The Best of SBS: Michael Wilbon
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You're listening to DraftKings Network. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm really excited about this one because I've never told this man how I actually feel about him beyond being a pioneer and someone who gave me and others like me permission, shared the stage with me. He's the original gangster. He taught all of us what sports writing could be.

what friendship and partnership with someone you love could be, changing television with one of the best sports television shows ever made and a long journalism career before that, before you gravitated toward the cotton candy, and one of the hardest workers I've ever met. I don't know where your ambition comes from, but I'd like to ask you a bunch of questions that I have never asked you before. But first, to express my profound respect for

and love for a legitimate teacher of mine. You and Tony showed me the way, showed me what could be possible. I'm 10 years older than you, and that means Tony's 20. You know, Dan, first of all, that means a lot to come from you. It means a lot to come from the people that are in a group that are half, if a generation is 20 and a half generation is 10, it means you and Stephen A. Smith and certain people that are exactly like

you know, 10 years younger. We don't think of you guys as being younger, but you are. And if we showed anything, if we did anything that reveals some sort of humanity, my mother was a teacher, taught public school in Chicago for 35 years. So teaching is important. So that's a hell of a compliment. Thank you for saying that. I'm so grateful to you and Tony and Ride Home and Kelleher and the entire environment that you had around you because it's,

It showed me what kind of environment I wanted around me. I tell people all the time, it wasn't even the friendship of Tony and Mike that made me gravitate toward how I would do it in its evolution. It's what they had behind the scenes, caring for them, the people taking care of their relationship and enjoying each other's company, creating something. Like you guys really did birth

I'm not kidding you when I tell you that you guys watching you, because it was unstated. It's not like you were telling me, holding me by the hand, saying, here, Dan. Because guys don't talk about that stuff, right? No, Dan. Okay, but you know it comes. But there's another place where you got some of it, because you're the people 10 years younger than us are the last people to sadly get this. And it was the camaraderie, the engagement, the contention of the newsroom.

And so ours is based on, you know, if you watch, if people are old enough to have watched Mary Tyler Moore and the ensemble cast of Mary Tyler Moore and Ted Baxter and John Amos and, of course, Lou Grant. They were living, breathing things. Newsrooms were. They had a heart. They were. I miss that. People say you miss writing. Not really. I miss the newsroom. But I know the newsrooms don't exist anymore.

Not like they did for us. And so Tony and I existed in the same newsroom. And we took that down the street. And Eric, speaking to people, Eric's not quite 10 years younger, but you know, you guys got the benefit of some of that. And yes, Tony and I, we needed it. It was mandatory.

to flourish in that kind of environment. Needed the sparks, needed people arguing, cursing at each other, creative bursts. Something that HR would not tolerate anymore. We used to tell young people who came into the PTI newsroom in 20, so this is 2001, 2002, three, four, five, six, young people, interns, men and women, young men and women. Be careful at how Tony and Mike are yelling at each other. We're going to curse. We don't give a shit if you don't like it. If you don't like it, leave.

Oh, my God. Can you imagine if people in Bristol knew that? So we did and we didn't care that. And you know what? No one ever complained to our knowledge because it was a democratic place. It was a place where you could scream back. You know, that's that's the magic of it, that everybody was sort of equal no matter who got paid more.

Everybody was pretty equal. Did you realize that you were pioneering? Did you realize that you were leading the way, giving sports writers permission to turn into characters on television? I would tell you why the answer is no. It's an actual concrete no. Because I grew up

Dan, I'm the weirdest creature in this way. People come to me and they say, Stephen A. Smith has told me this. We work together every week on Countdown on ESPN. And he's told me, you know, people have said you were the first person I sort of saw. And then when I was in the profession already...

You guys made this transition. Well when I was a kid a kid I'm talking about 12 14 years old Brent Musburger did this in Chicago? He wrote for the Chicago Daily News and then Brent Musburger was on CBS with Jimmy the Greek and and Irv Cross and Jane Kennedy or and Miss America I'm forgetting that was George so so Brent Musburger covered the Bears and he was on TV so I was a little kid and

And then there was a guy was bringing it even closer to home for me, a guy named Wendell Smith. Wendell Smith was a black man, an African-American man in his, I'm guessing, 50s and 60s. His widow just died. And he was writing a column for the Chicago Sun-Times. And he was on WGN at the same time when I was eight and 10 years old.

So people I've had people come up to me in the last 20 years saying you were the first person I saw who looked like me who did this. I saw people I saw someone, Wendell Smith, who looked like me and did both and crossed over and transitioned into television when I was 10. So 55 years ago. So, no, I don't consider myself a pioneer. I saw people do this. I actually know one of them. Brent Musburger is something of a pioneer.

mentor without ever being presumptuous enough Brent Musburger did all I went to the same college went to Northwestern Brent is Papa Wildcat Brent is 80 plus at this point right so Brent's got at least 16 17 years on me okay you can cite other pioneers but for me and for Stephen A Smith you were the guy and I have a I know that's factually I get it I you know I believe you guys

It's just... But you asked me if I thought of myself that way. God, no. Well, you were too busy working and repressing general feelings that aren't supposed to be spoken out loud by sportsmen. Repressing. Yeah, sports cavemen. But you...

Man, I remember your kindness, your grace, Michael, beyond just being nice to people walking through an arena, people slapping you on the back, and really seeming like someone who was grateful that anybody would think Michael Wilbon's words meant anything, enough to make him a rock star. But beyond that,

You and Tony were so generous with your platform, and you know as well as I do, that that's not true of all of your sports writing peers with ego. No, it's not true of all of our colleagues, which is too bad, because we generally felt that way. We generally felt that way. I just think it's how I was raised. There's no presumption. I was raised by two people who fled the South, right?

post-depression, who were part of the great migration from Georgia and Tennessee and general places in the South, but specifically for them, Georgia and Tennessee, my father and mother respectively, to Chicago.

And they were grateful for what they had, all of it. Grateful every day. And you had to be grateful. And there was no presumption that there's no other. There was no other way. And then I really believe that, you know, people from the Midwest use the phrase Midwestern sensibilities that exists everywhere.

I know people from the East don't believe it, and people from the West aren't even aware of what it is. Oh, but it's not just politeness. Hold on a second. There are plenty of people in this business, competitive people in this business, who would have been threatened. You have real confidence. But who would be threatened by the sharing of the stage? It is mine. You had a seminal program that somehow still exists, okay, that has made its way through the labyrinth of all ESPN things.

Isn't subject to cuts because you guys are now above cuts like you've got seniority. Oh, you are tenured in high school I need to be above cuts you are tenured at what it is that you do and from the very beginning You shared that with me and you didn't have to and you did it in a really loving way that made someone who was nervous You feel accepted saying that and Dan it wasn't conscious

Just that's how the two we were. Those those were the conditions under which we came into the business and grew up. And we're very lucky to to have the people that shared what they shared at The New York Times and Newsday for Tony and The Washington Post and The Washington Post for me. We just there's no I mean, Bob Woodward and Ben Bradley were that way when we got to the post. So why wouldn't we be?

Didn't think of the Watergate reporters were that way with Tony and Mike. Yes. Yes. I remember. I don't know why this came up recently, but it did. Tony and I were talking about it on November 22nd, 1988, which would have been the 25th anniversary exactly of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Tony and I were on the fifth floor where the Washington Post newsroom famously was. And we were just thinking about the 25th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Well, his best friend was our boss, Benjamin C. Bradley, the great editor of the Post. And we decided to go up to his office and ask him if he would take us to lunch. I don't even know what got into us. Tony did most of the talking. I was too scared.

And we went into Ben's office. The secretary said, he's back there. Go in. And Ben Bradley, people can picture Jason Robards if they need to, said, you two look like you want something. We said, we'd like you. Can we go to lunch? Why? Well...

he goes, of course he knows what today is. And Ben Bradley took us to lunch for like three hours and told us stories. Gruff old newspaper men. But you guys did bring journalism to what it, you guys brought, in changing the way sports television was done, you guys brought a,

A journalistic sensibility that had a little bit of meet the press to it. Yes, it did. And had also the crossfire sensibilities of we're going to argue, but we love each other and the arguments aren't going to mean anything. And they're not going to be phony. They're not going to be phony. Unlike crossfire, which was completely phony. Or a lot of sports television these days. Yeah, it is. It is. But yeah, we, yes, we brought that sensibility because again, that's who we were. I mean, part of this, anything that you're crediting us with, and I'll speak for Tony now too.

is part is it's who we were it's how we were trained I want to what I think is a greatest journalism school in the world Northwestern's Medill

And I brought that training. Plus, I worked at one place for 30 years and six months, The Washington Post. That's all I knew. I knew how to go about news that way and sports that way and treat it like it was news, not like it was the toy section. It wasn't the toy section. And I know where you grew up at the Miami Herald. And I know people like Edwin Pope who helped shape my early life. They did. I know we were shaped by some of the same forces.

And I know the people that you worked with, like Greg Cody, because I feel that there was a way that we were all taught to be at that point in the business. And I'm grateful for that. And so I take no credit, though I'm glad you offer it, for sharing the stage. The stage was to be shared. It wasn't mine. It wasn't mine to dominate. And I know what you're talking about. I won't name names. And we know the same people who did not want to share.

I don't care about that. Well, there are more, but there are more than I found more of those in this business than I found people like you and you, you did more things and you went more places and you, you had more interactions with people on that level than we did. You know, I, and you know me, I'm where I want to go to a gym on a,

Tuesday night or Thursday. Well, you love sports in an uncommon way. You love work in an uncommon way. And I want to get into your life and times because I don't think people understand how hard it has been and what you've earned, what you've had to earn. But you purposefully just did 30 years and six months because it hurt you to leave newspapers. How do you know that it's six months, 30 years? I know the day that I left December 7, 2010, my would have been my father's birthday.

December 7. He was born 16 years old on Pearl Harbor Day. So I got a real easy way to remember it. And Matthew was two years old. So he's born in 2008. So I got an easy way to remember it. And that just happens to be from June 13, 1980, when I got to the post 30 years and six months ago.

So, yeah, it's easy to remember for me. No, it wasn't intentional. I didn't want to leave. ESPN sort of forced me to leave. They just said, we don't want to see your best work there. We want it here. Enough. Because I overlapped for nine years. You know, we talked about it and you would say when we were together, what are you doing? Why won't you choose? And I didn't trust television. Still don't. Don't. And I trusted working for Don and Catherine Graham. I trusted that.

And obviously that, you know, people say to you, miss it. Yeah, I miss it. But I would have missed it if I was still there because it doesn't exist anymore now. But yeah, I did it because I didn't trust it. And again, I'm the son of sharecroppers, you know, people who grew up and did hard work on the farm. And my father got up at 345 every morning and went to work every morning. There was no, what is that the NBA players do now? Load management. There's no load management. There's none.

My father never missed a day of work in my life until he retired at 58 years old. Retire at 58. So there's no load management. Take your ass to work. That's what we did. Fathers went to work. And so I'm embarrassed that people don't work. That's what you're supposed to do. That's your obligation to the people that are in your family, to the city, the neighborhood, the culture, however large you want to make it.

So, yeah. So I didn't I don't I don't take any credit for that. That is your work, though, because, you know, that part you understand, you know, that you're a symbol for something with your platform that you now I do. I didn't know that when I was doing it at first. I didn't know. I mean, I know. Yes. Now, yes, I'd be sitting here lying and I'd be naive if I didn't know.

But no you went to work. I didn't have I missed one day of school in grade school from kindergarten to nine one day I remember throwing up in the third grade. It was the last time I threw up until I was 38 years old one day I remember how embarrassed I was to throw up and miss the next day of school and I grew up someplace where people weren't just lazy and

I grew up someplace where there was a 27-inch snowstorm when I was in fourth grade. You got to be at school by 1030 the next day instead of nine. There's no snow days. Matthew says, Dad, how many snow days you have as a kid? What?

What? And kids now miss school, miss work for any reason, any bullshit reason. I didn't miss anything. I think the most soulful conversation I ever had with you was before Matthew was born, after you had your heart issue and you were doing some deep dive looks into mortality and to life's purpose because you have dedicated...

almost the entirety of your identity to the work. Yeah, I guess so. I don't see it. I don't think you mentioned earlier about you tied it to sports, about what sports guys don't think of and don't talk about. Dan, I don't think about it.

Consciously. Now, I thought about, yes, you were right. You were there. You sat in for me. It was a snapshot. I've never seen it before from you. Well, it was a week. It was a week. It was one week. I remember I wanted to come back to work. And you called me. I remember the phone call. And you said, don't be an idiot. You don't have to work. You had a heart attack. Stop it. Well, I thought you did have to work. Because I thought if my dad was alive, that's what he would have wanted me to do.

Go to work. You're fine. Or you think you think you're fine. Get up and go to work. So I want to go back to work on Friday. And you and Tony and ride home said no. So I went back to work on Monday. I did. So the soul searching was more about my father died at 60 of lung cancer. And I spent my entire life being afraid of turning 60.

When I got to 50, you think I was bad. I had a heart attack at 49. You should have seen me at 59. Ten years later, I was worse because I was afraid to turn 60. Even though my mother was 92 at the time, I identified with my father. Not my mother's 92 years, ultimately 93. And you got to know my mother a little bit.

I got to identify with my old man. And so the examination of it was just fear. Straight up. A week of introspection and then back into the work. And back into the work until we got to about 57. And then I started to fear. I'll say 58 before I just said, damn, you know, my old man, you know, died at an age where.

I'm actually not getting that emotional. It means I'm tired. When I start tearing up, it means I'm tired. It literally means I'm tired, too tired. I've been keeping too many late nights. All I care about is I want for Matthew to have me longer than I have my father. I was 27 when my father died. Now, people might say the bar is low because Matthew will be 28 when I'm 78. All right, so if I can get to see Matthew turn 30, that's what I want.

But I didn't think 60 was just it was a tough thing because I lived like to this day to please my own man He been dead 36 years something like that, but that's that's what I exist. So that examination That's the examination. It was that simple and probably removed and I didn't think I had to do less work You know me, you know, I didn't do less work. No, you don't know what that means. Does Matthew know what you just told me? No, no

The biggest regret I have about this generation gap is it's a real gap. Like, the word generation gap, the phrase, was meant to describe what existed between the Depression-era people, people born from World War I to almost World War II, or World War II, and then their children and grandchildren. I should tell people you had Matthew. Matthew's 15 now. Matthew's 15. I was 49 and a half years old. And so—

That generation gap was meant to describe that. But yet, at some point, I still adopted the music my parents listened to. While calling them old and listening to the Jackson 5 and they couldn't stand to hear it, I still got to Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.

Right. And Sam Cooke. I got to them. I've never considered what you're presently putting in front of me, which is the idea that there is a generation of pop culture removed from even father and son because you had him right before you or right after you had the heart attack. Right before you had the heart attack. No, forgive me. Forgive me on the timing on this. Right after. Right after. Two months after. He was born March.

I had the heart attack on January 28th, same year. But so so generation gap. Ultimately, we merged. And ultimately, I could sit in the car with my mother who's 32 years older than me. That's not a small gap for somebody born in 1925 to have a child 32 years later. We did this. We watched the same stuff. We listened to the sense that we consume the same things. We didn't say, what? What is that? Now we have generation gaps, big ones. And I don't mean you have you don't have to be 50 years older than your kid. Everybody has it.

Technology helped create that. So does Matthew really internalize anything that goes on in my life? No. Will he? I don't know. I don't know. And again, I don't know that that would be any different if I was 44 right now and not 64. What did fatherhood teach you? Because before that, I would say that Wilbon was married almost pretty exclusively to his job.

Yeah, Cheryl would probably say that I still am. To just put some things on the back burner, other things become more important. It's very simple. The greatest thing I've ever done is be Matthew's father. The thing I'm proudest of is being Matthew's father. Does that mean I, you know, I was at a point then at 50, I'd already worked 30 years. So what you and others were saying at the time was you can back off. I didn't know that gear. I didn't have that.

and didn't do it. And probably they'd let some other things. But the thing that I saw that I got from my father in the relationship was dad's work. And that's what I want Matthew to get. I don't know if he gets it. I really don't.

First of all, he's running around the arena last night. He knows I'm up there sitting there talking, but he's running around. He met Neymar at the Miami Arena. Wait a minute. This is your fault. This part's your fault. But it's not. I went to work with my father. It's my work. I know. He drove a truck. It was a little different. I know. He didn't get to go hug Magic Johnson. That's correct. Slightly different. This one's your fault. It's not fault. It's my reality. You've given your son. I'm saying he's a little bit spoiled. No, he's very spoiled. Okay, that's fine.

That's your fault. And on top of that, maybe he hasn't learned quite the value of hard work the way you did because you saw your father coming home and he'd be busted up. And your life wasn't quite as opulent as I'm guessing Matthew's life is right now. No, he left the Ritz Carlton South Beach this morning after breakfast by the pool.

He left that to fly back home to Washington. After meeting Neymar. After meeting Neymar last night. After being in a finals game because he wanted to fly in and be with his dad. Yeah, I wanted him to do that. There's no more gifts and boxes and packages for him. You get experiences. You get experiences. So stuff that you'll remember. And we did that at a young age. We did that purposely.

Because we do enjoy that connection with sports. We argue and fight about sports every day. Like my father and my brother and I did at the kitchen table, which people say was the precursor to PTI, people who know what our kitchen was like. So Matthew and I do that every day, much to my wife's chagrin. Every day, scream and holler. Dad, why don't you love Kyrie Irving? Because Kyrie's an asshole. Why do you love him, Matthew? This is every day in our house.

And so he gets that part of it. He gets what I do. Didn't want any part of it. But he can also luxuriate in the benefit of benefits of what how you get to do that, you know. And so I don't know what it means. I don't know what I don't know what any kids get from their parents anymore because they don't even they don't talk. We didn't have headphones on, Dan.

I didn't have headphones on. My father would have slapped the shit out of me and knocked the headphones out of my ears. That's true. The AirPods or buds or whatever they are. They don't even listen. They're not even paying attention to us. They don't pay attention to each other. There's no dialogue. Tell me how your parents shaped you because you were visiting your mother in Miami into her late 20s before you moved her to Chicago. A dutiful son you were until the very end. Yeah.

Tell me about your parents, how they shaped you. And I mentioned where or I asked you where ambition came from. I know where your work comes from. Right. I know where your work comes from. I don't know where and how your ambition was. Fear of failure. Fear of failure. Plain and simple. Everything that has always motivated me. Don't fail. Don't fuck up. I mean, that's just it. Does that come from parents? Yeah. Yeah. They lived in my mother took.

So, yes, I moved my mother, as you completely accurately said, to Chicago because I couldn't come to South Florida to look after her. I'm already in Washington. We built a second home in Arizona. And then I got involved a lot in Chicago with my alma mater, Northwestern, and the south side of Chicago and trying to –

be involved in the fabric of the place that produced me. And I couldn't ask South Florida that anymore. And I said to her, where do you want to spend your last chapter? And she said, how about home? And home for her was the South Side of Chicago. She went there at 14 years old. Her father's brother had driven down in the dirt of Tennessee in the country roads and said to his brother, her father, Frank,

Why don't you let Robert, RJ, why don't you let one of your 11 kids come to Chicago, live on the South Side with me and my wife and go to school? And my mother overheard it because they didn't have any kids. They couldn't have children. And my mother overheard it and she reminded her father, can I go to Chicago? She was 14. She got on the train by herself at 14 in the South and left Tennessee, a little town called Trenton, Tennessee, took the train there.

To Chicago at 14, same age that Emmett Till lost his life. And I asked I talked to her about this. We would have these Christmas night dinners and I would I was sad. You would have done this. This is where you would have you would have been better than me as a journalist. You you you have gotten these stories out of your parents earlier and intentionally. I didn't.

I didn't do it till it was late. She was 90 the night we had this conversation. I said, you've never told me about your trip, the train trip to Chicago from Trenton, Tennessee. What was it like? And she was telling, she finally, she told me. And I said, why didn't, why haven't we talked about this? She said, there's certain things you didn't want your children to have to hear. And she got on the train. And this is, so 14 years old, this is through the mask. She was born in 1926. This is 1940. She gets on a train.

She's going north from the south and she sits where everybody else sits, which means she sat where the white folks sat. And I said, well, what did the ticket taker, she said, the ticket taker came to me and said, what are you doing sitting here? And I said, where do you want me to sit? What are you talking about? Because she'd never been on a train with white people. So how would she know? This guy let her go and let her stay in that seat.

And when they got far enough north where black people could move to the front, she was already there. And she saw this migration. How about that for symbolism? She saw this migration of Negroes from the back cars to where she was already sitting. And it dawned on her. I wasn't supposed to be here. Nobody physically could have thrown her off or worse.

And she took the train like that and got to Chicago and survived it and lived. Lived to tell me about it all those years later. I never knew the story. And I know the story of Emmett Till well, south side of Chicago. And I didn't know my mother knew Mamie Till. They both taught school. They were about five years apart in age, if that. And so all of that backdrop and my father fled the south, fled, fled. His father and other...

siblings, other of the aunts and uncles feared lynching, feared my father's temper, which was I'm not going back there, was going to get him killed, get him on a train, send him north. So instead of Detroit to get a job with the auto industry or whatever, they sent him to Chicago where there were some other siblings. So that that has to be known about me and my brother and where we come from and and how you got out of that circumstance is you worked.

And you and we didn't do most of the other stuff. My parents and my parents were frugal and they were children of the Depression. And so that creates very much the person I am. And then growing up on the South Side, growing up the most segregated big city in America at the time, a brawling city, a city where nobody was afraid. Nobody was afraid. And if people think Chicago is just violent now for the first time, they're idiots.

Chicago's always, I know what my hometown is and isn't. It's always been violent. Anybody can watch the St. Valentine's Day Massacre movie and figure that out. And so all of that produced me. I'm the sum of all of that. My father was also the son of a Baptist preacher. My parents were church-going Baptist people. I haven't set foot in the church in a long, long time.

Guess I have you've got your own church. Actually. You've made Church of sports You've raised Sunday morning that Sunday Sunday for me is worshiping in front of multiple televisions What was your dad getting up to do at 3:45 deliver? It was always food products at first it was sodas went back when there were bottles sodas and there were crates of them and people took the bottles back for deposit and

He delivered soda, delivered bread, delivered ice cream when I was oldest to remember and went with him to stores, to routes. He was a route salesman. My father was once laid off. He was the number one route salesman at Dean's Food Company in Chicago in 1968. And he was laid off despite being the number one guy laid off. Only black salesmen in the company had.

And a young dude, I woke up and went to the breakfast table one Wednesday morning. There's this guy sitting in my breakfast table wearing a dashiki with sideburns down to his mustache. His name was Reverend Jesse Jackson Jr. And he said, you're not getting laid off because I'm going to organize a boycott of Dean Foods on the south side of Chicago until you get your job back. My father was hired back in about two days.

That doesn't sound like the kind of job that can afford sending a son to Northwestern. Yeah. He was proud that we had no financial aid because we didn't qualify. Everybody else, white and black, in 1976 was qualifying for financial aid because Northwestern was the most expensive school in the country or one of the five most. And no financial aid for two kids. My father put the two of us through, my father and mother, on a teacher's salary, which was pretty good back then.

Were you seeing your father much or was he just exhausted all the time? He was home by four. We ate dinner together every day. Every day we ate dinner. He left the house at four. But he was back by the time I got home from high school. I just would think that someone like that might be very tired at the end of that kind of work day. He stayed up. We watched television. We watched sports together every night. He was available. We took a nap. But we were together. But he, you know...

He didn't know anything else. He thought he was lucky compared to what could have been going on in the South at the time, had he stayed. But he made enough money. I remember my parents shared. They told us how much money they made. My father showed us his paycheck. We knew how much he made. We knew what FICA was. We knew what came out of the check, both of them, exactly how much they made. And we knew they made more. I knew my father made more than the sometimes, no, most of the time, the doctors and the dentists and the lawyers made.

who we all live together, all of us, which meant, yes, Muhammad Ali lived there on the south side of Chicago when I was growing up and you saw him and you saw the physician. We didn't want to go anywhere else. We lived next to Walton, no Nick Williams on the Chicago White Sox and Billy Williams and Ernie Banks lived not far away. It was that segregated. Those guys weren't living anywhere else. The Black Bears...

players live suckers Lake Forest was so far away. So Gail Sayers we didn't see and JC Caroline We didn't see we saw everybody else. They lit we all live together And yeah, my father put two kids through Northwestern with no financial aid and you dreamt then of being a sports writer or pretty early when I realized I wasn't gonna be the next Ernie Banks I was 15 and I realized I wasn't that was not gonna be playing at Wrigley Field But writing isn't much of a career

I didn't see it that way. Neither did I. But if I show you retrospect right now, like my father wanted me to be an engineer, this doesn't seem like a very safe path, the one that you took. I didn't pay attention to my parents and what they thought. I told them I was going to major in journalism, and I remember everybody scoffed at it at the dinner table, including my brother, the banker. He says, no, he didn't. I'm like, yeah, he did. I was only two years younger than me.

I didn't, I wasn't paying, I don't know what they wanted me, they never told me what they wanted me to be. They were going to be supportive educationally of whatever. And so... Some people might think that sports writing with a Northwestern degree is a waste of a Northwestern degree. Yeah, but I had David Israel, and I had Brent Musburger and David Israel, and...

No, it was fine. And, you know, the money wasn't bad relative to the times. Who was making a bunch of money back then? Lawyers, doctors, maybe. I saw my father make more. I remember starting at about $23,000 a year. Yeah, me too. I started at $23,000 a year even 10 years earlier. I started at $23,000. We had this discussion last night. Matthew said, Dad, what did you make when you worked at the Washington Post? And I actually told him to the penny.

And so I didn't care what they were paying me, though. I was so happy they were giving me any money to do it. I cared a little bit, but that was 10 percent. I'm like you. I just I was I was doing what I wanted to do. I could afford a nice apartment in D.C. and a car to go on a date every week, maybe once. Life was pretty good. And we did in 1980 and even 1990 were a whole lot different than 2020. Well, tell people about what the hardships were, though, because you didn't have any. Nope.

Not a one. I had no student loans to pay back because my father didn't get financial aid. We didn't borrow money. I had a little bit. I had $2,500 of student loan to pay back. I don't even think I could do that properly. I had no hardships. George Solomon hired me, promoted me. I went from college sports to pro sports to columnist in 10 years and wrote a column for the next 20 after being 10 as a reporter. I had no hardships. I had no desperate, awful relationships.

I didn't have that. My parents, my father died. That was my hardship. 27 years old. I was 27. He was 60. My mother was able to, my mother and father saved enough money that she bought a place here, as you know, in Kendall. Lived in South Florida, went back and forth to Chicago and wintered down here for several years until she got tired of going back and forth and moved down here permanently. I had no hardships. None. Zero. Zero.

Did your father tell you that he was proud of you? No, never. Never told me he loved me. Never told him that. We didn't do that. I wasn't done. Never. I remember saying it. I never kissed my father until I kissed his forehead when it was in a casket. And I never talked about that before. But that's the truth. And I remember my father died of lung cancer. He smoked himself to death. Philip Morris, unfiltered cigarettes, post-World War II. And I was pissed at him when he died.

I mean, I was angry. And I remember grabbing my mother's head and Don's head going out on the steps when the casket was coming down, being carried by the pallbearers. And they were crying. And I said, we're not doing this today. We're not doing this today. And I didn't because I figured he should have stopped fucking smoking. He was getting my brother to get him cigarettes in the hospital. My brother was in college and I found out about it. But no, we didn't tell each other that stuff. But I knew I knew.

Like there was no question as to what my father dedicated his life to us. So what was that? He wasn't getting the king's ransom. Right. And he was going out. My father went to work in overalls every day. A pair of overalls and boots went to work every day like that. Drove a big ass truck, big, huge truck. So, yes, we never we know we never we never told each other that stuff. And I don't know anybody who did. And maybe they did. And we just didn't talk about it. I don't know that my family did that.

You were angry at the funeral. Yeah, I was pissed. But you kissed him in the casket. Kissed his head in the casket, yep. Yep. Only time...

Did I remember that? And I don't feel we missed anything. He was there every day. He was at Little League games back when nobody, parents didn't take off. Now there's a whole damn gallery of parents at every game Matthew plays. It's like, really? Do you people work? What a blessing, though, Michael, to not have to hear it, to just know it because the man carried himself in a way that showed it to you daily. I don't know. My mother said it that much. My mother and I said it.

you know, more times after 60, between 60 and 93 for her than we ever did from 32 to 60. How about your brother, Donald? Do you share that with him? Do you say it out loud? No, no, but he's, you know, he's my biggest fan and best friend my entire life and my brother. Why wouldn't you just tell him? I probably have told him two or three times, no more than that.

Matthew gets it all the time, though, right? Not now anymore. Teenage boys. Teenage boys don't give you much, Danny. They don't give you shit. They don't. They don't. They just don't. As a little kid, as a little kid, he would say it, you know, and I would say there were friends of mine who said, you know, this is going to stop at like 11. You can start playing video games and get become a tough guy. And he's not giving you any of that.

And I was thinking, yeah, right. I'll be different. I'll be different. You're not different.

Oh, but you are such a softie for him. I have admired both your combination of love and hard love because I just remember one time, I don't even know how old he was, but he was young and he had done something in a restaurant. I was on the phone with you and you were like, I'm going to go handle this right now. And I felt like Matthew was about to get a decent beating. He got a few ass whoopings. Somebody can come get me if they want to.

He felt like he had done something pretty bad. I believe in that. My parents believed in switches. Parents from the South, go out and bring a branch in so I can beat your ass with it. I believe in that. Sorry. He didn't get many. I whipped his ass a few times, though. A few. You know, a couple of times. He was really young. And I'll get in his face now. I mean, you know, I haven't – I've decided I'm not going to do it anymore.

After he turned 12. I don't think I've done it in two years. That's well, yeah, that would have been 13. So maybe three years. I haven't done it. And it's like, okay, I got to handle this differently. Because I wouldn't have wanted my father doing that after I turned like 11. I got my last whipping when I was 11. But I have to jump him. I have to jump him every now and then.

Can you explain to me a little bit differently or more how it is that you arrived at having the thought, I need to be here for Matthew longer now?

than my father was here for me and what you were doing with this fear. How did that fear manifest itself at 57, 58, 59, where you're just, you're saying deathly afraid of not living longer than your father. Yeah. Cause I don't have a wish to live. We just talked about this. I was talking about this to somebody a couple of days ago about living to 95. No, I don't, I don't, I don't long to do that. I don't have that ambition.

It doesn't mean I'm going to be ready to roll out of here if I happen to live. But I don't have that ambition. Most of the men in my family, lately, they've been living longer. So I never saw that. You don't see a whole lot of black men living a long time in most of our circles. And I'm diabetic. I got heart disease. I obviously had a heart attack at 49. You know, I got the shit that takes you out early.

And it's manifested itself. I was careless when I was younger. I didn't treat diabetes with the fear I should have treated it with. I thought I was invincible like a lot of guys my age who have means and access to health care. And you just think, you know, do whatever I want to do. Wrong. So you mentioned I look skinny. I weigh 50, 60 pounds less than I did when I got married.

And that was 1997, so not all that long ago. 25 years ago, 26 years ago, 50, 60 pounds less? Jesus, I was 250 then, I'm 192 now, so almost 60. I got to be better. But that's just me, so I don't want to die at 60 either, like my old man. So, you know, it's a combination of that. But I'd like to be here, because that's the most important thing I do. My father never got to see me.

His son's real success is he never got to live that long. My brother hadn't even gone to grad school yet. I think my father died. My brother's incredibly successful banker. My old man didn't get to see that. So I'd like to just to share the time just to go play around the golf. COVID taught me that. So during COVID, COVID was revelatory for me, Dan. I was.

I said to a couple of people, dear friend of mine used to run Johns Hopkins Hospital and Howard, Eddie Cornwell. I called him and said, this disease is virus. Where do I need to be riding this out? And he's like, I'm sorry, don't you have a blank in the house in Arizona? Go there because density is not your friend. And I went to Arizona. I got a ton of doctor friends.

And each one of them said the same thing. So I went to Arizona and Cheryl and I went there and then we took Matthew and he could go to school remotely. He was in fifth grade, sixth grade, whatever, sixth. And he had remote school every day. And we were out in the, I don't care what the people said about the numbers. Matthew and I went to the golf course one day. Thank God golf courses stayed open in Arizona. I'm a totally blue state guy. It was interesting what was going on in Arizona as it went from red to purple to now blue.

And Matthew said, Dad, people say you shouldn't be within six feet of each other. There's nobody within 60 feet of us. I'm like, exactly. That's why we're coming here every day. We went to the golf course every other day and played nine holes. And then my brother drove out from Chicago with his son. And he and Jordan and I and Matthew, we played golf every day, every other day, nine holes. And I said to him, when you guys are in your 50s, you're going to look back on this and say, can you remember when we spent all this time with our goddamn fathers?

And I said, hopefully we'll never have this kind of time again. But it was life changing, life changing. And I spent 100 days in Arizona with my family. I have never spent 100 days with my family.

I said to Cheryl, she's meticulous about record keeping. I'm like, what do you think the greatest number of days we ever spent together was? Michael, you're always traveling. You're always going somewhere. I don't want to be anywhere longer than four or five days. You're always working. You're always getting on an airplane. I don't want to be anywhere longer than four or five days. That's just excess. I just don't. I get antsy. I'm not happy.

But we were together for 90 days. The last 10 days they left and I stayed in Arizona. And she came back with a number like, what do you think it was? And I said, I don't know, 60. She was like, 38. It was like minuscule. Because yes, because you know my life. You knew me before she did. It's going to be you, not Cheryl. It's going to be you've got to go off, be the next thing. I don't think it's going to. I mean, and she's got a big life, too. No, this is what I chose.

This is what I chose. This is what I like to do. I was doing it before I met her. When she met me, it was like, this is what I do. You got to figure out a way to fit in this. I don't fit in your life. You fit in mine. This is what we got. What do you think? You want to do this? Because this is how I roll.

And I loved my life at 30. I got married almost 39 years old. I already loved my life. Well, that's, yeah, you can be very formed as a 39-year-old adult who has had success. Yes, even though I was marrying an attorney who was a lot smarter and academically more accomplished than me. But you're more stubborn and more formed and more caveman. And so you're going to be work, work, work, fit around. I don't know that it would have been the same if it was the other way around.

Practical. We had to support the lifestyle that was making the most money. Yes, absolutely. Because at that point, you had gotten rich, and you didn't expect probably— No, I wasn't rich by then. Well, but you're pretty—whatever it is, whatever your dreams were as a sports writer, you have— I had surpassed—I was trying to surpass— No, you have surpassed them, what, million-fold? Whatever the original dreams were? Yeah, but I hadn't done it at 39.

When we got married, it was happening. The explosion was happening then just because of where we were in the culture, what was going on in my life, television, radio, other media. Mitch Albom once said to me in a car, do you own your Internet rights? It was 1996. And I said to Mitch, what's the Internet? Real conversation. He was always ahead of the game. He was way ahead of us. He had an MBA. He knew what he was doing. I knew what I was doing. So I wasn't rich then. But it was coming.

And so, no, so we were going to do what I wanted to do. It was a conversation. It wasn't a caveman thing. It was, do you want to go out and build 2,000 hours, Ms. Duke Lawyer, or are we going to do this, which is right in front of us? Are we going to do this little thing over here on television that for five half hours a week is going to pay us tons and tons of money? Yeah, and basketball and other stuff, yeah.

Yeah, we literally discussed it. And I said, if I do this, I'm not doing anything else. I'm not going to the grocery store. I'm not taking out the garbage. I'm not doing shit. There's no honey-do list. If I take on all this, we've got to have a 1950s marriage. Do you want to do that? What a romantic. I mean, put it on a Hallmark card. And you know when this happened? This happened actually like a couple of weeks before the honeymoon, before the wedding. Because we had to have the conversation. The Chicago Tribune was saying, come home.

Oh, you were in a bidding war. Oh, you were going to be the big time come home columnist. They would have paid you tons of money. Skip Bayless took the space after I was offered the space. They offered you the job. You turned it down. My hometown paper, the paper I delivered as a kid growing up.

That would have been the dream. The face was already on the side of buses. They had the ad drawn up. I saw it. Hold on. Tell me about this. So I didn't know this. So you had a bidding war for your services between the Washington Post and your hometown newspaper, the newspaper. You dreamed about being the column voice for when you were delivering papers. David Israel. What age were you delivering papers? Mike Royko.

From 11 to college. Okay, so what happened there? Because your path would have been different. You wouldn't have done the Tony... Well, I could have. Jay Mariotti thought of this before anybody. Jay Mariotti, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist, would have been my rival, though we were, as you know, we're all colleagues. But Skip Bayless is your fault? You're the ground zero for the virus? Well, I mean, Skip was doing his deal in Dallas. He wasn't doing it in Chicago. But I...

Mariotti called me weekly and he said, you've got to come home. You've got to take this. He knew about it because he thought, he said, WGN is going to put us on TV. This is a direct quote, and it's not from me. I wasn't smart enough. It's from Jay Mariotti. He said, the next Siskel and Ebert are not going to be at the movies. They're going to be in the press box. How prescient was that? Not only prescient, Jay Mariotti could have been Tony instead of Tony and –

Would have been far worse than Bayless and you and him would have killed each other. We would have. You and Jay Mariani would have murdered each other on television. We actually liked each other a lot. That would have stopped. Wait a minute. You know how important these television relationships, how fraught they are. The fact that you and Tony Kornheiser love one another. We do. The fact that he's among your best friends. Yes, he is.

That would not have happened with Jay Mariotti.

Gene Siskel was a columnist at the Tribune before he was on TV. Roger Ebert was a columnist at the Sun-Times. I grew up reading them. All right, you're not a pioneer. You're a copycat. You're a bogus fraud who steals from others. I'm borrowed. You're Elvis. Borrowed from the best. You're Elvis. Borrowed from the best. So I was going to go to—every day I agonized over it.

I will tell this story. I don't think I don't know if I told it publicly. I get a call back. These are pre-cell phones. I got to call it a landline at home from the GOAT, the real GOAT in the NBA. And he says, why do I have to hear the cocktail party? You're thinking about leaving and coming home to Chicago, right for the Tribune. Suppose you found out about a cocktail party I hadn't told you. I'm like, you never would have told me anyway. I can't believe LeBron made that phone call. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Ah, LeBron was in grade school then. LeBron knew. No, he knew before. So, and I said to him, you know, I told him, I said, okay, here's the dilemma. And we actually talked about it. And I learned how much I didn't know about money. Talking to Jeffrey Jordan. Well, what was the dilemma? What was the dilemma? The Tribune's offer or the Washington Post, Don Graham's offer. And I literally went through it with Michael on the phone.

And he had serious, hard advice, like financial philosophy. Here's what you need to be looking for. And I learned then, of course, because at that point, he's almost at the last dance year. This is the year before the last dance. So he's at the end of his basketball career, playing career. And you realize that guys like him and Charles and I are working on books and stuff, that they know so much more. Even though those guys are four years younger than me, they know so much more about money and finance, business,

than we'd ever know as sports writers. We know a lot more now than we ever thought we'd know. But at the time, Dan, I didn't have an agent. I didn't know anything. So you stay at the Washington Post. And at that time, you and Tony are just you're arguing in the newsroom about TV to a lot. You're on local television, NBC affiliate.

And the chemistry was immediate between you two because he was older. We didn't examine it. It was in the newspaper. Tony would write columns every Monday morning during a particular Redskins season, and he would use me as the foil in his column. And that's how it started. Tony would take the apparent differences between us and just, you know how he is, he would just blow them up. The apparent differences are white and black, you know, black.

New York Jews, South Side, Chicagoan, so Midwest, East Coast, Catholic Jew. And I'm not Catholic, but I went to Catholic school. I'm a product of that educational system. And Tony would take these things and he would juxtapose them. He turned you into a character in print before you... He turned me into a character in print and himself into one.

And he did this, and we had this in Washington when nobody else really knew unless you read the post. And Tony did it brilliantly and generously and hysterically funny, as you know. But are you proud of the sports television show, an enduring sports television show? Where does your pride reside, the highest pride?

on what you've accomplished there is it lasting 20 years is it that you've been able to use a platform in a way that reaches and moves people like what are the greatest you just stated it it's yes 20 years that you gotta god it's gonna be 22 years in october yeah i mean that's ridiculous um i don't know that what we thought when we started about years i don't know that i you know what dan i don't examine stuff like people will say well how was the show today i don't know

I don't know how the show was. Well, I wouldn't say with you that introspection that you stop for introspection to be something that you have time for because you got to get to the next thing. Yeah. And I don't see what examination does. It just slows you down. It just clouds your mind. You don't know. You can have bigger examination of what you do. I guess other people, there are other people charged with the responsibility of doing that. I don't examine everyday PTI. I don't. I've never have.

There's some shows I feel are better than others. There's some moments, but yeah, using the platform, that's how I get, like, I never thought I could transition from writing a column, which my columns had grown way too long. They go, you know, we should have been writing 800 words or so. Some papers less than that. The Washington post tolerated a thousand. I was writing 12 and 1400 word columns sometimes. And, um,

I wish sometimes I was less introspective. I wouldn't stumble. You have always been introspective. You've examined this. You always have. Well, it makes me question. It makes me stop at some of the landmarks and question the worth of what it is that we're doing for a living in one place that I could do it very easily. Right. You came to this revelation late in life, but I've not had kids. Right.

I have been married to my job and making things for a long time. And that stops along the way because I have missed out on some things in life that feel deeper. I can come to question the worth of what I'm doing for a living even as it makes me hugely happy at every turn. Yeah, I never have questioned what I'm doing, the worth of it.

I figure, you know, people have multiple skills. Maybe they can't. I don't have that. I don't either. I got the words. And I've known that since the fifth grade when I was sent to the board, the blackboard to diagram a sentence by Mrs. Richards in fifth grade. And I could do it as well as she could. I knew then, OK, I can I can manipulate the language. I can be literate. Where'd that come from? I don't. My mother, my father didn't finish high school, not anybody read every day.

So there was reading going on around the house. Oh, God, yeah. They had to be reading. They had to be reading. There was. That makes me crazy about Matthew. It makes me crazy about the whole generation. It makes me crazy. Yeah.

It's hard to physically get a book in your hands. I was made sad the other day when the last bookstore on Miami Beach, we've only had one. And then the last one ends up getting, you know, not closed, but it gets smaller and smaller. Yes, yes. You know, yeah, I mean.

So that makes me nuts. But I knew in fifth grade I could do that. That was something that, that was my skill. So I never spent any time examining, oh, should I be doing something else? I can't do what else I'm going to do. I can't do it. What am I going to do in school? But have you examined that you were responsible for one of the great sports television programs of all time? No, no, not a bit. Because I think if you stop to do that, that's too much patting yourself on the back. I know I sound like a basketball coach now.

The older I've gotten, the more I believe in Pat Riley. I believe in that. Yeah, but he's made, he can be a romantic at his core, but he's also, he can lament some things he's missed because he's so obsessive compulsive about the chasing of things that you miss out on some things. I missed a couple of things. I missed Matthew's first book report. It was on Jackie Robinson.

And I was in San Francisco. I was at the NBA finals. So, oh, wait, that would be exactly how many years ago today. And I had tears. I felt bad that I missed that. And I'm going to miss basketball games. I missed his first. I missed a game. I went to a game. I took a day off on a Friday. I went to a game when he was in middle school. And so I guess he was in eighth grade. And I went to a game and they said, did you hear what Matthew did Wednesday? It's too bad you didn't come to Wednesday's game. I said, what do you do Wednesday?

He had seven straight threes Wednesday. I'm like, what? Yeah, I missed that. And you miss a lot. Although now you can stream. What kind of shit is that? Will you quit complaining about old people things? Yes. I'm not streaming anything. I understand your form. You know what I stream? Nothing. Urine. If it's not on. The only stream that you have is your urine stream. You know what's on TV on my TV? If the on button produces it. Why are you so proud of being a grumpy old man?

Why? I am. But you sit next to him. Tony says I'm worse than him. No, you can't be. You cannot be. So does Eric and Matt. You know them. Call Matt Kelleher after this and say, who is grumpier now, today in real time? How can you not stop? They will tell you me. Michael, I'm going to make you force. I'm going to force you to do this for a second. Come on. Come on. You were responsible. Your friendship. I...

That's too much patting on the back. No, just stop for a second. Receive this, please. Receive this from someone. I'll do it because you're making me. A pupil talking to his teacher with gratitude. You two around love.

birthed an economy, you birthed a family of people who work on that show, and all of you have made one of the greatest sports television programs there have ever been, and one of the longest running television programs of any kind there has ever been. I've never thought of it in those terms. I think Eric Rideholm did that, more so than Tony and me. I think of what you just described as the odd couple with

Oscar and Felix. He built it around you. You guys were the you guys. Tony says they put us in the best car. Eric put us in the best car. He built the car. We just drive it. That's accurate. Look, I'm proud to be to have the platform every day and to raise the level of discussion in a in a in a genre where, you know, let's face it, it can wallow on the floor most days.

I'm glad we raised the level of discussion. I will take that much credit. You elevated it. Okay. I'm glad we did. But okay, then we move on. Then we have another day, right? And then life ends and you're kissing your dad in the casket and you've never told him that you loved him and he's never told you because these things aren't to be talked about or shared, even though there's joy in the talking about and the sharing. But it's okay because it worked the way it's supposed to. That toughness worked at that time.

Is that does that work today? No, it doesn't work today. We don't do that today. We don't go without that expression today. But it was good that we did that. I don't when I said to you, I haven't had any hardships. I don't have any regrets. None. You know what else I don't have? I don't have a bucket list. I've done all the shit along the way because because I was making sure I didn't do it. I didn't die before I could do it at 60. So I've done it.

I don't just what do I want? I want I want like an amazing apartment in Chicago, which I intend to get. So there's an ambition that's left. But other than that, it all has to do with Matthew. It has to do with passing it forward. I don't have any bucket list items. I don't need to go anywhere or see anything else. I've done that. There's some places I want to. I'll get them. Need to. No, no. That list is everything's checked off that list.

And Matthew comes to you and wants to go to lunch, asks to go to lunch. How does that one go? We just did it a couple of days ago. It's great. Yeah, let's go. So we do. I mean, I don't know that I examine my father at 15, and I don't know that he can examine me at 15. The reason I ask you the question is because if you've spent so much time articulating what you just did, which is a fear of death,

life ending before you get all of the moments that you want with your son and he's a teenager and he has a generational lack of appreciation that that ends up being the lament of every parent is to be underappreciated because he has he can have no idea at this age not reading books that's right what it is you or your or his grandparents went through so that that's right so that his life could be a very different black life in america yeah

A very different black life in America than the one that you guys had. I am wondering how much time you are getting to savor all of those moments because Mike Wilbon, who had a heart attack at 50 and spent a week of introspection amid the fear before he got right back to work. Yeah.

You don't have to have any regrets to know that there are a whole lot of moments in there worth savoring, that you're allowed to savor maximum gratitude style in a way that makes a life enriching in ways beyond money. But I think savoring is by its nature reflective. And if you do too much of that, you're not looking forward.

And so I and I have trouble letting go of chapters. I'm not good at realizing when the natural chapters are over. Awful at it. And I've realized that, which is too reflective. But no, to do this with him, I got to I got to look forward, pay it forward, look forward. Right. I mean, that's what it takes. So now there's much more of that. There's much more of that happily. And every day, you know, he sends me.

Clips every morning of something. I told him I said this looks like maybe the life of a producer But you don't want to do anything that resembles anything that I do So who knows how I'll get or work or work or does he want to do work? Does he want to play ball, but your work ethic was pretty obviously handed down He's watching your work ethic doesn't get handed down anymore. It's different. These generations are different I don't mean just my son. I watch enough other families and

To see. There's a disconnect. That's the generation gap thing. I go back to that. There wasn't that disconnect between my parents and me. Even though 32, they seemed like friggin' old people back then having me at 32 and 33 years old, my parents. But no, so I don't know that he sees any of that. He's a smart kid because I know how he puts concepts together and how he can...

come to conclusions and see things that I couldn't see at 15 or 18. He knows more about basketball than I knew at 24. He's known that at 14. We can sit and watch a game and he can see stuff. And so maybe I have dreams of him being a scout. I don't know. But all that, we do that. We do that. Luckily, technology allows us to be able to communicate even when I'm not there. So

I haven't, I, I'm never there between, you know what I mean? You know how many, how old he was before I saw him on Christmas day. He was seven before I spent Christmas day with him.

I spent Christmas Day with Magic and Stuart Scott and John Barry. There is stuff you've missed, Wilbon. You might not regret it because you love your work. I don't regret it because I had to do it. Seven threes hurts, though. Seeing your son make that one. I don't know where it would be, whether it's the book report or seven threes. Jesus. Missing your son. Seven threes in a game. And he didn't brag about it. I'm proud that he didn't brag about it.

You didn't run through the door and say, Dad, I made seven threes. Well, you're not bragging about what I'm not asking you to brag about, but the relationship with you and Tony is a unique one. And if I know Tony and where all his uncomfortable repressions lie, my guess is that you two haven't actually dug down on talking to each other very much about how much you love each other. But you love each other. Like, you love each other in a way that is deeply married love each other. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

I guess it is, like you said, obvious. It's probably obvious to the women we are married to joke about it. Carol and Cheryl, they joke about it when they see each other or talk. And it's not all that frequently. But I'm sure Tony's children have talked about it. I've heard Michael and Liz make reference. But, you know, what I don't I'm not just.

I don't come from self-examination. But why wouldn't you tell the old man how you feel about him? He knows. Why do we need to? It might also feel good. Has it not felt... I've never told you any of the things that I'm telling you right now. None of them have come out of my mouth before. No, they haven't. It's great. It's great. And thank you, but I don't need it. Like, I know it. I know it was fun.

The last time the Heat were really great, you know, 11, 12, 13, 14, when I would come and I'd wind up when you would have those great brunches on Sunday and then we'd go to Prime 112 at night. All of that. I know that. I know that. I don't need to be showered with it. I've never had that. Never had that need to be told. That's just, you know, I mean, I'm...

I guess, do I need to live in a time where people say everything? I just think it's fascinating. You are a good profile writer. You are a good column writer. The psychology and the sociology of sports are things that are relentlessly fascinating to you. I'm legitimately surprised as I talk to you to hear you

be that allergic to reminiscing or introspection or reflective. Two of those three I think are dangerous. Reminiscing I'm fine with. That just means I'm old. The other two, they make you soft. They make you... I don't trust them.

What's wrong with being soft? No, everything's wrong with being soft. On the inside, soft? Soft? Like you could be covered in armor. Everything's wrong with being soft. Last night, I said to Matthew, this is okay. This is it. We all love this. It's okay for men to be soft. This is at 1.30 in the morning. Men have to always be hard? Yes. This is at 1.30 in the morning in the hotel here on South Beach. And

So men have to always be honest.

This year, like seven players played 82 games in the NBA. And I called my son. I called him the P word. Oh, no. No. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes, I said you know what you are? No. You've gone too far. No, I have not gone too far. There's not enough of that. I like men who are soft and sensitive and can talk about their feelings. I don't like that kind of introspection. That can't lead to anything good.

Can that lead to... Feelings. Jesus. Feelings. What do you mean? What are you, French? It can't lead to anything good. No. Feelings. Deep, deep loving... I don't trust it. I don't...

And you know what? There may be a difference there culturally in the 10 years. In the 10. In the 10. Yes. Well, but Hispanic men can be like this, too. I mean, I don't think I'm a normal Hispanic man rummaging around in my feelings all the time. I'm putting this on your age. The great number, the Hispanic men I know...

Much more like the black men I know and men of color who have run from this for decades. Yes, you are the exception, but I think it has to do with age more than culture. Maybe I'm wrong. I think it has to do with age. I think that there are many more of my African-American male friends are much more likely to indulge in this who are 50.

Well, and not 60 or older, you know, it's like Sweet Dig Willy. It's like you go, you know, in the Spike Lee movies when there's no sentiment. And it was was it was a Sweet Dig Willy or somebody else who said, you know, boycott the Koreans. I'm a boycott. You know, you better go boycott that barber who cut that shit in your head. It's I love those characterizations because I think they're very real.

I have said before that among men, insults are the language of intimacy. Very good, Dan. However, there is. Very good. Yes, but there is another layer that I wish for you to receive now in closing here on what it is that we're doing because my gratitude for you is profound. Thank you.

My love for you and the environment that you guys have created, that you shared with me, is overwhelming. Thank you again.

Eric, Matt, that everything it is that I've been able to do professionally is only because you guys were putting the lights up in front of me that I could watch and steal liberally from because you guys gave us permission. I receive it. I am honored by it. Not flattered. Honored. Honored. I am a little surprised by it because I don't have that level of self-examination on any level. It's probably bad.

I admit that it's probably a bad thing. So I'm grateful that you feel that way. I am grateful even more so if we have influenced the lives of the people who are just younger than us, that they have taken something from this journey. I am. I don't readily see it or know it or even recognize it. I'll give you that.

But I think that there is something. I think there's nobility in not seeing it and acknowledging it and just forging ahead. Because I think if you stand back and admire your own work, you're fucked up. I love you. Now get the fuck out of Stugatz's chair. Stugatz, your chair. I should leave something bad in it, but I won't do that. Danny, thank you. Thank you, buddy. Appreciate you, man. Love you and appreciate you. Thank you so much.