The Big Suey: The Worst Person To Make This Argument
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Welcome to the Big Sui, presented by DraftKings. Why are you listening to this show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Levitard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only difference seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys? I've done it. And now, here's the marching band to nowhere, Fat Face and the Habitual Liars.

Dominique loves giving notes on the sporting class. It's the angry notes, mostly. You don't like the show? No, I love the show. He just ends up arguing with you through me. Why wouldn't you just argue with me? Because I recognize that you are a character and I will not get drawn in. I'll let myself take a minute to breathe. It's like, with anyone that you care about, you're like, alright, we're not going to have this argument right now. So it's like, alright, David is...

representing a caricature of a monopoly man, David is obviously not as oblivious and heartless as he makes himself seem. So I yell at Pablo for making you seem like you don't actually care about people. You only care about money. You could still call me. No, it would be a waste of time. And I say, hey, David, that's really messed up the way that you pretended like these people don't matter. And you will be like, oh, no, just doing the show, Pablo. I really love people.

I also love that anytime Dominique disagrees with someone, he just accuses them immediately of being a character. Every single time. Every single time we do a show, he's like, that's not really what you think. You can't possibly possibly really think this. I have to. You're a cartoon character. I have to. You're an Asian Marge Simpson.

No, I just like talking to David Sampson and John Skipper about business. I do too. I like listening to it. It's a great show. If you don't listen, you should listen. Do you get upset that he's on the show? Is it that deep? No, no, no, no. I'm upset that he doesn't provide the proper pushback. So, like, I think...

It's somehow you. He's impugning your job as a model. Hold on, let me push back. How dare you? You, David, have taken a position so pro-corporation that it makes John Skipper seem like a socialist. And I'm like, Pablo, what the hell is going on on this show where you have two people who represent the opposition to labor? And I'm in here like, yeah, get him, Skip.

What are we doing? You are now expressing the thing that David Sampson complains to me about, which is that John Skipper gets to be a socialist because he has a southern accent and a drawl. John Skipper gets away with stuff as chairman of this company that brings me to tears. It really does. You feel like a suspended bad boy. I feel like that there is nothing that any of us can do.

to change his character. And what he's done is he's made the character himself.

Why else would you fire people? Yes, please. Yeah, we have a top five. We have a top five we're working on here on the dock. Definitely getting the email from Dan. Mine's going to go to my Addy SPN, so I'm good. I love John. You guys are, this is, John knows. John and I talk about this all the time. I was just saying, I'm in a sporting class. I don't know how the company runs. It's running great. Love it. Everyone's happy. Keep up the good work. Have fun, guys. That's really great. Thanks for that. You got it, buddy.

I'll tell you another thing I fired someone for once. Oh gosh. I think that you would do the same. Okay. I do. I think that what would you do if you had access to an asset that you only had access to because of the job you had and then you use that asset for your benefit? So let me be even more specific. If you had the ability to get tickets. Any level of specific would be good. You have the ability to get tickets to an event.

and you get the tickets at X, and then you sell them at X plus Y. - So how'd you get that job? - It depends. I mean, that factors into my opinion. - How you got the job or what the job is? - How you got the job. - I have no idea. You're working for a baseball team where you get access to tickets as a benefit. - Are you paying for the tickets? - No. - Okay, so you're getting free tickets and scalping them. - Yes.

Are you filling up the stadium? I mean, that would be nice. Get some butts in seats, baby. It's almost impossible that you are finding a way to disagree with this. You really asked David Sampson for advice on how to fill up a stadium. I'm just saying that maybe you shouldn't have fired somebody who was getting butts in seats. How many times did this happen? It was caught.

It was caught in an investigation that we did internally. So this was not like sure there's not a ESPN.com article about this also. So I'm asking, like, is this like a one time, like a big event thing because you had access to the stadium and it was like a desired event? Or was this like someone was claiming tickets every day and then selling them every day? So both. But one of the rules in baseball is every team gets access to playoff tickets, even if your team is not in the playoffs.

So you could get playoff tickets if it's the Dodgers playing the Yankees. The Marlins get tickets to that. You get ticket strips. So, yeah, I mean, that's obviously something that you are made aware of before you take the job. It's something that you shouldn't do. And I don't disagree with...

I think I find you to be a reasonable person. And I think that a lot of us come to our opinions based on the position that we're in and experiences that we've had. And so I wouldn't say that I could never see myself behaving any way, or I could never see myself behaving like someone, or like you, frankly, in situations that you're in, if I had the life experience that you had. But given the experience that I've had and the things that I've seen, the things that I've experienced, when I hear you say certain things, I'm like, ugh.

It's kind of offensive to what I believe in and stand for. So I'm not going to defend someone selling tickets or committing fraud, obviously. But when you put it the way you originally put it, you have access to assets. All of us have access to some assets, and we use them for some personal advantage all the time. I get a computer from work, and I use my work computer to do things all the time. So that particular example is... Are you profiting from that? Yes.

Or is it just things you're Amazon shopping? If you used your work computer to run a separate business, that would be a violation. Let's not talk about it. So the Bat Boy went on Letterman after this happened and said, quote, honestly, they never told me the reason for the suspension. He said, I guess I got in trouble for supposedly gambling, but it was a dare. The money was just an extra part of the dare.

I have no recollection of that. He went on Letterman? That is unbelievable. A week later. Was his name Nick Cirillo? I can't. He was 19 years old. He said he drank the milk in 59 minutes, but then vomited outside the clubhouse. So he did not collect the money. Wait, 59 minutes? You cannot drink a gallon of milk in an hour without vomiting.

I'm not talking about the lemonade thing. I was picturing him chugging it all. That is chugging. I mean, it's like a sad lunch. Do you know how much a gallon? No. I'm talking about a gallon, not the quart. What if it's a gallon of milk, but in ice cream form? Do you guys think you could do that? How much ice cream is a gallon of milk? It's more than a gallon of ice cream.

So I believe if you did the math, let's say it's four gallons of ice cream, you probably could not do that. - It sounds like you think you could eat a gallon of ice cream though. - I've never done it, but there are people who do. I don't think it makes you sick actually. - The Marlins in this story, quote, have declined to comment. Cirillo, a Bat Boy the past five years, said he hopes to return for the next homestand beginning September 16th. Quote, "I really miss working there," Cirillo said. "I hope I can get back there soon," end quote.

Let me ask you something. If you fire someone and they go on David Letterman, are you going to hire them back? Because it seems like Nick Cirillo made the wrong decision there. I mean, you're on Letterman. This was great for him. Where's Chris Cody when you need him? I mean, sounds like you wouldn't have gotten on Letterman if you didn't do the dare. I mean, for sure. And he got 15 minutes. If this were the TikTok era, he would have a million followers right now. He'd have a TikTok shop. He'd be selling milk merch. He hawked two of that milk.

I am so over Hawk 2. I know. Can we talk about that for a second? How bad that reference was? And also how much I dislike that Hawk 2 is being advised by Shaq about celebrity now. That was in the doc. She was down here at Dare Beach Club judging a bikini contest yesterday. She's at 13 minutes and counting.

She has started to finally post on social media and she's releasing these documentary style, when they intro new contestants to The Bachelor, that is what she's doing. She's like, this is where I grew up. Also, this is not what I want to do. I do not want to be Hak Tua forever. And we're like, girl, I'm

I'm sorry, that ship has sailed. This is way too late for that. I mean, she could parlay it. What's she pivoting to? I mean, like Theo Vaughn was on Real World and like Cardi B did. I'm just saying, I'm not saying it's likely, but people do parlay like these momentary opportunities as celebrity. If you have an actual talent. Honey Boo Boo before she became a senator. Do we know her name? No. There we go.

I mean, also, I don't know it. I don't think that matters. I think what matters is does she have an actual talent? So, like, once you get the eyes on her, are you going to find out? The talent that she actually has, I guess, never mind. That would be a whole different line of work that I think she said she doesn't want to get involved in.

You're talking about the hot two with talent. What? I'm talking about the marketing. I'm talking about the fact that she's taking advantage and monetizing this. She hasn't, though. Like, she just, she, like, came out and was like, if you see any merch that's not by me, if you see any social media, I don't have social media. And it's like, girl, this is running out. You don't have talent.

and you've waited too long that I don't think she's gonna be able to capitalize the way she thinks she is. - She waited 12 minutes into her 15 to get started. - I just appreciate that you lapse into the accent every time you do her voice and it's pretty impressive and you pull right out, it's nicely done. - Well, I'm Southern. - Yeah. - I like slip into my accent randomly. Every time I talk to my sister, I sound so redneck after.

I find it fascinating how TikTok has provided all these people with 15 minutes and they and everyone thinks they're all rich and they're not like the girl on the couch. What? What? I don't know that one. Hmm. The one who says that's your I think it's your algorithm. No, she wants a guy in finance who's six foot five. No one's heard of that. Six five. Finance. Blue eyes. She's not rich. That moment passed too. She's trying to take advantage. Need a talent, though. Sing.

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official sleep and wellness partner of the NFL. See store for details. Dan Levitard. Pablo leads all of podcasting in reading while smiling. If you listen to ESPN daily, he sounds like he's having the time of his life. Stugatz. Coming up next on

I'm going to tell you. The Savannah Bananas are changing faces. Savannah Bananas. How do you know I'm smiling? That's how I find my vocal range. Sometimes I just say Savannah Bananas. Savannah Bananas. Yeah. This is the Dan Levatard Show with the Stugats.

It does take us a lot of energy to not talk about the things you've been talking about between segments. We'll save it for later. We'll save it for later because that one is really good. I like that one. That's a really good one. I want to start with something, though, that Dominique declared he did not care at all about, which is the Bronny James story. Because David Sampson managed in four seconds to make him care because David Sampson is exercised. I'm worked up.

about LeBron and I want to understand why. The Los Angeles Lakers are so full of shit and LeBron is the key conductor of that. And it offends me. All they had to do was have JJ Redick tell the truth when he was hired. All LeBron had to do was tell the truth about his involvement in JJ Redick, his involvement in the operation of the team. None of them ever copped to drafting Bronny as though he was some sort of talent.

He's player development case study one, is what J.J. Redick said. Give me a break. Then they gave him $7.9 million guaranteed money for a player that didn't deserve a nickel guaranteed. Then LeBron does a victory lap saying, I took less than the maximum. Look at me. Meanwhile, the James family got more than the maximum, which is a cap violation. But the NBA will never investigate it because they suck at the teat of LeBron and the Lakers. Yeah, I'm worked up. Okay.

So when I say someone is obviously playing a character, how can you pretend like I'm not being honest? That's not a character. So you are, David, David, you don't see the obvious reason why you are the worst person possible to make this argument?

To make an argument that somehow LeBron James' nepotism is the issue here is— So if you listen to nothing personal, I am not against nepotism. I'm a beneficiary of nepotism. But how about admitting it?

Why can't there just be a, why can't JJ Redick acknowledge what the Lakers did for LeBron? You, as someone who ran an organization and has told us a number of times about the many things that you have lied about, and you explained why you had to lie, are pretending as if you don't understand why they can't admit it. What are we doing here, Papa? I am giving my audience a lot of credit, and I am telling them that this is not the example that we would use.

When I would lie to people, it's when there was a possibility that people would buy what I am selling. There is no one buying that Bronny James got $7.9 million because of his ability. I want to explain the specific financial criticism you're making, though, because I don't think our audience necessarily is following as fluently as you are assuming, which is Bronny James got guaranteed money.

Right? Mm-hmm. So how much guaranteed money did he get? $7.9 million over four years. 55th pick in the draft. Second round, right? So guaranteed $7.9. LeBron took a pay cut of some amount. He signed for below the max. I think it was like $3 million. $2.7. Yeah.

which helped the Lakers tremendously, kept them under the second apron. It also enables them to keep a draft pick like in 2032 as draft capital. And it gives them a mid-level exception of 12.9. So there was a reason for it. And I guess you, I would think that you would understand that there are some

business decisions and arrangements that are worked out in a way that are not always completely like we had this conversation earlier. And that's what surprises me is they didn't break any laws, right? So why is this particular and this is where I get upset with you and people like you is it feels like it depends on who is the person who is circumventing the rules in order to get an advantage without actually breaking them, that that determines whether you're going to celebrate it as some crafty business maneuver or

or you're going to say, this is bullshit. Like, that's what offends me about you. So, thank you, and I love the communication. What's crafty, if it had been crafty, then we're not having the conversation. Half the stuff I did never got to Letterman or got to the paper. Except for the time it got to Letterman. Except for the time it got to Letterman. Apparently, at the time, Brad Penny said, it's ridiculous that he's getting six-game suspension for drinking milk when you get suspended ten games for doing steroids. Ha ha!

That's a good point. That is hard to argue with Brad Benny. So I would like to say this. We are currently not on ESPN. I work at ESPN. And when we do first take at ESPN, I understand that we have to kind of in order to, even if you feel like you have been one-upped in an argument and you lost, you have to kind of fight it out because we got to fill up the rest of the segment. It kind of undercuts the show if you're like, hey, yeah, you got me there.

LeBron is better than MJ. We're done. You know? But in this setting, David, we can stop this and move on to one of our many other topics by you just admitting, yeah, Dominique, you're right. What I'm saying is completely unfair and my opinion is completely predicated on who is the one who is circumventing the rules. That's all.

i just want to get that down yeah i want to get it exactly right yeah dominique yeah is it yeah dominique sure not yes you can go yes whatever you're comfortable with but it's like can i can i try to be a david sampson translator

I want to workshop David's spin of why he is criticizing some lies while also being the person who is most famous in our business for acknowledging when he himself lied in a parallel position. David has taken the position in sports media of being the guy who is saying, if you can't fool me with your lie, I'm going to call you out for lying. And I'm the only one who can do that because I have been a giant liar.

Okay, so I think that no one accurate no one here believes that they are being fooled by this lie like we had this conversation in the pre-show where I said when people ask me to do something and I changed my mind and say I don't want to do it I say hey, I don't really feel like it. I'm good whereas most people I think make up a lie and I said I

Why make up the lie? Because the person who is receiving it recognizes that you're lying. And then you guys made the fair point that it's kind of like a courtesy where they know you're lying. I know you're lying, but you care enough about me to make up some foolishness. I think this falls in the same category because on his face, no. And I think a lot of things that like when you would you would argue about sellouts or you would argue that you guys would lie about sellouts, you would argue that right.

We all knew it was bull, but we were like, all right, David, we appreciate you taking a shot at the lie. Like, I think this falls in the same category. And obviously you would never be so terribly offended by a team president or a team owner misleading the public about how many tickets they're selling.

Or how good they think their team is going to be. So when you are going into a full rebuild. It's different though in a salary cap league. It's different in a salary cap league when we're talking about when you're screwing around with salary caps, salary floor. But the way that they did it gave them more room. So it's not as if I don't understand the point that you're making. So you're saying that they're getting some unfair advantage over the other teams. That's what you're upset about. I'm saying they're giving LeBron James more than LeBron James is allowed to.

get. So he's getting over the max and he's getting credit for going under the max. And that's what bothers. So we should point out there's also an argument, a strong argument that suggests that the Lakers cap is actually worse because they got Ronnie. But what David is saying is that LeBron and Ronnie and the Lakers are acting in concert. It's an inside job. And so LeBron James giving money back is not actually giving money back because the family is getting the money.

And so what this raises, Dominique, is I think it's an eternal point that I think you and I have talked about, Dominique, actually, which is like the max salary and salary caps and like LeBron James giving something back. What that says about a sport in which he can't get more because, of course, there are laws keeping his salary.

Full financial potential in check. So by your own words, the NBA has been sucking at LeBron James' teat. They have gotten more value from LeBron James than LeBron James has gotten from them.

Well, they've got more value from LeBron James than they've paid him. We'd agree with that. The fact that the max salary exists is evidence to that. So there are very few examples where a company doesn't get a greater benefit from the action of an employee. So LeBron's been paid $583 million in his career. Has the Lakers gone up in value by more than $583 million? Yes. That's why people want to own teams. Okay, so what it sounds like to me is they have found a way

So if you were running a company, and it had to be a sports team or not, and there was a way that you could compensate someone who's made you billions of dollars, and there was a way that you could go about doing it that was not illegal, and it would only cost you a couple million dollars, you'd obviously do it. And I hate that I find that it seems like I'm in the position where I'm defending the move that the Lakers did, because I recognize that is necid nepotism, and I'm not a proponent of that attitude.

in any way, but I also don't care that much that they're finding a way to give a man who's made them billions of dollars, find a way to give his family seven million more dollars. That to me is odd. And I can't believe that you don't see how

how differently you view these situations depending on the person who is making the decision or who is benefiting from this. Like, I could use countless examples of how teams and owners and leagues circumvent laws and rules in order to benefit a lot more than one dude getting $8 million in that and to be up in arms today over that and not recognize the hypocrisy of that is confusing to me. Related, we still need David Sampson's top five people he's fired.

Proceed. Yeah, Dominique. Okay. I totally agree that in this instance, I have made a mistake with this position. That's all. And I think that we should go back to talking about the topic we were going to talk about before. Hand him dance, baby. Yeah, you want dance? I'm proud of you, man. Good job. See, the good thing about admitting that you are wrong is that now you're right. So great. You're exhausting.

In a good way. It's fun to be with you. Would you like a jelly bean? Nah, I'm good, man. Thank you for saying no. That was nice. But I want to get to the LeBron part of this for a second because I do think... It's a real story because the most famous athlete in basketball, maybe on the planet, Leo Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo notwithstanding...

is figuring out ways in which he can realize the true value of being LeBron James at age 40. And so, the strongest argument for why Bronny was taken by the Lakers and why it's not a big deal is what Dominique was alluding to, which is this is just part of the way that you make LeBron James whole. And so the idea of, is this a hill worth defending and dying on because they could have taken someone else or they may have cut in camp or just been a two-way contract.

I cannot get exercised about this because I live in the realpolitik of like superstar management. And yeah, so there are benefits that come along with being one of the greatest ever to do it. Like there are benefits with coming along with just being rich in America. And one of the benefits is you get to tell your team who to draft at 55. And yes, you could make an argument that this is a spot that this could have been Patty Mills.

Or this is whoever was there like you could argue could make that argument. It's a hard argument to make. But on the just baseline of ethical behavior. Yes, you are right that it is unethical if we accept that Bronny James does not deserve this spot. Yes, I agree. It is unethical to force him in there. However, the other argument you could make is a defense of Bronny and that this is not great for him.

He looks despondent, doesn't he? I have no space for arguing that LeBron James does not deserve this or is finding a way to circumvent the cap and all that stuff. That's the stuff that annoys me. So if you want to talk about this is setting Bronny up for a failure, this is not good for him, they don't need the money, so why are they doing this, putting him in this kind of lose-lose situation? I'm on board with that. I have a harder time getting on board with you saying, well, but the 55th pick, though.

But I can still get on board with that just on basic ethical behavior.

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Don Levitard. He seems like a not nice guy, and he's always been a not nice guy. I don't care for him, and I hope he has the day he deserves. Oh. Oh. Let's see. Stugatz. I hope he has the day he deserves. That's how I get people when they're really mean to me. I'm not like, go F yourself. I'm like, I hope you have the day you deserve. It's a great kind insult. Yes. Yes.

It's beautiful. It's leaving it to the cosmos to sort it out. That's a less Southern bless your heart. This is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugats.

The thing about what LeBron is doing, right, in his wanting of things, in his hunger to get ways to feel like he's being made whole, I think brings us to a point at which you guys actually probably have some philosophical alignment. Why is David grinning slyly while looking at the other side of the glass? Part of the email I also got was to make sure that Lucy and Jess are engaged.

Oh, they are. And I was trying to figure out. I'm finishing my F1 minute. You are finished. Okay, thank you for that. That race, by the way, was unbelievable. I'm not here to talk about race. I thought you were going to make a joke about me being Dominique's nepo baby for the week. That's what I thought you were grinning about. Yours is security blanket. Yours is pacifier. I dig it.

And Lucy was writing something, so I didn't know what she was doing. So that's what I was thinking. I wasn't working. I was doodling. You were doodling? Oh, boy. Can you show us what you were doodling? Are you doing the S's with a bunch of lines that you've been practicing your signature? Recently, I've started junk journaling, which is just you take junk that you mail or coffee slips or just whatever you have. And so I've been into scrapbooking and junk journaling. So I've been doing stickers.

Oh my gosh, that's incredible. And little pictures. It makes me less sad when I look at my daily schedule and stuff. Where it's like, oh, I have work to do. But look, cute stickers. So you just grab any junk that's around? No, so it's like, it can be based off of what you did that day. It's all random stuff.

I don't think that's what she meant. I don't know what you mean. It was a great race, which is why I'm trying to race to finish my F1 minute, because I want to do it this week, and I'm not here tomorrow. It's not even here? It's not even for today? No, it's for today. So I was going to. I'm doing it right now. Can you do it right now? Right now.

I was going to criticize David for like taking the show there, but it ended up in a great spot. But I do think that last time I was here, David, I tried to help you become a better broadcaster and I'm going to continue to do that. So it's been about four times since we started the show where someone made an excellent, like irreverent joke.

And we all like let it sit there and let the people who get it, get it and appreciate it. And you stop the show to point everyone's attention to it, which I think makes the joke less funny. So let's just let's just let it fly. So when we made the sexual jokes, only that applies to. No, it's all. It's all jokes. Yeah, I think treatment. I think so. Yeah, I would. I would. I would. I would refer to your notes. Yeah, Dominique.

I have a question. So are you guys saying basically that the Lakers and everyone is pretending? Because as soon as Bronny got drafted after allegations of don't draft him or he's going to go play in Australia, then we get as soon as he gets drafted, Nike tweets out a fairytale story and the Lakers tweet something out.

Are you guys suggesting that that is all being done, that they're all saying this is not nepotism? Everybody on every network came out on the air to say, you know what? This nepotism claim is unfair, but also completely unrelated. Nepotism has existed in the NBA forever, but this is not nepotism.

This is a different thing. But we're also going to tell you nepotism has existed forever. Go look at who's coaching over here, there, blah, blah, blah. So are you guys suggesting that this is all being done as a ruse so no one can suggest that something illegal is being done? Like they have to go over the top to say, you know what? We actually believe that Bronny deserves this so no one can accuse us.

of kind of skirting the salary cap. There definitely is like a super sweet 16 vibe to this where everybody's sort of like celebrating this kid and they're going way over the top. But I also want to be fair to the story because while we're talking about like, is it reasonable to draft like the truly like the DNA of LeBron James with 55th pick like in a vacuum? I'm like, yeah, let's roll the dice there. Honestly, like I don't even know.

I think it's not unreasonable just on that level alone to be like, let's take a flyer on this kid. Like a horse stud. I think that the... Good bloodlines? Good... I believe Tom Havistrow did the research where it was like over 60%. It was some statistic. I won't butcher it. If...

The sons of NBA players were a college. They'd be the best performing college when it came to NBA performance in the history of the modern NBA. 49% of NBA players are related to an elite athlete, either professional high D1 or an Olympic athlete in some sport. So if you're talking about bloodlines, like, yeah, give me LeBron. Give me LeBron's bloodlines. Truly. I think what David no longer wants, but what he said he wanted at the beginning of this was...

them to acknowledge that this was a farce and this is a circumvention of the salary cap. I think it's impossible to prove because he is, if you look at the players around him, like you look at the college stats average and like he's falls in line with other people that you can point to and those people obviously have more potential than him. I think

I think it's close enough that it's a ridiculous argument to try to wage against someone who you feel like you owe so much to. So, like, that's kind of the issue. Dominique, are you really pouring tears out for LeBron and saying that they owe it to him to draft his son? And his stats aren't comparable to anyone who would get picked.

It's 5.8 points a game as a college freshman. Don't let the facts get in the way of the whole thing. We got to zoom out on the story here, right? Because I think we are so like at the earth's mantle of this story because we're in this business that I do think it's worth

It's worth remembering that when you tell the story of Bronny James to a normal person, they're like, this is the greatest story of all time. So Bronny James is LeBron James' son. Maybe you've heard of him, right? He has that name. He has that pressure. LeBron has flip-flopped between I want my son to be his own person to also being named me. He is very contradictory in that way. All of these things are true. But when Bronny James has his heart stop on the floor as a college freshman...

and he's at USC and has to go to a hospital because he might die, and then he comes back, and of course he's not going to be as good. Maybe he should be better than 5.9 points a game, to Kravitz's argument. But the point is, he's back, and the Lakers draft him. You're like, this is, on paper, way too on-the-nose to be real.

And so I'm just reminding everybody that the idea of Brownie James being bad at basketball, there is some context for why his performance was underwhelming and why also you might think that this from a, again, let's introduce another variable into this, from a marketing perspective, do players ever get drafted because of marketing, David?

No. Do they ever get signed because of marketing? Yes. No. Of course they do. You have to have a ability. You have to have a baseline ability. I think the point is that— We'll do stunts like Adam Greenberg. No, but marketing also plays a—you even told us that you guys signed Ichiro because you thought that you would get a ton of ad revenue money. Yes, but Ichiro had to be able to play. Well, yeah. We're just saying, is it a factor? Yes, it's a factor.

It is not a deciding factor, but it's a factor. Bronny James, it's a great story, but are we saying his cardiac arrest is what made him not a good player? I'm saying that it's a factor as to why he wasn't as good as he would have been. I actually didn't know that. Not stopped. I know he had the cardiac arrest. I didn't realize. How could it not affect? I'm not saying he would have been a first-rounder. Bronny James, from the very beginning, was always overrated as a prospect. When it came to, like, he's LeBron's son, is he going to be the next...

great NBA certainly not certainly not but I don't know is his ceiling now Kravitz is the biggest NBA nerd here I want to sort of indulge his criticism here Ronnie James' ceiling to me seems like a guy who if he really cares about defense right he's like 6'2 hyper athletic yeah

We see guys like that in the league. We do. But if you're talking about like a Davion Mitchell or Drew Holiday, those guys were elite college players. Elite college players, not bench guys on mediocre teams. It's not to say, Brian, you can't do it. It would just be fairly unprecedented because of his college career. I think we're having two conversations and saying –

The point I was making when I said that his stats are comparable to other people is that he is not so bad that you cannot justify drafting him. He's not so bad that you can say this is an obvious case of cap circumvention. Is he actually a real prospect to have a career? I think we all would agree it's probably unlikely because as –

Charlie has yelled at me on my show many a times. He's a 6'1", small forward. Like, he's a small catch-and-shoot guy. That's very bad. And, yeah, that doesn't work in the NBA. Suboptimal. But the point that I was making was you can look at this story and look at the bloodlines and look at all the information that we have and say that we are drafting on potential. And that's what all NBA drafts are. Baseball, you recognize even more so.

It's even more based on potential. So if they were to hold some sort of hearing, it'd be pretty easy to defend this choice without saying we did it because of marketing. Say he is the son of the best player that we've ever seen. He played high-level college basketball. We hope that he'll get better. At this spot, 55th,

We've never had anybody make the team before. We're taking a flyer on somebody here. Why did he get 7.9? That's the hard part. I was about to say, the hard part to justify is the contract. The reason why he got 7.9 is because his daddy has meant so much to this league for the past 20 years. Agreed. Agreed. It sort of hurts the argument a bit. Oh, yeah.

And they could have done it better. They didn't need to give him four years. So, okay, let's do something that I like to do sometimes. Let's be defense attorney for an unpopular person, in this case for the James Laker Industrial Complex.

Would the move have been to just keep him on a two-way deal, to totally minimize the reward so that he begins to have to earn what feels like his spot? I think you treat him the way any drafted player gets treated, except for the fact that he's going to make the opening day roster, assuming LeBron's healthy. He's going to play in the first game LeBron is healthy so they can have the father-son moment. If it's opening day, it's opening day. But after that, I assume LeBron is smart enough to tell J.J. Redick,

and Rob Palenka, hey, after that, I want to play with him in one game for one minute. Then it's we've made history after that. He's got to earn it. They're going to make plenty of money off of this particular marketing gimmick. I would say that this falls into a category that, frankly, most arguments that we have fall into is these small decisions don't matter. It's something like people who did not like this move don't like this move. Whether you give them 7 million or $35,

it's not going to change their mind. I think maybe you give them more ammunition to argue against it, but it's not going to change the way they argue against it. I think it's a mistake to think that the difference between the reaction to LeBron James Jr. being drafted is predicated on how much they paid him. That to me seems absurd. It gives you something else to point to, but I don't think anyone who is offended by the Lakers drafting LeBron James Jr. is really...

would say, you know what, if you would have gave him a two-way contract, I'd have been cool with this, but it's the fact that you gave him the money. Like, that to me feels... I wasn't offended by the fact they drafted him. I thought it was a great marketing move, great, so cool, father-son. It's never happened in my lifetime, never happened again. I can't think of another example where a father-in-law... It has never happened before in basketball. So I'm all in, and ESPN and TNT are going to take full advantage, and I love that. So that's not my issue. I just think the issues surrounding the announcement and then the actions after the draft is what has bothered me.

Something Charlie and I talk about on our show a lot is the tension between sports and entertainment. And I think that this is where it gets really uncomfortable is when you make money by entertaining people and when decisions can only be justified by how many tickets are going to be selling. It makes it real tough. Thankfully, we have the former president of the Marlins to tell us all about how to sell tickets.

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