like there are not many people who.

Pablo Torre: Is it though? Is it though? I don't know. I see America as a place where the older generations, those who are excellent and those who are terrible, neither sides of that sort of a spectrum of quality are given it up. And I am so glad that some are not. I am very glad that you two particularly are not. There are others where I'm like, Jesus Christ, they don't realize the game is over. And I don't know if it's a young man's game. I think we say that, Patrick, but I don't know if that's true. And I think LeBron and Tom Brady are kind of proof of that in sports as well.

Dan Patrick: Yeah, but they're only 40. They're in their 40s. I'm going to be 70. That's a, there's a lot of separation there of, hey, I'm just getting into this to, hey, I'm just leaving this. They're taking on things. They're excited. I'm, no. It's completely different.

Dan Le Batard: I've seen, though, what I was going to say to you guys, though, about what has happened to me, I'm going to say, over the last five years, because you seem more convinced than I am, Pablo, that I'm never going to hang this up.

Pablo Torre: Correct. This is my take that you disagree with.

Dan Le Batard: You had better hope so, given the collapsing media and how much your podcast costs. You'd better hope that I never stopped doing that.

Pablo Torre: Also that.

Dan Le Batard: As I've gotten into my 50s, I have seen less and less value. And I've had this conversation with Dan because his daily standard is, I believe, so unreasonable and so unforgiving. I've seen less and less value in being competitive at my age. To me, I really have settled into a space where the mere getting to do it is the success. I don't have to beat everyone. I don't think that's how Dan comes to work still every day. I think we're different that way.

Dan Patrick: This will sound really pretentious. You know, Jordan would create rivals, but they weren't really rivals. He'd make up stories. Like, in my mind, I'm still competing with ESPN. And they're not competing with me, but in my mind, I'm competing with them. And other shows, whether it's McAfee, Colin Cowherd or whatever, it's you want to be great. And there's no report card you get. It's just the feeling of, did we get the right person on? Did we get information? Are we breaking stories? And that's really important. It'd be easy to just sit here and go, who do we have on? Oh, okay, Albert Breer, the Monday morning quarterback's on. Let's talk about a couple of things and then take a break and then come back and then... I don't want it to be formulaic, but I have to come in and be competitive. Did I talk too much? Why can't I just let it go? I wish I was thinking so much. Take a breath.

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Pablo Torre: I want to pay you the compliment here. The reason why I've come to really respect and enjoy Dan Patrick as well as Dan Le Batard is that you guys ask questions that many other people are afraid to ask of people who are powerful, influential, very famous, don't appreciate those questions. You guys have done that in ways that have comforted me as I think about, like, what is this whole entire business? A business where the athletes, and again, not to make this all about the athlete podcast, because I think we've reached a point, frankly, of diminishing returns, where so many people have gotten shows and microphones because of what they used to do that now we're, I think, realizing what it is that you guys were trained and learned how to do. I think that's not the argument anymore. It's simply that, you know, when Tom Brady thinks he can do the job that broadcasters can do, and LeBron, of course, I believe will have designs on that as well. Competitiveness is funny because you've done this for so long where literally the guys you covered are trying to do the things that you do now because that's what media is. It's why it's so important in this country. Is that it's the thing, the microphone is still the thing that everybody wants, even the guys you think would have no interest in it because they have won and done everything. They actually want what you guys have built.

Dan Patrick: Well, the one thing that athletes can't replicate is they're not curious enough. They're not curious about the people they have on. And I'm curious because I could never play at their level. So my questions start out with wonderment. How does this happen? Why does this happen? Where, who, when? And having been taught how to interview many, many years ago, still being curious is what it's all about. But there is a competitiveness. When I interview you, I'm going to win. Like I got, I win by, and I remember Pete Sampras said to me, you got to work harder if you're going to get better answers out of me. And he was right. I wasn't asking good questions. And Pete was famously a difficult interview. And I figured it out. And if I step on your toes or it's a little uncomfortable, it's just part of the game.

Pablo Torre: I think it's important to establish that in none of this is the presumption that I know more about sports than the athletes. It's the opposite. It's the thing that you can't train and condition and coach into somebody, which is the lack of expertise, the lack of knowledge, forming a worldview that makes the angle that you take to these stories one that aligns with a public interest, which is where the journalism thing becomes not just a joke, but a real premise.

Dan Patrick: That's the great tug of war because they go into these interviews, they don't want to give you stuff. Correct. I mean, they're conditioned to not give you something. How do I get in this interview and get out of this interview without saying something that's going to make a headline for all the wrong reasons? So all of a sudden, your guard is up a little. That's why I love talking to somebody and trying to have them forget that we're doing the interview. Like the goal is that it's just a conversation. And when you get that, that's when you get somebody telling you something. And that's the fun part. Or they don't even know they've told you something. And it's not gotcha journalism as much as it is, I'm going to study and I'm going to get ready and I'm going into battle and I'm going to lose more than I win. But, you know, I'm sort of Braveheart, you know. It doesn't end well all the time, but, you know, you're going to know I was there.

Dan Le Batard: Christ Almighty, he's Michael Jordan over here. He's Braveheart over there. But he doesn't mean to be pretentious, folks. He goes into every interview.

Dan Patrick: But you know what? But much like in Braveheart, at some point you are going to see some guy's ass.

Pablo Torre: So, yeah, there is just that as well.

Dan Le Batard: And there he is right there. Dan Levinson.

Pablo Torre: There it is. There it is. There it is. His organic ass.

Dan Le Batard: Organic ass. Bountiful.

Dan Patrick: Oh, yeah. You know, I got to rest my voice. Just might want to wrap this up. He's got to go. He's got to go, Pablo. We're on Dan's time. Not yours, Pablo Torre. Wrap it up.

Pablo Torre: He said it was... I did do three hours today. Just saying.

Dan Le Batard: Both of us did. I don't know how many hours...

Pablo Torre: Hey, no, no. Dan, you and me, you and me, the dinosaurs, still three hours a day. Pablo strolling in with his parasol three times a week.

Dan Le Batard: I'll see you guys and I'll ask Dan and Dan to do one of the episodes for me.

Pablo Torre: Oh, you got to be exhausted. Who canceled today, by the way, that you had to rope us in? What deep dive? Is this the Knicks... The Knicks-Brunson contract. Is there something in there with Jalen Brunson?

Dan Le Batard: Well, look, how he arrived at the Knicks, this is where I will have to defer to the reporting I may or may not do on this. Certainly was interesting, right? Like, okay, that's a pretty good deal for the Knicks. Has some whatever. Anyway, I don't want to get ahead of myself in terms of that.

Pablo Torre: That's a tease, though. That's a tease. It's a bit of a tease. I'm showing a little ankle with you. I always show a little bit more ankle than I should with you. But by the way subscribe. I got in so much trouble because I told you that holy shit the number of people in New York City who come up to me on the street now and are like please don't do the Jalen Brunson story that you told Dan Patrick you were gonna do and I'm like that was awesome when I said oh you're working on anything else and all of a sudden you gave it to me I was like yes that was that Braveheart beat you I lost Braveheart got my ass.

Dan Le Batard: I did get you. I was like, man, you're on a roll. Hey, you've done a great job. This is great. The number of headlines that came out of a tossed-off comment to you because I thought you're my friend and were riffing. And instead, suddenly, people are hearing the saber-rattling of the next great investigation. And I'm like, Jesus Christ.

Dan Patrick: The call that he got the next morning from me, Dan Patrick, screaming into the phone, why are you giving Dan Patrick the good shit? Do you know how much we're paying everybody for the good shit.

Pablo Torre: That's right. Because as we start at the top of this show, Dan Patrick, now we can understand him as Braveheart. And in the meantime, you guys think this is foreplay. I climaxed like 20 minutes ago.

Dan Le Batard: Oh, for the love of God.

Pablo Torre: Pablo. What is going on?

Dan Le Batard: Pablo, Jesus. What?

Pablo Torre: You're professional. The man's an icon and a pillar of professionalism. He doesn't do crude sex jokes. This is awkward. I'm uncomfortable.

Dan Le Batard: So am I. I'm going to go take a shower.

Pablo Torre: Are you?

Dan Le Batard: Yes, I am.

Pablo Torre: Yeah, I'm the one that has the voice.

Dan Le Batard: Oh, there it is. I'm sorry. Did you climax?

Pablo Torre: This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Ark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time. Thank you.