Local Hour: What Happened To The Wacky Batting Stance?
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You have some sniffles going on right now. - I do, I have some coughs. Everybody on the trip I was on ended up getting sick but me and I now am feeling a little bit sick. But why is it that you're scared of me? I don't know how well we can do everything we do every day.

if you think I should get a COVID test and what are the new rules on COVID tests? 'Cause this just happened to me this morning. Like I was coming out of the house and I just felt like garbage. - Are you asking for my feelings about you in general or? - I'm asking as it relates to today's show and going forward, you being around the possibility of sickness. - I'm not gonna be around it. I don't wanna get COVID.

I'm upset at you for not testing yet for COVID. You should get a test right now. And if you don't get a test, I'm going to leave. What are the rules on that? What are the rules? I think a good rule is if you wonder aloud into a microphone, if you have COVID, you have a social responsibility and one to your coworkers to now get tested. But I didn't. Especially with the context of...

Oh, everyone in my group got sick. Yeah. Well, the group tested and nobody had COVID. It was some sort of coughing African strain of something. There is a summer strain going around. The current president of the United States is sequestered because he has COVID. He is. I touched your pen, man.

Okay, so I need you today, though. So you're going to just leave now? You're going to so that I can end up in this quarantined bubble studio by myself? To be honest, you should be the one that leaves. But you're not going to do that. So yes, I am going to leave. The C in COVID stands for see ya. Okay.

There he goes. He is leaving. Stugatz doesn't want to have anything to do with the program anymore. But this is a bit symbolic because Stugatz is also flirting with WFAN again. Next week, Dano. Taking phone calls. What are you shaking your head about, Billy?

One, that I'm just hearing this now on air for the first time. No, no. Yes, and I've asked multiple times, can you send me your schedule? And the response I always get is, I sent it to Chris and Carl. And I'm like, but can you send it to me? Because I have to record with you. Jeremy has it as well. He can forward it to you. Yeah, how about you just send it to me?

Okay. And not to everybody else. And by the way, this is the first I'm hearing it from him because Taylor, who listens to WFAN every day, told me a week and a half ago they announced that Stu Gatz is going to be co-hosting again in July. And I go, when's that happening? Because July only has a couple weeks left. Contract year.

Billy, and I'm glad you're here, Mike. And Chris, Cody, all three of you can actually have a commentary on this because you saw from a unique perspective the way that Stugatz tried to slide around all the faux discipline of Mike when Chris Whittingham arrived. And Whittingham was made crazy by all of this, that Stugatz would tell people who would say yes to things and not tell people who would say no to things.

And that's how he would slippery around. Why go to people who are going to say no? You don't sound good, by the way. I know. Why go to people who are going to say no? You go to the people. You find out who the people are who are going to say yes. You go to them to get a yes. You know?

But Billy is your teammate, and you own God Bless Football together, and he's been doing it for weeks without you. He had to summon Lorenzo, God help us all, last week. That was a good episode. Thanks for checking it out. It was fun. We'll reunion. He had to summon Charlie Kravitz, Lorenzo, the old gang of people you go to when Stugatz can't be counted on. The gang was back together, yeah. This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz Podcast. ♪

Today's episode is sponsored by DraftKings. Stay tuned because you'll hear more about DraftKings and all it has to offer throughout the show. DraftKings, the crown is yours. It really is too bad that Stugatz has decided to flee the studio because I believe he would have enjoyed this particular conversation. An oldie but a goodie. LeBron versus MJ. The only reason I bring it up, and I know it's tired and lazy to bring up the Cowboys and LeBron and

What's the third one this time of year that you could go to when it's the slowest day of the sports year? We don't care about baseball enough anymore to fix it.

That's a good one. That is a good one. Jeremy does care about baseball that way. I have a renewed interest in baseball. Or did they fix it and we're just like, ah, well, that didn't do it. Our job here is done. We thought it might. Fix it more. Yeah. You know what? Here's how you fix it. Let's just all go back to 1997. Yeah.

I would argue that the problem with how do you fix baseball as a topic this time of year is that they have fixed baseball, but not enough for you. Like, that's what's happened. They have fixed it. They've implemented all the ideas we had all those years ago. I've discovered it's the smartphone.

And everything else over the last 15 years was just us trying to rationalize why it wasn't the smartphone. I think they need to sprinkle in some things that, like, just bring us back. Like, we need a Gary Sheffield type stance. Huh?

No one's got that in baseball. They have Babe Ruth playing right now. That's right. Nothing is bringing us back. They kind of have multiple Babe Ruths. They have a guy who pitches. Enough with Mike Trout. Mike Trout's not pitching. Enough with him. Enough. Mike Trout. That's what I was talking about. They have the novelty and sensation of Ichiro mixed and matched with unprecedented power and pitching. All-in-one guy in a huge market. You know what I need? I need a Jeff Bagwell. That's what they need right here. They have an Aaron Judge. Yep.

Your Bagwell's not... The stance isn't good enough. The elbow's got to be a little higher. The ass has to be on the ground. I'm low right now, Dan. You don't even know. There used to be a guy who made a living off of doing impersonations of batting stands. Oh, the batting stands guy! Oh, he was the best. He's great. He's great.

What do you, why, ah, what happened? Find that video and send it to video instead of just going, ah, and giving up on it. Billy brought the guy up. I know, and then gets bored with his own subject as soon as we buy in on it. That's so Billy. I'm just saying, the guy's whole gimmick is just copies other people's batting sense. You brought the subject

It's just crazy. This is someone's profession. I don't understand it. It wasn't his profession. It was. It was just something he was doing. Influencer. I guarantee you that this man quit his job to become batting stance guy at one point in time. But we all tried to help you. Damn, look at this guy. We were like, yeah, batting stance guy. Well, my point was how crazy it was that this was a thing. This was a time in this country that we had a guy who would just go around. Baseball. Look, I love baseball. Okay. But I will say this.

Baseball attracts some weirdos, okay? And I'm not saying the batting stance guy is a weirdo. I will say that the guy that's like the middle-aged man that runs and knocks over little kids to steal home run balls, that guy's a weirdo. We can agree with that. No, that guy's an asshole. It made Marlins man. Yeah, he's got all his screws. Kevin Euclid never swung at a 3-0 pitch. What a stance.

That's not true. No, it is true. I saw that too. Did you scroll by some Instagram thing that was like odd facts about baseball? Is that where the coconut thing came from? I don't believe it. I mean, it probably isn't true, but the internet told me it was true. Similar to how Louis Castillo would never swing at the first pitch. I do not want to escape as much as Billy would like everyone to escape this. What he just did. What I do. It was a real window into his soul.

You mentioned batting stance, Guy. Yeah, now on to the next. It's one of the few instances in the history of the show where you got immediate buy-in on something from something you said from everybody, and you got bored by the subject three syllables after that because you didn't want to be going along with the crowd. No, falsehoods. I knew that, you know, my point was I can't believe that we made this a thing. And then everybody was like, oh, that guy was great. I'm like, oh, here we go. Found this path.

Allow me to get... I'm on his Instagram right now. The third to last post he did was Andre Dawson. Like, respectfully, batting stance guy. Who in the year of our Lord 2024 is asking for impersonations of Andre Dawson's batting stance? Throwback. Stugatz did at my wedding. The Hawk.

I can't believe that he asked him to write a chapter in that book. It's crazy. It's totally insane. And the chapter, to my understanding, was you didn't deserve to be MVP. Tell me why you did. That's right. On a last place team, you can't be MVP. I can't believe that you are legitimately learning for the first time that Stugatz is flirting with WFAN again. He wants to be a program director, man. He doesn't.

Well, he doesn't want to do the work of it. He just wants the power. No, he just wants the money. He just wants the money. He'll outsource the power to somebody else to do his bidding. It's not exactly scraping together two nickels over here. Well, but that's the thing. He doesn't want the money. It's not enough money. Otherwise, he'd already be doing it at WFAN. No, he wants the money that he thought was attached to the role.

No, he wants all the money here and that money without doing any of the work of being program director over there. I could not, and I hope he's listening, I could not envision a worse program director at this point. Oh, that's, no. I mean, look at how we open the show, guys. He is who he has always been.

Always. So you don't want that as a program director. You don't want a program director. You don't know if he's going to be in town or not. But he's got a lot of good ideas and he does care when he cares. It's just trickier these days to get him to care the way that you care. Would he care to share them?

Well, he does. Well, he's angling. The whole thing, I think, is meant to be a negotiation. I mean, contract here for everybody. I think it's meant to be to create. Look, man, the industry isn't dying, but it's shaking. Right. When you get all of these people at ESPN who are either being asked to take pay cuts or get out of there while they give the money to just a few people, the industry really is struggling and spasming. And I agree.

You know, when I get scared about stuff around here, it's at least in part because I'm not sure if if we don't make this succeed, where are these jobs in Florida? Like what the jobs that we presently have here, where do we get them in Florida while remaining near and around our families if they're not created by us? In May 2008, Dan Patrick mentions batting stance guy and his, quote, unmarketable skill.

Well, it's not a business, Philly. He made it one. That's the part that I can't believe. We had this country where he was just running around doing impressions. Thank goodness for the MLB Network, by the way, right? Because then what are you going to do? You're going to go do the local morning show circuit? The only jobs in media out here...

I mean, you would assume that you're right. We'd properly be boned, but there's soccer jobs and Spanish language jobs. So we'll start learning Spanish. Okay, very good. You mentioned the smartphone, and I wanted to ask everybody here, because this is an exasperation of mine, as things get updated, do you guys believe that everything around Apple...

That there is a glitch in the system that allows their stuff to fall apart two or three or four years in so that you're obligated because of your addiction to again feed them money in three or four years because there's a feature, not a bug in their system that breaks things after your addiction. Are you posing this as a theory? They lost a major lawsuit because of that.

way because of that. My wife's phone froze and she couldn't start it back again so she had to get a new one. Yeah, they had to suffer the consequences in that they got fined an amount that did not at all equal the amount of money that they made because everybody's phone just started crapping out whenever there was a new one. Do you guys have any other examples of the big corporations doing something like that kind of nefarious once it is that they've gotten us that kind of addictive

to things because my frustration was that it's just happened too recently with too many things in my house where I'm like, my God, what a great grift. It's not just you've heard me talk before about Apple can charge me for certain things at this point.

And I don't even know what they're for. And I just assume that it's right because there's a 699 charge over here somewhere that I'm assuming they could do to a lot of people who may not be paying attention to every 699. The only other example I could cite is just the general conspiracy to keep the oil industry alive.

Well, that's a darker and more serious subject. My computer was 18 minutes behind for the last three days, and I couldn't figure out why. It fixed itself. But I was quite concerned. I couldn't figure out how do I speed this up 18 minutes, and why are we 18 minutes behind? And it wasn't frozen 18 minutes behind. It was continuing to move just 18 minutes behind every single day.

You're in agreement that Apple is actively, it's not just that everyone's listening to us on our devices. Like how, how is it that we can be this okay with these things? Is our, is our dependency on this company too big to fail? Whatever it is, $3 trillion market share can buy everything in the world except Bezos.

How is it that you're not more troubled by the fact that we've got devices that are listening to us and breaking every couple of years so they can charge us more money? Well, I'm not because I have a Samsung Galaxy on Android. You show that company as you tout Google. I'm not touting. I'm actually touting Samsung, actually. Yeah, but it runs on Google. Yeah, so you're giving your data to a big tech company either way. You're really showing Apple. A chiropractor.

But once you go, you got to keep going back. Yeah, he's right. Really good one.

Well, I mean, just in general, not to sound like a crazy person, but like any business or whatever whose business plan is to solve your problem would go out of business if they actually solved all of your problems. So they don't want to actually solve all of your problems because then they wouldn't exist. The money's not in the cure. Chili's 2 for 20 menu keeps me coming back. That hasn't been the thing. They changed it. Exactly right. Thank you, Jeremy. We need to have truthers come out and say, this Chili's 2 for 20 is now like 2 for $99. Yeah.

We haven't been two for twenty in a damn near a decade. It's heartbreaking. And now it's like three for ten. There's like some weird thing. They have like some small plates. Three nothing for ten. Three cubes of ice for ten dollars, maybe. And the five dollar footlong? What happened to that? Okay? I mean, now we're like at fifteen dollars for a six inch sub at Subway.

I would like for you guys to give me the greatest example because there are a number of times recently where I've gotten super frustrated on behalf of others for things that are so not affordable now that used to be. I'd like for each of you to come up with a single thing that has recently floored you because the price of it is so much different than it used to be. And you're like, what the hell is going on?

with inflation in a country of a lot of one issue voters, I can't afford things anymore is something that is going to make people both angry and vote differently. - I've got one that goes the other way. I always took a principled stand on buying food at a movie theater.

We all know, like, we sneak candy into a movie theater. It's part of the experience. I taught my daughter that. It's like the first illegal thing I taught my daughter. I don't plan on doing other things. I'm just saying. But I went to a movie with my daughter. And where I used to be able to say no to anybody else, I'm not going to be able to say no to my daughter because it's an event. Anytime we actually go as a family to a movie theater. So I went. And for the first time in, like, 15 years, I bought concession stand food at a movie theater.

62 bucks you probably spent or something honestly it was such a relief because everything else has gotten so out of hand that they handed me like a four dollar candy like a four dollar sweet tart i'm like whoa this is the life this is incredible inflation has like they were so ahead of the curb on inflation that everything around it caught up and now it's like a bargain

Put it on the poll, please, Juju, at Levitard Show. Has inflation gotten so out of control that movie theater concessions are now cheap?

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Official sleep and wellness partner of the NFL. See store for details. Don Levitard. Let's go to 80. His name is Bo. Wow. I think Billy typed an 8 instead of a B. Fine. It's a clear as day. $2. Stugatz. Number 8. It's Chris Corder on the line. This is the Don Levitard Show with the Stugatz.

Chris, I want to follow up on the first illegal thing you have taught your daughter. The only that I will. I should have rephrased. The one illegal thing I will allow her to do. There it is.

Getting to the subject I was trying to get to. There it is. I don't think it's illegal. There's not a law against it. Sneaking candy that they sell there. I think, I mean, I'm probably not going to get arrested. Morally questionable, maybe. Policy is not a law. Probably get me kicked out of the movie at least. No, they'll take anyone at this point in a movie theater, I think. Elite combo, a bottle of a red blend that's moderately priced at a movie theater with a bunch of crunch. I'm telling you.

This is like a sommelier would say, that is an incredible pairing, sir. What a decision you have made. Wise choice. Mike is obsessed with this now. Mike wants to bring the movie theater back. Mike is one of the people in the world who is not just romantic about the movie theater, but is actively trying to do things, make events and take people out to the movie theater. So he gets obsessed with all their little marketing strategies, the popcorn bucket strategy.

The food that has a theme. What is it? A spicy Frito of some sort? Well, Twisters. So while you were away, I made the point that I think Top Gun Maverick was, you could make a solid argument that it was the most important movie ever.

because it saved movie theaters and also it was awesome it was incredible and it was a star making vehicle for a lot of the members of the cast and one of the cast members still haven't seen it by the way oh you haven't seen Top Gun Maverick no I and I'm ashamed of myself for not having seen it because it's the rare movie that I thought was a super bad idea had enormous expectations and somehow it

Exceeded those expectations. For all those reasons, Tom Cruise deserves a special Academy Award just for Top Gun Maverick. But Glenn Powell was one of these stars that was made by this film. He was in Hollywood for a long time, hadn't become a star, and he didn't really steal this movie because the movie was impossible to steal from anyone.

It was an incredible movie, but he became a superstar from it. And now he is the lead in a reinvigorated Twisters franchise. If this movie came out in 2018, it might have been direct to streaming. It would have been a dud. It would have been panned. Nobody would have been with it. But a good old fashioned disaster movie. This was a thing in the 90s. Disaster movies in the summer. Box office events.

food tie-ins, be it fast food tie-ins or snacks, Fritos has blessed us with the nostalgia of something tangible. And this is why all these novelty items are coming back in a big way. In an era of everything living on a cloud, everything being streamed, even your ticket stub is no longer tangible. You're dying, yearning for something tangible. So I am going to sneak these Fritos Twister Collabo Twister Chips

because it's Flamin' Hot and Ranch. You shake it up in the bag and you make a little twister inside the bag. And I'm going to the theaters on Sunday to watch Twisters. And now, like, there's already, I may dress up as a cow because this harkens back to a time where the disaster movie in the summer really meant something. So I'm going 4DX.

Now I told you, my previous experience with 40X caught me by surprise. I didn't know what to expect. - Shakes the seats, correct? - Yeah, I was pouring my moderately priced red blend.

and I was watching Ethan Hunt motorcycle throughout Europe and I got wine all over myself. But now that I'm prepared for it, I have accepted the challenge from dressing in all white in my cow costume and getting moderately priced bottle of red blend to see exactly how I can survive this experience. And that is just basically the appetizer for next week where Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman try to save cinema.

Roy, why are you laughing at the assortment of Mike Orion observations here? I'm just wondering if that cow suit's going to have the udders on it. Yeah, you want the udders. It's not a cow suit.

It's not a cow suit without the udders. But I don't know if you've seen these popcorn buckets, but this is a true to me. Dune 2, the popcorn bucket became a meme. And what you end up having is like, oh, I want to go to the movie theaters. I wasn't sold on this movie, but I want the novelty item because this is going to be a collector's item because we've had essentially 20 years where...

with zero movie memorabilia. No movie posters. You're not going to a video store and say, "Hey, do you have any old movie posters?" You can't even save a ticket stub anymore. So the Alien, the Alien popcorn bucket looks incredible. I cannot wait to eat out of that thing.

I do think it's pretty hilarious that the first popcorn bucket that's bringing the novelty popcorn bucket back is the Dune 2 one that everybody wanted to f***. Yeah. Well, now the whole thing is like the challenge is make a popcorn bucket that people want to f***.

Put it on the poll, please, Juju. Did everyone want to have sex with the popcorn bucket? Come on. Thank you for not saying it. Come on. But, I mean, it was implausible. Number one, the hole was rather large, but also it had the spines in there. It was kind of like a cat's vagina. That's why cats scream so much when they have sex. They have those spines inside. So anytime you hear a cat screaming, it's the out. They're trying to pull out, and the spines are just keeping the penis in.

Was Dune where the popcorn bucket made its return? Yeah, the novelty popcorn bucket had its moment with Dune, and now everybody is chasing. And yes, you have tentpole franchises, big, large movie franchises taking a stab at this. But I think we're now on a path where these are such a hit. People want some tangible merchandise attached with their movie-going experience that...

Boring courtroom dramas should take a stab at making a popcorn bucket. I'll take a primal fear popcorn bucket. Let's do it. Lewis just said something in my ear, and I'm going to run with it, that the penis actually has the spines on it and not the vagina. Well, either way, it hurts when it's being ripped out. Right, it does hurt on the way out. I'm glad we clarified that. But where the spines are? It's a penis? That's what confirmed 100% in my ear.

Confirmed 100% by the person that told it to you. Well, they looked it up. Should I Google Cat Penis? How about Craig Council's stance? There was a time a person could make a living off of this. Craig Council. Lewis was right. $5 footlongs. Insane. I think that what you're arguing on behalf of is a good idea.

at least in part because the first memory I have of sort of

becoming a baseball fan was getting those slurpy, big gulp type of cups at 7-Eleven of baseball players. This was, good God, this was in the 70s. But it sort of, it's not just that it was memorabilia. It made a child a lifelong fan of baseball because as a child I had connection to something that was tangible, as you mentioned. I do wonder, like we've talked a lot about the fact that we're more connected

than we've ever been and more disconnected than we've ever been because everybody you walk past in the streets, they're all staring inside their phones. And the only tangible thing that all of us have is some sort of addiction to these devices. And I do agree with you that you have to start reinventing portions of the industry in a way that grabs young people with just

junk, toys, anything that they can have that's in their hands. God, I long for people wanting anything in their hands because I come back from Africa with an assortment of pictures and you're like, I could get that off of Google. Like none of those pictures. Like I've got an award-winning photographer with me. It's Ron McGill. He's taken all sorts of pictures that are beautiful and breathtaking. And you're like, yeah, anyone could have taken those. I could have downloaded that from my computer. I didn't have to go to Africa to go get it.

pop culture since basically the fidget spinner is missing tangible touchstones.

You know, it's like you had all these things in the set. It's slinky. You had all these things that were tangible that took you back to a time when you held it. We don't really have those things anymore because the only thing we are holding is our phones. Well, let me ask you on the subject of toys, because I guess the video game has probably replaced anything that resembles the toy. You guys can't shut up about this subject.

college football game, the EA Sports one. I think Chris Fowler's the next South Beach session. He's the voice of...

everything happening there, and it took many, many hours to do everything that he was doing there. But is there such a thing right now as a popular toy for children that all children... No, come on. It's the tablet. Let's just replace it. No. Because a tablet's a catch-all. It's a babysitter. You can download an app that is a yo-yo rather than have an actual yo-yo. You're telling me there's no such thing right now as a toy? There are, but it's not a booming business. Like I said, where are these...

pop culture touchstones when it comes to toys. The last thing that was a tangible thing that was a sensation, I genuinely think, was the fidget spinner. Billy, as you sit over there doing whatever it is that you do over the course of a day. Funkos, they're collectible. They say in the box. Legos, maybe? Legos stand the test of time, I guess. But it's very few and far between. Closing tabs right now. The tab I'm about to close is Weeb Eubank.

Because? Because you were talking Jets yesterday on recording for GBF, and we were talking about how long Robert Sala, spoiler alert, how long Robert Sala would get a grace period if he won a Super Bowl as a Jet coach. So I was looking up how long Wiebe Eubank would get.

survived with the Jets after winning their Super Bowl in 1969. Weeb Eubank. Okay, I'm glad that that's what you're doing during what you're... I'm closing tabs because I need to have space for more tabs to open while I look up things like popcorn buckets and fidget spinners. As you try to help the show at every turn. Popsockets, right? Is that what they're called? Popsockets? The question I wanted to ask you is if...

You, while doing that in your role as anarchist who doesn't actually support anything that's happening around here, if you're secretly proud of yourself that 24 minutes have gone by and because of you, I haven't been able to get to LeBron and MJ. Hmm. Yeah.

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Don Levitard. All these high-paid analysts, I don't want to mention names, TNT, ESPN, you know, oh, yeah, they are dead. They're not going to make it, you know, even if they win in the...

If they lose it in Miami. I need to calm you down. That's right. If they lose it in Miami, they don't got a chance in Boston. Oh, they are going to have their ass, you know what, in Boston, you know. Stugatz. They were wrong. Are they going to lose their job? No. Are they going to get a cutting pay? No. What are they going to do? Keep predicting what is the obvious. They are going to say, oh, the Nuggets are going to win. Oh, Denver, the Altitude. And you know what? The Heat are going to win it all. This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz.

I got to this text too late, unfortunately. Stugatz is here, but he's in another room because he doesn't want to be around me until I get tested for COVID. But he's mad that no one in the room, like legitimately mad, just texted me. How is it? And this is how it is that he thinks he can be a program director, because he's like, how is it in a room full of talented people talking about the popcorn bucket that none of them were clever or smart enough to say that it should be a popcorn f*** it?

That's the kind of program director. Gotta work on AM radio. The kind of program director stuff that Stugatz wants to take. Noted good idea man, Stugatz. To WFAN. Stugatz is evidently just typing in the other room commentary. So he's in the studio writing things that mock the show in real time if you want to watch it on YouTube. With the talented comedy writers of the video team.

Yeah, who you take facts from, dangerous. Well, they confirmed their own facts. That was funny. We have confirmed through another graphic that Kevin Uklis never swung at a 3-0 pitch. Dan, you mentioned LeBron and Michael Jordan last segment, and we're going to get to it. But Bronny, the truth, huh?

12 points in a summer league game. He hit some threes. Jeremy came marching in here today like the front of a marching band saying these are the 24 hours to be excited about the Heat because LeBron is saying that Bam can shoot threes and they've got the dunk of the summer league. Yeah, this is it. This is your 24 hours because I know a lot of Heat fans have felt negative about the way the offseason has gone, running it back, whatever you got.

But yesterday was one of those days where you can feel good because first and foremost, Alondis Williams had the dunk of the summer league. It is one of the sickest dunks you'll find. All right, hold on a minute. Let's just show it and hear it so people can enjoy it. Get out of the lane. Alondis Williams! Oh, the shunk of the summer! Wait a second. Where are we going to see that? SportsCenter Top Ten. Oh, no.

It was pretty good. You don't often get... A full cockback. I mean, but cockback to maximum extension of your arm until it's around your hip before you dunk it. Yeah, that's pretty good. Hence, full. Ridiculous. But the reason to be optimistic...

Isn't even Alondis Williams. It's what Khalil Ware and Bam Adebayo each did in their individual games. Khalil Ware has had a really good start to the Summer League yesterday. He had 24 points on 9 of 12 shooting. He's shown his ability to work from distance, but he's also blocking shots off ball, playing drop coverage, doing the things that the Heat are going to want him to do as a rookie, even though a lot of people thought he'd be a project initially. And the reason you get excited about a big...

is because Bam Adebayo playing the four next to Anthony Davis

looks like a world beater playing for Team USA, as he should. He's surrounded by great teammates. But what he's doing offensively, stretching the floor for them, what he's doing on the defensive end, it's okay to feel optimistic today. There's all sorts of reasons why you don't have to. But when you look at those two guys and their individual performances, it allows you to feel optimistic about some of the other things going around the heat, including Jaime Jaquez being called the best player on Team Select alongside Cooper Flagg. These are...

Really positive things. And today's your 24 hours. The Knicks win the summer. The Sixers win the summer. You get your 24 hours just like the Rockets got when Reed Shepard went off in the summer league. So does that mean after today we won't hear you talk about it again? Sure. That's why I said we get 24 hours. You better be careful offering that promise, Jeremy. You better be careful. Unless you guys ask me to. That will not be happening.

I love, I mean, I understand it's flattering. Team Select has a lot of good players, but I love that this guy is as good as a high school. Well, that kid's going to be the number one pick. They're saying they're the two best players available. I'm aware he's really good. And yes, while you can be encouraged by everyone that's on Team USA is singing Bam's praises, there is a lot of clamoring of people that watch international basketball that say Bam needs to start over Joel Embiid, particularly because

Bam suits the international game so much more. What Joel does so well or what he gets away with so often in the NBA is flopping around and officials in the international game just look at him with confused, uh, befuddlement and apathy because he's just flopping around and they don't reward that over there. But I will say the reason why Bam looks so good is because he's playing with such better players. Yeah. It is a blessing to have Bam be at,

best, the fourth most important player on the court. If anything, this accentuates the need to surround Bam with even more talent, something that up to right now, even though we're excited for 24 hours, the Miami Heat has failed miserably at. And that's perfectly fair. You can have that take.

in 24 hours from now because today you're allowed to be happy. Heat fans, I'm looking directly into the camera and speaking to you. Today is the day you're allowed to be happy about what Bam and Abayo did yesterday, about what Khalil Ware looks like and what he could be moving forward.

And hey, use that to feel optimistic about your other young players. Use it to feel optimistic about the things that some of those other players on the team like Terry Rozier or Tyler Hero or Duncan Robinson can provide. It's your 24 hours to be optimistic. You can go back to your practice tomorrow. Stop him! Stop being a homer, bro! Stop being a homer, bro! Executive produced the show, Chris. You can't let him just run around all over the place masturbating about Khalil Williams.

Be aware. I would need the Dune II popcorn bucket for that. Oh, boy. When are we going to lock up the sweater whip?

Why is he an unrestricted free agent still? Guy's out there hitting threes like it's nobody's business. Is that why he hasn't been going to the arena? Can he not practice there right now? Because he's in the summer league. While I was out, you guys please tell me if what Khalil Ware did with Jeremy, where he gave him Mount Rushmore of four players that were ridiculous, was something he was actively doing as a young person to be a troll.

Did you guys identify? I'm trying to get caught up on all of the things that I missed while I was gone, and it's been a lot. So where did you guys land on this? Because when I saw that, I'm like, this is asinine. They must have made fun of this. This can't be something serious that a young person is saying. Yeah, for those of you who don't remember what Khalil Ware said, he told me that his Mount Rushmore of NBA players all time was Wilt Chamberlain, Kobe Bryant, Anthony Edwards, and Bam Adebayo.

And I can tell you... He panicked after. I think he was trolling. I think he was having some fun with the guys that are currently in the league, knowing it would make some headlines. I don't think he realized that it would get aggregated by everybody.

I'm just realizing you were in Africa when we discussed the Swider Web. You don't know about Swider Web. I mean, I know that it's a movement that took the nation while you were gone for two weeks, but it took the nation while you were gone. Everybody around the country was going, Swider Web! Because of Cole Swider, yeah, he was hitting trees like it was nobody's business, as I told you before. At record paces, people were saying, you know what? This might be the next Steph Curry. That happened while you were in Africa. Everybody was saying...

Sweater whip! It was a big moment. And then, for whatever reason, Pat Riley and the Heat, they pulled back his offer, and then he became an unrestricted free agent. Because he's such a good team guy, he's still out there playing number 21, the, you know, hollowed number 21 of greats like Hassan Whiteside in the history of the Heat. Sean Leonard, I believe. Yeah. Sweater whip! Sweater whip!

Why is the expression like nobody's business? Because the batting stance is literally nobody's business. And when you say he was hitting threes and it caught on like nobody's business, I don't understand what that expression means. What does that mean? Do you know what it means? I don't know. I'm not a wordsmith. I just report the facts. They're your words. Sweater whip. They're your facts. It's not his business. It's not my business. Let me ask all of you this question because this is what I have assumed.

And I have not done any reporting on this, but I will because I do want to find out about this. And I've been covering this team for a long time. I do not believe that by the trading deadline of this upcoming year,

that the Heat will be there saying, oh, yeah, we still think we're as good as the Sixers and we'll just magic our way up there. Like what we have seen over the last two years is, and this is understandable. I get why this happens. I know that a lot of people would look at Pat Riley and say it's passed him by. In the last two years, they've swung and missed on everybody because they have swung and missed on everybody. But they've been passed. And the way they got passed was they,

Just like they fell in love with the 30-13 stretch that Deion Waiters and Hassan Whiteside made them feel like, well, we've got to try to run it back. What happened as an eight seed by beating Giannis in the first round made them try to run it back, and then you saw it's not good enough. And now, as you see what Philadelphia has done, and I assume Milwaukee would get better, they're behind. They're clearly and obviously behind. And given what I'm about to say, because...

If you've been connected at all to mortality in the last few months of Richard Simmons is dying. Dr. Ruth is dying. Bill Walton is dying. Jerry West is dying.

Pat Riley doesn't have any reason in the world to still be working at his age approaching 80. He's not going to wait around for another young team to ferment. Most recently, the things that they have done with young people is something that Pat Riley has never before done in his career. So I have assumed that the next play is going to be an assortment

of pieces that gets Jimmy Butler for one year maximum Jimmy Butler and that he's going to try and get Durant again even though it's old and everybody would look at it and say really that's what you're doing it's Phoenix it didn't work in Phoenix I've assumed that that's the move that they're going to try and get in play for because I don't see a better one about winning right

now, this minute, because you cannot expect this Miami Heat team to be good enough as it is to challenge Boston and Philadelphia. Well, it's been fermenting. This core has been fermenting for quite a while with Pat not doing anything. Meanwhile, guys like Matt Ishbia are the ones living like they're dying. So I do know that they...

did try really aggressively, made a very competitive offer for DeMar DeRozan, and they thought that that could maybe salvage their offseason. But this is where you're at right now. DeMar DeRozan was essentially given the choice, where do you want to be? He preferred to be on the West Coast, and he took the storied Sacramento Kings franchise over Heat culture.

Jeremy said we can't talk about this today, though, guys. That's fair enough. Not today, Ford. Positivity today, guys. 24 hours. Fair enough. Then we can have these conversations. Maybe we put a pin in this and say tomorrow. Remember the positive things about the guys that are here. Stop being a homer, bro. Fine. I will finally be able to get to this LeBron story. Oh.

Summer's the best time to run the way you want. Dial it up with new challenges and programs and bring your workouts with you to make the most of outside sunny days. Stugatz, guess what? What? You know what you can do with Peloton? What? Get the app, go outside, ride a bike. Well, I thought you ride Peloton inside. Well, you do, you can ride Peloton inside if it's a rainy day or if it's cloudy or you just don't want to get outside, maybe it's too hot.

summertime, go outside. I record a lot from my office with you and you've noticed it's sitting there yet. It hasn't been used. Well, now's the time. Summer's the best time to start that push. Right. Can we do it together? Not on the same bike, but we could join a class together. I used to do that. We used to have Guillermo Tan. I'd invite people. We'd all take a class together. Okay. So I think you're starting to get concerned about my health and my age, Billy. I,

I sense that with you. We're beyond starting. Okay. Whatever road lies ahead, your training starts here with Peloton Tread and Tread Plus. It's not just a bike, a treadmill too. I'm going to go outside. I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to do it with Billy Gill. I want to be in your class. I want you to be my instructor. You know what? I won't be your instructor. You don't want to spend more time with me. No, I can schedule a class and we can ride together. I won't be the instructor of the class. We can have Camila could be our instructor. I like the Grateful Dead class. My daughter, she uses the Peloton. Mm-hmm.

She was on it once and an instructor who was playing Grateful Dead tunes. Let's do that. Okay. Why don't we go for a run outside? Guided run. Peloton. Me and you. That's something we can do together. Okay. Turn on the app. Me and you go outside. Enjoy the summer. Call yourself a runner with Peloton at onepeloton.com slash running. All right.

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