Reflecting on Athlete Behavior and Public Perception

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It's a podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Lebetard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not gonna 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 that if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys? I've done it. And now here's the marching man to nowhere, fat face, and the habitual liar. This episode of the Day and Levitarge Show is presented by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. Chris uh has a young child and he is at home with her. Uh Roy and Tony and Mike have young children. So can you guys get for me that video that I believe will be traumatizing two children of a certain age, but I'm not familiar enough with My daughter's four fifteen months tomorrow, so she wouldn't give a rat's ass about that. Okay, so uh Roy, would Claire be upset by this video? Olaf from Frozen here, if she is a fan of Frozen, as I imagine most kids are. Uh play this video of Olaf and for the audio audience . I will let you know that it's a robotic Olaf. It seems to be talking and then a heart attack, as far as I could tell. Uh just total . Right. And then all of a sudden the carrot nose falls off in a way that I would believe to be the greatest of the trauma, but the thing that's jarring about it is the instant paralysis because it's moving like a robot, it's moving like it's animated, and then it freezes and it's seizure. It's clear seizure there. And then falls over with the clacking sound, falls on its back, and that is and then its nose falls up. It's met with yells and gasps. I mean, how could it not be? It's horrifying. It's the eyes for me. It's the fact that it's talking, it's moving its arms, it's looking at people, and then suddenly eyes freeze, fall backwards. Hey, frozen. Uh frozen is yes. Olaf, what that's how you would explain it to the child, correct? Uh don't worry, it's just Olaf was frozen. And and you're not gonna say heart attack, seizure, you're not gonna you're not gonna you're gonna say what are you gonna say about the carrot nose? Because for the for those of you do not know frozen and can't see the video, Olaf is just the sort of uh stereotypical snowman uh where he's got a carrot for a nose and that's basically the whole snowman it's a couple of buttons. It the snowman's real easy. In terms of uh c taking care of fun stuff, it it it is uh second only to the stick in terms of the least amount of things that you need in order to play uh with the stick is in the toy hall of fame, I should mention. Uh you can't play that enough. Please keep playing the sound though, because Olaf Olaf falling on his back. I am wrong. Seizing the plastic thug. It's just horrifying. So what age? What age do you have a a a trauma that a child is gonna have nightmares? Because it sounds like Mike and Roy I think it all depends on the kid, Dan. I mean like some kid my kids when they were of that age, they would have laughed. That's how they are. They would have just cackled laughing. But clearly from this video, I can hear someone in the back of it. Like hearing. It's yeah, it's jarring. It really is. I'm unsettled by it. It is unsett ling no matter what. It really is. I uh what is the most unsettling part? Because I'm gonna say it's the carrot being five feet beyond the head after the screaming clacking sound and you know kids being whisked away. Uh the thing that's greatest about it though is the mouth is moving, and then when the seizure strikes, it is clear to all involved that this is now an inanimate object and something is de eply wrong. Like when the mouth stops moving, you notice you notice the seizure in his face. Yeah I think the dismemberment, the loss of the the nose is what really gets me Even if you like my my eight-year-old granddaughter, she looks at that, she realizes that's a robot. She's like, that's not a real snowman. But it's still jarring. It's still unsettling. I would be the one gasping in the background if I were watching that live It does look though when you watch the video like the NFL trainers when someone is concussed, like getting down on one knee right there and just checking in and actually not touching. Okay. Because they're not potentially paralyzed. We we go down, we get on one knee, and we look at them, okay, all right, are they doing okay? What's it one knee? Look, how are we doing? Okay, now you can go in and help. And of course, the second person that comes in grabbing Olaf by the crotch isn't exactly uh wonder I think it would have been funny if they would have started applying CPR. That would have been uh just an added touch that would have been really special. Who knew the nose was so lightly put on the face, right? You figured screwed on, I feel like everyone knows that with a snowman. If the most authentic snowmen do not have mechanical parts, they don't have yellow curry stick the the carrot in there nice and you're right. It should have some roots and some depth. I think that Greg's got the analogy wrong though. It's not Santa holding a bottle of scotch. It's uh it's Santa holding a severed human head. Like it's it's something the dismemberment you speak of that has the carrot nose seven feet in the background as paramedics, one of them dressed as a uh gesture of some sort, uh paramedics uh tend to tend to the snowman. Uh that is quality video. Keep it behind Tony, the rest of the side. I wouldn't say jester, I'd say part of the king's court. Thank you for doing that. Because Jester, you know, implies the little hat and you know bells and whatnot. He's more of like a like a duke in the court of some sort. An earl, yeah. Are we sure he's not one of the princes in Frozen? Could be a princess. I think he might be a prince. Was there a prince in Frozen? Yes. Yeah. Uh not the hero though. There was Sven , who was like the hero who was walking around with the reindeer that would talk. The prince was actually the bad guy, spoiler alert. Prince of Denmark. Isn't that kind of a Disney stereotype that the Prince is always impossibly good looking but also arrogant and uh Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes sometimes they turn this one on its head. Like a sleeping beauty doesn't kisses her, wakes her up. You want to believe in the love story, even though it moves way too quickly. Yeah. And then they pull the rug out from under you and like, oh, that's actually the bad guy the entire time. Also, how could you not be arrogant if your name was literally Prince Charming? It was meant to be . Uh I can't believe that Roy did not tell me. Uh I learned this from a friend of mine who used to uh he used to be someone who ran the Vegas Knights and he was explaining to me uh that he liked the recent hire that the Vegas Knights had made. It ain't the United States of Tortorella! He's back. He's a jerk and people like that as their coach, and I wanted to ask the rest of you why that is because I was making fun of my friend. I was like, you would not want a torturella as your boss. It ain't the United States of Tortorella. Why do you want your players, people you ostensibly, you know, care about, to have this bully in charge? It ain't the United States of Tortorella. I'm curious, Roy's thoughts here, because Bruce Cassidy was a hard ass, right? Usually when the players do not and the Vegas Knights have had a terrible season for them. They're still in the playoff position because they're benefiting from a weak division, but they're not beating bad teams. It seems as though Cassidy's actually Yeah, they tuned them out last year and now this is the final straw. It's just interesting them doing it with eight games left. Right. But usually when you replace the hard ass, you go players coach. You don't go from hard ass to harder ass Can you guys find for me why it is that it's a hard ass, why someone who we all know what you're saying there, but I'm not totally sure why we all know what it is that you're saying. Damn, because we all love a soft ass. Somebody who's a hard ass uh Tar Tortorella in hockey circles, where is he? How close is he to the top of the list on guy you bring in if you want to just kick your team's ass? Somebody that nobody 's gonna like, and maybe he motivates them, maybe he doesn't. This look man, the Dallas Stars did this with Hitchcock. There are any number of teams that love doing this with the guy who's unreasonable, but Tordorell is the top of the list, is he not? Yeah, uh the guy that he replaced is actually kind of up there. Bar uby is an another guy, which that didn't work out for the Leafs at all. But yeah, there are a couple of these old school hard asses. That y it works if if you have an undisciplined team and you come in. Uh coach you guys, any of you , that coming in tomorrow to straighten out our outfit is somebody who's got a little bit of military sergeant in him and is known throughout the industry as a hard ass. Nobody here would want it, correct? There's not a person here who would want it for themselves, no matter how sloppy and disorganized we are, who would want to know that the boss coming in is a hard ass. Nobody's gonna say, oh, I think the company needs it. I think we need it. This is team number five for John Totorella since he left Tampa in twenty thirteen. Dan , I'm gonna disagree, man, because there are a lot of athletes that actually respond a lot better to a hard ass. Draymond Green is a great example. Steve Kerr, when he first started coaching, he's like, I don't have to get through to the guy, he called Tom Mizzo. Tom Mizzo says, Oh, he just wants you to cuss him out. That's how he wants you to coach him. And so whenever we see Steve Kerr and Draymond Green nose to nose yelling at each other, yelling and shouting us up, a lot of people were like, Oh, trouble in paradise. Like, no, that's Steve Kerr just adjusting his lead ership style to apply to a guy who responds best to that kind of coaching. It ain't the United States of Tortorella. I think in general, though, you want the medium ass . You know, you don't want the drill sergeant over here, and you don't want the soft player's coach over here. You want the guy who kind of combines both elements, the medium ass. I just invented that phrase. I I like that phrase a lot, Greg. I think Paul Maurice kind of ventures into medium ass territory. think he does too. I think that's a great analogy. In professional football, who's a medium ass? Okay, because we were talking about this the other day when it came to I don't even remember what we were talking about, players coach. Oh, that we were talking about somebody ripping McDaniel, Raheem Mostert ripping McDaniel because he was saying he was too much of a players coach. Uh Andy Reed, to me, I think he is soft ass. I don't think soft ass medium ass. Soft ass players coach. I think the perfect medium ass in the NFL is Mike Verable because he comes from that Belichick tree. You don't're hard ass, I think his players adore him, because he's not too far removed from playing, too. So he knows what it's like. Tomlin's a hard ass, and his players adore him. You can be true. Amin's point is the correct one in that some of these environments are vastly different than our environment. A creative environment can be sensitive, can be fragile. Uh players, some players do appreciate, and when they get onto the real world, they don't like that the real world is less honest than the locker room. They don't like that people won't just criticize them because you're not growing and learning unless you're having things around you that prod you into a better place. But I do think that that can be done with kid gloves as much as with, you know, iron fists. Creatives hate the hard ass. It's why anytime there's a hard ass involved in the talk show circuit, someone on the staff runs the vanity fair and can't wait to complain and air all the dirty laundry. Hey Roy buddy. Ew. You know that energy shift when the game gets good and everybody all together in unison knows to stand up on their feet. Oh absolutely, Mike. Yeah, you've been at many big time sporting events. You know that moment quite well. That's what it's like when you take your first sip of Cuervo. Oh delicious. It's the signal that says, we're not checking the time anymore, pal. Mm-hmm. It's when small talk turns into stories. Mm-hmm. Quervo, man. It's at high five a random stranger effect. That's right. The game is popping. You're hugging people you never met before. That's the kind of energy that Cuervo brings. It's so smooth, so delicious. That's the Quervo effect. Keep it, Quervo . What are you reaching for? If you're a smoker or dipper, you could be reaching for so much more with Zinn Nicotine Pouches. When you reach for Zinn, you're reaching for 10 satisfying varieties and two strengths for a smoke-free and spit-free experience that lets you lean in for chances to break free from your routine and a unique nationwide community. Whatever you're reaching for, reach for it with America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Find yours in wherever nicotine products are sold near you Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Folks, listen up. DraftKings Sportsbook, the number one sports book for live betting, is built for March. The tournament is unpredictable, but the rewards are guaranteed. And DraftKings is delivering some of the most generous rewards in the market. New to DraftKings, bet just $5 and get $200 in bonus bets instantly. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now and use code Dan. That's code Dan to turn five bucks into two hundred in bonus bets instantly in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MYRESET. New York, call 877-8 Hope and Y or text Hope and Y. Connecticut call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org on behalf of Boot Hill Casino in Kansas. Wager tax pass-through may apply in Illinois. 21 and over in most states, void in Ontario. Restrictions apply. Bonus bets expire seven days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see sportsbook dot draftkings.com slash promos. Limited time offer. The Libertard Quiet Man. Yes. You know I'm a married man. I don't cheat on my wife despite that gratuitous line in back in my year out of Stu Gats. I wish you were here, my wife. I really miss her. No, I don't. That's the thing about my being married. You know, you're not allowed to say I don't miss my wife. I've been gone two days. I haven't gone been long enough to miss my wife. I'm sorry. I call her. I'm phone with her for 30 seconds. You know, what am I saying? Hello. All right. All right. We'll see ya. All right. And then, you know, I'm gonna see her in two days. I was jumping, Charlie. Good. DC C Dan Lebatar show with the Stu Gats . Media match, Sean McVay. Uh you think I think he's more players coach as as well. Like I I think there is a version of coach in these sports who has realized that generationally there have to be multiple ways to reach a 20-year-old. Not everyone is Draymond Green. You have to do it individu al to individual. But I do think someone like McVay would uh wouldn't puff out his chest about I'm leader, I'm in charge. He would view himself as an ally. My job here, did you guys see what happened with the management of the 49ers as it relates to IUK where Shanahan's like and John Lynch are both like that's it? He's played his final game here, and the owner wanders over. He's like, hold on a second. Talented players are hard to get, he might still have some value, and now he's publicly saying something different. The coach has to be an ally to some of these guys, and Shanahan is fed up because he's like I, can't reach this guy. If I physically can't reach him. I can't get him on the phone to find out if he's gonna show up for work. And that is something that I can't trust in my environment. But the owner doesn't have to deal with that. The owner says, my job is just to create a place where I'm putting a bunch of good football players in a room, and then we create the organization that serves those football players so that they become better football players. To me, I mean this or whole organization is dying for like a Pablo treatment. I I I'm so fascinated by the San Francisco 49ers and have been for years because I I uh dating back to his coordinator days when he was in Cleveland, it seemed like he was the only guy that knew what he was doing over there. Kyle Shanahan to me is like cream of the crop. But they have all these injuries. There's this electrical substation. The Iuke thing is weird. They seem to have great leadership with John Lynch. They're always right there, but they can't win the big one. They have like guys that George Kittle, Hall of Famer, Fred Warner, Hall of Famer, and they're trying to do this with Mr. Irrelevant at quarterback. It's a fascinating thing. Trey Williams Hall of Famer. McCaffrey Hall of Famer. Yeah, I mean exciting whites all around the field. It's a it's a fascinating team. Put it on the poll at Lebetard show. Uh do the San Francisco forty niners lead the league in exciting whites. Uh the Brandon Ayuk situation is an un it's a really unusual one. A guy gets his guaranteed money and then just stops showing up and become such a problem that they take his guaranteed money, which is not something or they're trying to take his guaranteed money. You're not allowed to take the guaranteed money unless someone's behavior is egregious. You wouldn't even you wouldn't even think to do that because of the harm it would bring you with future guaranteed contracts because you're now the organization that takes back guaranteed money. I uh to Mike's point about wanting to know uh the ins and outs of that organization , I wish one of these insiders would explain to us exactly what the breaking points have been there that make Brandon Ayuk think it's okay just stop showing up for anything at work after you've gotten your guaranteed uh money. Uh the the jobs let let's uh transition here uh to jaden ivey because I want to talk about how uh rare it is to get and have these jobs and what you have to do to lose them. Because at this point the Chicago Bulls could put anybody in a uniform. So going into free agency as Jaden Ivey is , sitting on the bench, getting waived for uh an assortment of commentary, uh, some of it anti- gay, but all of it filed under uh religious beliefs and religious but beliefs that are more ardent than they were in his previous uh previous stops, where the reporting is that many Bulls players and management were getting tired of his sermonizing and preaching? But while he's away from the team for conduct detrimental to the team, he's doing an assortment of live streams where he's got he's feeling a very strong need to tell everybody not only about his religion, not his just his depression, not just his love of apple pie, not just his opinions on abortion, but specific ally anti-gay commentary filed under the Bible and uh what he called unrighteousness. And he's saying, what conduct did I do that's detrimental to the te am. Well, he no this is what he's saying though. He's like, how did I how did I harm the team by having a religious conviction? Now, I we can in this particular group of people, because of what it is Jade Nivy. But there are many people in America and a divided America right now, divided along religious lines, who would say that Jade Nivey's conduct isn't detrimental to the team, that he's being persecuted because of his religious beliefs. That's what they will say. That is the framing of whoever it is that's going to now support Jade Nyvey. Well a number of people like he can become a figure now from sports who was too hot for sports because he's too busy telling the truth and sports can't handle it within uh the silos that people are now politically, religiously, based on gender, based on sexuality. Uh this is a move that hards harms him with the Chicago Bulls, but doesn't necessarily harm him with his base. Uh what base? Yeah. What base? People who believe that homosexuality is wrong because it because in the Bible you believe what it is that you believe about sexuality and immoralities. He's calling it unrighteousness. There are many people who believe this. Dan, many people who believe this. I guarantee almost all of them have never heard of Jaden Ivy. And this is alright guys, this is when we gotta put on our big boy pants because I'm gonna be a little too blunt and direct here. He's not good enough to have a controversial opinion of any sort in any direction. So you say this has got him out of out of the favor of the Chicago Bulls. Buddy, he's done with the NBA forever. You're not good enough to have that kind of a scandal uh in terms of things that you're saying again in any direction, and still come back to work the next day like George Costanza saying I didn't know there was anything wrong with that. Yeah, public support of his beliefs is not a a smart business model for any sports franchise in in America, even in these divided times. But I want to uh endorse what Amin was just saying. Top five pick, and this is not a small sample, he's been in the league now five or six years, I think. Top five pick hasn't quite panned out, hasn't quite panned out plus those beliefs. This is a business decision. If he had panned out as a top five pick and Yes. They would allow him to do the apology tour. They would not have waged them. If he were good, there would be a different set of rules. Uh this would actually be a more interesting conversation if a team was being tested along its ethical lines by somebody who was good enough to cross over into this barrier and keep their job. The easiest move for the Bulls is get out of here. It does not matter who's in our uniforms. We don't need this in our uniform. But when you say he's not good enough, neither's Enus Cantor, and he turned it into a post basketball career uh waving around that he was blackballed by the league and too honest for the league. Enus Cantor, first of all, had compared to this kid a Hall of Fame career. That's like night and day, as far as someone who was accomplished on a basketball court. Enos Cantor also had an on-ramp because of real persecution that his family was going through back in Turkey. The problem is Enos Cantor was, in my estimation, a guy who liked to hear the crowd cheer. And so what he chased was the cheers. So as he heard right wing kind of conservative media say this guy's telling how it is, he's like, what else do they like to talk about? Chi China and then like and LeBron's afraid of China. And like, yeah like and then and and also like and he just kind of was chasing cheers again, Enus Cantor, another example of it. Enus Cantor freedom. Sorry, Enus Cantor and it should be noted been quiet lately to a mean's point the the the thing that he also realizes at some point this is the the opportunity cost that every organization makes how good is he? Meaning , can I get someone who maybe not be quite as good, but maybe a little bit less as good, but also doesn't come with any of the bullshit uh antics, then I'll go with that option. This is a place that people end up all the time. So give me the tipping point. Give me the guy who's worth this. Where's the line on argument where because this always becomes the talking point, always in the face of these conversations. Oh, they wouldn't have done that to guy who was better, or they or they would have punished more severely guy who was worse. We can all agree the Chicago Bulls are not trying. He's about to become a free agent. Like this is disastrous. As a business move? Disastrous. Because Amin just said he talked himself out of the league. He was objecting to Pride Knights, but this is like, he'd fit right in in hocke y. He not not saying that. He he not Dan. If he were the an equivalent level talent as he is in the NBA over in hockey and had that Instagram live, he'd be wave too. There's not a sport in America where this dude at his talent level would still be on a roster today. Not a sport. I'm I'm not sure that what you're saying is so about a top five pick only because , okay , in hockey, I've seen a whole lot of objecting to Pride Knight, and uh I do under stand how it is that people want their hatreds or their beliefs either expressed their way at sporting events or not at all at sporting events because they just don't want this with their sports. I saw ESPN was being celebrated by Shitstein's uh coverage because they've run all of the woke journalists out of ESPN. They have they've successfully done that. They have qu ietly done that, and it's at least in part because their focus groups show that in protection of the business, it is uh wiser to get everybody the hell away from anything that resembles social commentary and just throw all the money at live rights and don't have any opinions that are not sports opinions anywhere on your sports network. That side has won and it has pushed over the worldwide leader so that the worldwide leader is now embracing the climate of the moment by avoiding all of this stuff. Jeremy, where do I have it wrong on hockey in saying that uh hockey is permeated with a whole lot of people mumbling under their breath about feeling like some of this stuff shouldn't be near the ice. Because there is a difference between feeling like you are being forced to celebrate the LGBTQ community when that doesn't line up with your beliefs and publicly dem onizing that group, railing against them, publicly calling them s sinners and and I believe there was an another term in there that was unrighteous. That is a different thing than saying, hey, I don't want to wear the rainbow uniform. Thoseose are are th two different things and it's important to draw those distinctions. To severe eczema . After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking Epclis achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. 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Number one, what Jeremy is saying is articulating is the NHL players or the other athletes who have spoken out, it's usually in a kind of a measured tone. Hey, I don't this doesn't represent my beliefs, whatever. This dude was ranting and raving. By the way, beyond that, he also said Catholicism is a fake religion. He also said Steph Curry is a fake Christian. Oh, just because he wrote Philippians, whatever, whatever, doesn't mean he's uh righteous in the eyes of God. And like he is just like a Looney Tunes character talking. These are not the words of a rational human being, regardless of how hateful his speech is or isn't. Uh and this has been percolating for quite some time. The reports that he's basically harassing teammates with his opinions, being very preachy, not worth it. I do want to clean up some of the hockey stuff 'cause I don't I I don't think it's fair to even mention them because what Jeremy says it's right is absolutely right. You don't have anyone that outspoken really in hockey the way that Ivy was. And also, you don't have the kind of support in the NBA that you've seen from stars like Connor McDavid and Matthew Kachuk when it comes to these Pride Nights and Rainbow Tape and whatnot. We had the conversation a couple of days ago about Puka Nakua and his mental health and a and uh Antonio Brown and like what that sport does to people's brains. And obviously in basketball, we're not having that same conversation because it's not the same physicality level. But when I see what Jaden Ivy does on his Instagram live, like it takes me back for a second. I'm like, man, is it is it is it an episode that he's having that he's using stuff that he's learned and stuff that he's converted to Christianity? And now that's kind of blending the two worlds together in the m in the midst of it of an episode. That's something that I look at and I'm like, I see people on the street, homeless people ranting and raving in the stre And you're not taking liberties because uh Ivy 's been um upfront about his battles with depression and his own mental strife. There's a huge difference between having a belief that is unpopular and getting on a soapbox and espousing that belief at the expense of your team's reputation. And that's where Jaden Iverossy ced the line. If he's a particularly religious person who hides behind the shield of his religion to be anti-gay , that's his belief and he's entitled to it. But you don't have to espouse it. Let me let me stop everyone here for just a second because what Tony said about an episode, I will tell you that this uh I've had all my thinking on this changed almost entirely by the experience that I had with my brother at the end, uh, where uh he had his the cancer had gotten to his brain and there were things happening with episodes that I simply didn't recognize. Okay ? Uh I had to go in on behalf of our family years before things really escal ated, okay? Because everyone asked me to go in and say, Dan, please go talk to your brother and tell him that no one can say anything to him, that there's nothing that can be said to him that's not met with an objection. I did that and my brother didn't talk to me for more than a year. What Tony is saying about episodes and when a guy is going crazy, it's easy to do with Charlie Sheen and Kanye. And some people are, as we mentioned with Puka, some people are just assholes. So it can't be filed under. Well, what's going on over here? Is he actually going a little bit crazy? But when you mention an episode, I cannot tell you how ill-equipped sports is to deal with any of this. They only have to deal with it if the player's good enough to force you to deal with it. But I don't know what happened with John Morant. And when behavior is so crazy , like sometimes it's Antonio Brown, and you're like, okay, I'm I'm comfortable doing this, but these are just the incidents that spill in the public. In the case of Ivy, this is what he's chosen to share with us, but he believes he's being wronged here. L likeike, be clear on this. He believes he's right and no one can tell him anything because he thinks he's talking to God about it. So Dan, this kind of reminds me a little bit of the conversation we had yesterday about Tiger Woods and the idea of expectation and failing to meet expectation and what that can do to someone who's centered their entire identity around being something amazing. In Tiger Woods case, you said you don't think number two is good enough. He said, Probably not. He probably thinks dad wanted me to be number one and I failed. And some of that stuff manifests in how he handles things. Again, we're not making excuses for any kind of behavior. We're just trying to explain it. So same thing with Jane Ivey. If you were a top five pick, like Greg said, and yet didn't pan out,. Like that's gotta be some real mind F that's happening upstairs. And then you you you you partner that breaking of your brain with whatever kind of discovery of religion, which a lot of people turn to in times of darkness. And then it depends on who is introducing you to religion because those people will emphasize certain things. Like it could have fallen with the right crowd, so to speak and it was about loving your one another and and all this stuff. Instead he probably fell with someone who was like, and look at the way they walk in this league, uh sinning left and right and and they've got their pride knights and and this man over here, Steph Craig' suppsosed to be a man of God, but he's cussing more than anybody else. Like all of that stuff is a weak brain that has been infiltrated with whatever manipulative message has come to him. It's not unlike, and I know this is gonna make people go crazy. But when you talk about what turns people in certain parts of the world into , you know, like people, suicide bombers or whatever, it's that, it's like a broken brain, a broken like uh psyche, and then the person that you turn to for guidance, for help, for support, for direction, is someone who does not have a positive message. And that influence can turn someone who otherwise would be a regular person or a down the road person into a kind of an extremist. I wasn't uh terribly comfortable, even though I understand it with some of the pop psychology we were doing on Tiger Woods when we talk about some of this stuff that isn't excusing behavior but is attempting to explain the behavior. Uh the reason that I have never tried cocaine is because I know where it is I'm addictive and I am compulsive and I do not want to enter into one choice I make that then affects all other choices after that because now I don't have control over something . Do you believe in the case of Tiger Woods, giving the specifics of what it is that he had to sculpt to be great, right? The loneliness of golf, the meticulous attention to detail, wouldn't you think that that is someone who's sort of uh predisposed to obsessive, compuls ive patterning? We are all a product of our learning, our environments, our experiences, our influences, all of this stuff. Would you not think that a personality type that had to do whatever Tiger Woods had to do in order to be great would be someone who would be predisposed to being at the very least obsessive compulsive? Yes, especially knowing everything we now know about his father and their relationship. Tiger Woods, it this is worth remembering. Tiger Woods for about a five or seven year period was so good that you could bet the field or Tiger Woods and a lot of people would bet Tiger Woods over the field that he was gonna win that tournament. And he did more than than just win and win and win and win majors. He revolutionized the sport . But that was what was expected by his father. That was what was expected. That was the w and and and so he wasn't . Ordained, prophesized by his father. The first major article on Tiger Woods was how his father uh was going to turn him into a god. The first thing written when he was a teenager, and then my Yeah, and and so falling just short of Jack Nicholas on the all-time major table was not good enough for Tiger. And it still isn't. And now he's turned fifty and he 's got demons around. So so what do you think the audience is feeling as we talk about this? Is it for the wrongdoing, right? For the crowd that says, hey, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, show me what a man looks like, and man up. Don't talk to me about weaknesses of a fragile brain uh damaged by manic episodes. Don't talk to me about uh the weaknesses of addiction. Uh we political sphere and and you're just consumed by the same stuff that you're always consumed by in this weird culture war. It's just weird. The sports are the ultimate meritocracy, right? Kaepernick is invoked so often because Kaepernick made it to a Super Bowl and it he was very clearly black balled. Not ever ybody is under a Colin Kaepernick light plight. Enos Cantor Freedom wasn't, and certainly this bust of a draft pick isn't. For all the DEI projection, it's exactly that projection. Because this guy's flatly just not good enough to be in the league on his own merit. And when you add the fact that he's making everybody in the office uncomfortable and is having really unpredictable episodes on social media and in the workplace, this is an easy decision. Nobody wants to like doesn't matter even if I agree with you on your religious takes, nobody likes that guy. Nobody likes that guy. It's like, oh, Jesus Christ. And so, you know, one of the things like they said contract detrimental Did you do that on purpose? Uh Jesus Christ. Contract detrimental to the team. It's like, oh, ask my teammates. My teammates all love me or whatever. I'm like, I mean, they can like you, but they can also be sick and tired of you coming around and trying to talk this stuff over and over. To be fair, he did break his leg last year and has been rehabbing and trying to get back to it. So like that that points to a physical situation where Aaron Powell I mean saying that a top five pick who's been in the league five years, which would put him at roughly his prime, right? He's not he's he's not an old player. He's not thirty yet, correct? Twenty-four, twenty-three So but um Amin's saying this is a death sentence. Amin is saying this is not this will not return to basketball. That he just that right before heading into free agency , he just sealed his fate as he will never work in the league again. I think there's a coup a couple of things there. Number one is like I said, basketball wise was it had not shown enough to be good enough. He had a a good year or so in Detroit. He's been a very injury prone player in his career. Number two, again, this is some wild over-the-board stuff. Like I said, we're focusing on the anti-LGBTQ, but again, he called out Steph Curry, he called out LeBron James, he called out the religion of Catholicism. Like he's sprayed across a wide map of all different targets and groups of people who are going to be pretty upset. Number three, Dan, he d like we've all pointed out, he does not seem to be of sound mind. Like and that's probably should be number one. It's like I can't bring someone into my locker room who it does not have it all there. Like there's a level of kind of like wild card we'll deal with. And then there's a point where it's like, no, this guy can do anything. This guy, when you whenever you have someone who's invoking God like that in the way and saying that his mission is to spread and all that stuff, it's like, yo, man, I'll tell you, the next thing that comes up usually is violence. Because when people don't want to come along with you on that ride, it's like, hey, I'm gonna force you on that ride with me. You can't trust a guy like that. And so for that reason, he won't play here. I don't even know if he'll play. Mike made a joke about him, maybe playing in Europe. I don't know if he'll play there. He'is mom is also the coach at Notre Dame. Yeah like like that part is is what's crazy about this but the anti-Catholic takes her stranger now. That's what I'm saying. Like this is this is someone who is clearly mentally ill and using uh Christianity as a muse for his mentally ill ramblings because you have someone here who is using the Bible in a way it's not intended to be used. Like I I'm a Jewish person, but from what I understand about Christianity, there's a lot more time spent on on poverty and greed and things like that than the the bare mentions of homosexuality within the Bible. And yes, some people are gonna use that as a means to then go ahead and be homophobic, but it's really just punching down on a marginalized people. It it's it's cowardly to do so, and of course, to be able to see it all uh happen through the musings of of someone who is mentally ill. It's no different than someone who grasps onto QAnon or anything else. It's using something as a mask for your mentally ill ramblings. Okay, but uh while he suffers from depression, uh you do understand, right? Why we get no closer to a bridge on this stuff when he's saying these are my religious beliefs, this is who I am, uh this is uh my relationship with God, this is how I think about gay people and you dismiss that which he thinks is reasonable as mentally ill. Right. But that's because that is like flatly not the tenant of the religion on its own. Like people who use Christianity or Judaism or Islam or anything to rail against a certain group of people are not following the tenets of said religion. Right, but that doesn't make them necessarily mentally ill. I'm willing to ex