Coach Gottlieb explains what the NFL schedule release says about the NFL’s overall dominance across the pro sports landscape, looks back on the 2nd anniversary of his hire as UWGB Men’s Basketball Head Coach, and goes deep into how he’s scheduling the 2026-27 season.
Finally, he reacts to LeBron James’ petty game ball controversy, and why it could foreshadow problems for his final season.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
What up? Welcome in. This is the Doug Gottlieb Show,
and it's steadrooly sweet here in well in America, really
not just in Green Bay America. But I was the
power of the NFL is really remarkable. And I've said
this on national radio for the twenty years that I've
(00:27):
done it, or I think I did it for more
than that, but that's okay. The point is I've said
this before, but not necessarily to this audience, which is,
you know, there was a chunk of time there where
people thought that Roger Goodell should be fired, right, and
they would find something they didn't like, and you're out
(00:47):
of your mind, really, And I don't know how many
of the decisions he makes or it's the people he
empowers to make the decisions. But here's how big the
NFL has gotten under Roger Goodell. There were no games
played last night, right. No one wants to put their
games against NFL games. That's just dumb. And the NFL
has said like, oh Christmas, Oh the NBA, you like Christmas,
(01:10):
We're going to take that. And then last night it
was completed with Bears Packers on Christmas. Come moment, it's
a rap. You're gonna watch the Lakers and Bulls. Are
you gonna watch are you gonna watch the Bears and
the Packers? But I want you to think about this.
Last night there were no games played. Some of the
(01:30):
schedule had been leaked. Most of the schedule had been
leaked by the time that the schedule actually came out. Right,
So if you just go on social media, you type
in your favorite team, you get the schedule out. If
you want to get every team, you could do that
and print them all out, have them all. You don't
even need to watch TV. And yet the NBA is like,
we're good, We're not going against that. No, thanks, nope, brilliant.
(01:53):
I remember before Goodell, they did play some internationally, but
now they're playing in Australia, they're playing in South America.
They're playing and here's what those do. You're like, what
does that do? Like how many people? There's some ancillary
benefits considering I'm sure they get a bunch of money
to send teams down there. Right, let's just and those
(02:14):
are all sponsored and whatever the reality to it is.
Right now, the NFL, okay, they have completely changed the
model with TV partnership. It used to be about exclusivity.
That's what you paid for. You paid for exclusivity. We
are the home of the NFL, and we're only gonna
have it on two networks, maybe three. Now you're on ABC, ESPN,
(02:37):
you're on CBS, you're at NBC, you're on Fox, you're
on Amazon, you're on Netflix. Did I miss anything? I
feel like I missed something. There's also a game that's
on Nickelodeon and oh yeah, by the way, all these
are available on YouTube as well. And the point is
there's not anywhere you can go that you can't you're
not gonna watch the NFL and what those kind of
(03:01):
odd start times do, especially when you go and play
in Europe, You're like those games are I wake up
and my favorite team's playing. If you're I've been a
West Coast guy for what was it said, nine in
the last eleven years before the last two years here
in Green Bay, so you'll you'll miss games. You'll like,
wake up, like what happened? That game's over? How is
(03:23):
that over? I don't even I didn't set my fantasy team.
I'm screwed up by But it's a different window for
you to sell to TV if you keep stacking them everything, well,
I mean, and we keep paying for Sunday ticket. I
pay for Sunday ticket because I want to see the Packers.
I want to see the Chargers, and I don't care
where they play, and I don't want to be blacked out,
(03:43):
and I want to watch it, and I want to
be watching wherever I am. With my YouTube TV on
the with the Red Zone channel, I can literally watch
it on my phone wherever I am. But the fact
is that a lot of those games aren't on those
anymore on Red Zone because we have so many other
start times and start days as the season goes on.
It's brilliant because the numbers keep rising in terms of viewership,
(04:05):
so it's not like the odd start times hurt their numbers.
And all it is is you can increase how much
you charge to these TV entities because now you're running unopposed. Yes,
it's Sunday morning at I don't know, nine am on
the East Coast, it's a really early start time, but
there's no other NFL game on, so there's no competition.
(04:27):
It's a standalone game. Even in the midst of all
the games you have at one and at four, and
then the Sunday night football game, which is I think
it's seven thirty or eight fifteen or something East Coast time. Anyway,
the whole thing is brilliant. Even go back to Chargers
and Rams in LA. It's not a perfect fit. It's
(04:48):
slowly but surely people are going to forget about how
murky it was. It was. The Raiders do fit Vegas.
They fit LA probably better. But the only team that
really fit in Vegas was the Raiders. So if you
really want to know what happened there, there was a
concussion lawsuit and the NFL knew they were going to
(05:08):
have to settle or lose, and it would be in
the neighborhood. They thought of two billion dollars, Well, they
settled for like, I don't even think it was a billion,
which you know, it's a lot of money, right, But
why did they expand suddenly the Los Angeles, Well, the
franchise fees were seven hundred and fifty million dollars apiece.
(05:28):
Those franchise fees went directly to pay for the lawsuit.
Roger Goodell works for the owners. It don't work for
you, you don't work for me, don't work for the players,
work for the owners. So he came up with a way.
He came up with a way to pay off a
two billion dollar lawsuit that those owners were going to
have to pay without them ever having to go in
and pocket. Do you know how rich guys are so cheap?
(05:53):
That's how they got rich. That's how they got rich.
And when you tell a multi multi, multi billionaire that
owns a billion dollar franchise that you don't make a
ton of money on a yearly basis, Listen, we got
a two billion dollar bill, but I'm going to take
care of it. Don't worry about it. You'll pay nothing,
and then I'm go'll make you more and more money.
(06:14):
And all we got to do is send you once
every couple of years to Melbourne, to Germany, to South America,
to Mexico to wherever. Rodger Goodell is going to go
down as the greatest commissioner in the history of sports,
Yet social media will tell you that he's an idiot,
doesn't know what he's doing, should be fired or whatever. Yeah,
it was weird to have the COVID draft in his basement,
(06:37):
although honestly I kind of liked that draft. THO was
kind of cool and the bro hugs are awkward on
Draft day, even going back to when I was at
Lambeau last year. But that's not what he's here for.
He's here to make money to grow the league. And
if you're like me, you watched NFL Network or ESPN
last night and you just couldn't get enough even though
you knew what the backers for me Packers in Chargers
(06:59):
schedule was and I still want to watch. And then
kudos to the Packers and Chargers Falcons a couple others
cults were really good as well, where it's become about
the it's like a competition between the social media teams
to put out these digital movie a little like mini movies,
(07:19):
and they're all new and creative. Like it was. It
was kind of fake Claymation with with the with the
Packers one the Chargers was based on Halo, right. The
Falcons was like, this is Sports Center. That's really good.
The NFL is king, the NBA knows it. Now you
(07:39):
know it as well. Today is my Cotton anniversary, Like
what's the cotton anniversary? Cotton anniversary is the second anniversary
of my hiring it at GB May fifteenth of twenty
twenty four, actually May fourteenth, to twenty four. I got
(08:00):
on a plane Burbank, California, and I mean, like, here's
the here's the actual progression of what happened. Okay. So
May fourteenth was a Tuesday. So thirteenth was a Monday, twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth,
May ninth, I'm driving home on the four oh five
(08:23):
four or five Freeway. I had just gotten back on
a trip with my son to Oklahoma, where we were
considering moving there. My ex wife's from there, and she
wanted him to go to high school in a more
kind of normal spot, if you will. And I was
(08:43):
going to do the live there and in Oklahoma, go
back and forth when I when I needed to, And
that was kind of my my life plan was was
what we were, what we were doing. And a friend
had told me that the coach at Wyoming was considering
leaving and it was kind of a late date in
the cycle, and I was like, oh really, and then
(09:06):
it popped up he was leaving for Texas Tech to
be an assistant coach. So of course I texted Josh Moon,
who I had remained close with since being a finalist
the year before, and Sunday and Twicks was hired Wyoming
question Mark. Fast forward to May tenth, the next day,
and at twelve oh four, which was four minutes into
(09:29):
my radio show, Josh Moon calls me and I'm like, well,
I call you back, call him back, and he says,
are you still interested in the GB job? Hell? Yeah,
so he said, let's talk later. So I'm driving home
on the same four h five. This is on a
Friday traffic pad. But when I get out of work
(09:50):
at two, if I got out really quick, it's pretty
good some other day weekend. And he said, look, I
don't know if Sunny's going to take the job or not,
but if you, I mean, you were finally this last time.
We really liked you. You know, if you're still interested
and you have a plan whatever, we I think this
is a good fit. So now I got to drive
(10:12):
home and there was no offer. I hadn't spoken with Sundance.
I didn't know if you mean. I assumed everybody assumed,
like that's where he's from. He loves it there, they
love him. There, they needed they needed new energy, like
the whole thing just worked. So I assumed he was.
(10:34):
But I couldn't. You can't, like, you can't say, hey,
this is gonna happen when I don't know what's gonna happen.
So you fast forward to Mother's Day Sunday and I
talked with Josh later on that night, talked to him Saturday,
(10:56):
talked to him Sunday. Sunday night, he calls me and
he's like, I still haven't heard from Sunny. He told
me he needed the weekend to think about it, but
I'm pretty sure he's going to take it. They got
to come up with the buyout. So Monday morning, Monday morning,
it started to get real, and Tuesday morning I was
(11:20):
offered the job. Tuesday afternoon, I was on a plane
southwest to Arizona, Arizona to Milwaukee on southwest, and I landed.
I think it was like ten thirty. And I learned
something that night which I know to be true. I
know it's like an hour forty to Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee,
(11:45):
but there's something about those last thirty minutes which feel
like an hour and fifteen minutes. Anyone else notice that
I don't know what it is. We're like, am I
not in Green Bay yet? Why am I not? And
I'm telling you I've made that drive two years. I've
probably made that drive sixty five seventy times, and every
time it sneaks up on me. How long those last.
(12:06):
Maybe it's because you get excited about getting home. Maybe
it's because I don't know, there's there's no especially when
it's dark. It's not like there's any markers. Right Like,
once you get past Sheboygan, it feels like it should
be fifteen minutes from there, and then it feels like
it's like an hour and a half from there, and
it's not. So. I rolled in at one thirty, stayed
(12:27):
at the Hyatt. At six am, I was woken up
with a knock at the door. Young man named Cayden
le Captain who Shaka Smart had recommended to me his
head manager, Mav is his nickname, and Mav met me
with a cup of coffee and we went to works.
That was two years ago, and Caden just left to
(12:52):
be an assistant coach at Siena where he's working with
some of the guys from Marquette. And and what's interesting
about it is now two years later. I remember speaking
with Chancellor Mike when I first got the job, and
he's like, look, it's gonna be really hard. It's late.
(13:12):
We have a lot of money. It's hectic, we're on
academic probation. Place has been down. You'll be fine. And
he said, look, what you start with is not necessarily
what you're gonna end with. He said, by my second year,
there was only one person in my office who was
there when I started. And Hark Sanders is the last
(13:37):
of the Mohicans who's a lifelong friend. He played for
my brother at San Diego State and he's still my
recruiting coordinator. But yeah, we've had departures, really good ones.
Kill Ganz, who you've seen on this podcast as a
head coach at Northern Michigan. Jordan McCabe, who's obviously beloved
from around here from being from Kacana. He got a
great job at at GCU. Dennis Harrington left after year
(14:00):
one and went to the Air Force Academy. He and
his wife Molly are expecting. They're great people and now
and now Caden is gone and he's going to Siena,
and so part of the challenge to this job. There's
a lot of challenges at this job, but the biggest
challenge is you kind of got to remake yourself every
(14:20):
year and you got to be smart about it, and
we're trying to build. I'm trying to build something sustainable.
I'm not trying to just Hey, I'm all in. I'm
gonna win this year and then I'm gonna leave. That's
what some people do. I don't believe in it. I
don't I'm not thinking about a next job. This I believe.
I truly truly believe this. You can obviously this is
gonna last in perpetuity. It's on record. I believe that
(14:42):
Green Bay should be the best job in the league.
And you know, like it would be my vision that
us in Milwaukee at some point get together and go like,
is the Horizon League the best fit for us? You know,
is the Valley a better fit? I don't know. I'm
not trying to start anything with the lead. I'm just
talking about fits and perception of league. I do think
(15:04):
that there is whether it's our league or Summit League
or OVC. I do think that there are some of
these schools that are going to really really struggle to
compete because it's really, really, really expensive to compete. In
order to have the money to compete, you have to
have support, and the support has to come from the community.
Can't just do it from the school, but you do
(15:25):
need to do it from the school. You can only
do it from the school in schools making money in school,
it can only make money when they're growing. Our school
is growing. Most of the schools in the league are not.
This town supports sports. Most of the schools in this
league do not. They don't. But two years, wow, it
seems like two minutes. Obviously, the first year was really
(15:47):
really miserable and hard, but I learned a lot, and
most of you stuck behind me, and some of you didn't,
And now you're behind me, and that's cool. I don't care.
I've done things where I've had to growth thicker skin
than anybody, and I'm just trying to build something that
you guys are proud of. But it has been a
fascinating two years, right, fascinating, And to be able to
(16:10):
share it with you here on this pod and radio
and TV show is going to be really really fun.
And again here's the perfect example of things you don't know.
We talked in the first segment about scheduling, So now
we're trying to schedule, and I want my schedule to
be a sustainable style of schedule. So this may be
(16:32):
too much information for You may not care, but I'm
going to educate you really quickly on it. You get
thirty two college basketball games. Previously to this year, you
only got thirty one, but you got thirty one plus one.
You're like, what, there's these things called mtes, the tournaments
in the non conference. We went to the US Virgin
Islands last year, so US Virgin Islands if by playing there,
(16:55):
you got one more game on your schedule. And I
think the idea is everybody's just trying to win twenty games. Man,
just the more games the better. We have twenty games
in our league, that means twelve games in the non conference.
We have to make money, you know. Part of this
(17:16):
level is you have to make money at play. It's
called a guarantee game. So we played Minnesota last year, right,
and we partnered the Minnesota game with the Saint Thomas game,
which was previously scheduled previous to my arrival here. And
the Tommy's beat us pretty good, and then two nights
later we played Minnesota. I thought should have won the game,
(17:38):
lost in overtime. Minnesota paid US ninety thousand dollars, which
is a little bit below the actually going rate. But
they picked up our hotel rooms and it was a
bus trip and we got to partner it and I
don't know, I in hindsight, we should have made him
pay one hundred grand. But the point is that every
year you have to make a certain amount of money
(17:59):
and those games can be very, very difficult, And like
the Kansas game where we made one hundred and ten thousand,
but we took a bludgeting and the guys, you know,
it really hurts your team's confidence because they don't think
that they're any good, not realizing that that team is
just way way better than anybody we should be playing against.
You just are. It's like if you if you ever
(18:19):
play in a youth sports and some of these tournaments
have like gold level, silver level, copper level, right and
you're like, okay, we're a silver level or a copper
level team. They're a gold or a platinum level team.
Like this is what happens, you know. So the challenge
to this year is how do I get home games?
How do I get home home games? Are gold, Gold,
(18:42):
but how do I get home games on a yearly basis?
Because there are a couple teams that all play US
that are Pritton aren't good. But that means we have
to go back there next year, and then I get
back in the same cycle of playing teams on the road,
and I don't get more home games. So here's the
working philosophy behind what I'm trying to do with our schedule.
I'm going to play four by games four Okay, We're
(19:07):
already playing Bradley on the road and that's a payback
for Brian wordled. I'm an amazing contract that we worked
out and we played them last year in exhibition, got
them tickets to the Packers game, and then the return
was ninety grand in a guarantee, which is great, great
(19:27):
FUS trip for US. Hard game. They're gonna be really good,
but guarantee games you're not. It's like nine to nine
percent times you lose, you just do. So we have
that one on the schedule. We're looking for three more.
We had to play Saint Thomas on the road again.
We've already scheduled West Florida on the road and the
(19:47):
UMKC on the road. Why West Florida, Why UMKC. Well,
we're trying to partner West Florida with Florida State. They're
fairly close to each other. But West Florida is in
the first year Division one and I want to go
out and play them because they're going to come back
here next year. Remember, hardest thing to get his home games.
The goal in my scheduling is to get five non
conference home games, five, which is not bad. Last year
(20:11):
we had three two non D one's Haskell and Ripping,
and then we had UC Santa Barbara, which was again
a home and home that they came back to. So
we're trying to get I want to get three teams
to come back every year. So next year we'll have
Saint Thomas at home, We'll have UMKC at home, We'll
have West Florida at home, and then we'll play likely
two we ACT schools at home as well. There's your
(20:34):
five games. That's a good solid schedule that you can manage.
Talented teams, but teams that you can compete with. Hey,
then you go and play four likely four guarantee games. Okay,
that's nine. Now what do you do with the other Now,
what you do with the other three games is again
you go and schedule three more of those road games
(20:56):
which you think you could compete in to partner with
those by games, and then you have them come back
and every year you have five home games. If you
have five home games non conference, your expectations should be
to win four of them, if not all five of them.
Now you go into conference play twenty game conference schedule,
and you know your goal should be at our level
(21:19):
to be above five hundred coming out of non conference.
It's hard to do. Okanks, Remember you're playing those four
four guarantee games, are going to lose all four, maybe
win one here if you're zero to four, okay, and
then you're five and oh, now you're five and four.
What you do with those next those other three games
is paramount, and then you hope to be at the
(21:40):
top half of the league. This year we're in the
top half the league, the top three in the league really,
and you can get close to those twenty wins, put
yourself in position to win the league, pushed up position
to win twenty games, and so on and so forth.
But the process of getting to that is super super
hard because you have to move dates around, you got
to massage things, you got to stay on to people. Meanwhile,
you're rebuilding your team at the same time, and I'm
(22:02):
rebuilding my coaching staff at the same time as well.
But I'll leave it with this. I remember two years
ago everybody had left the Cress. It was like five
in the afternoon, May fifteenth, twenty twenty four. It was
(22:22):
a beautiful day. And there's a lot about This has
been really hard for me. Obviously, I haven't been able
to I have two girls that are in college. One
that switched schools mid first year. It's had a kind
of rough go of it socially, but academically she's amazing.
The other one's been great socially and it's good academically.
(22:44):
But they're both at Oklahoma State right now. My son's
in Oklahoma. It's it's hard, man, when you you go
through all the things and you want your you want
to come home and your family be there and your
kids be there to kind of live it with you.
And I mean, I really know the soul when I
moved here. But I can't think of a better first
(23:05):
job and opportunity than in Green Bay, Wisconsin, because I
do think people get what you're about when they watch
you and they see you go through tough times and
you don't point fingers at other people and you just
get back to work, because that's what Green Bay people do, right,
they got a blue collar Let's just get back to
work and figure it out and fix it. But on
(23:27):
May fifteenth of twenty four, it's like eighty degrees and
I went outside the crest and nobody's around, and I
just laid down in the grass and just kind of
grounded myself. And I had such amazing gratitude for it,
for the opportunity that Josh Moon and Chancellor Mike Alexander
have given me. And two years later, I still have
(23:48):
that gratitude, and I think that's the that's kind of
one of the secrets to life is. And people say, like,
never forget where you came from. I do not. I
come from Orange, California. I grew up in a house
my mom still lives in three eighties South Liberty Way.
Look it up. It ain't say anything special, And I
make no apologies for my career path. It's a squiggly
(24:10):
line of all kinds of things. But I remember I
used to work with a man named Tom Brenner's great dude,
who was head coach at University Vermont. Remember they beat
Syracuse the NCAA tournament. And his expression was my boy,
I want to be sick when I die. And his
point was he got to live, man right, got to live.
(24:32):
He had to try new things. And I don't plan
on leaving this earth for another I think a man
a one hundred. I really do. I'm pretty healthy. But
if I don't leave this earth for another forty years,
the first fifty have been pretty dope, right. I've played
for two grade schools, two great coaches. I've done the
(24:56):
transfer thing. I've done the junior college thing. I didn't
play there. I've traveled the world old played in Russia
and France and Israel. I've worked for ESPN where I
thought when I thought ESPN was at its peak to
cover the NCAA term for CBS. I launched a radio
network with Cbsports Radio. I worked for Fox Sports Trader,
did Fox TV and it all kinds of digital stuff.
(25:17):
And now I'm a head basketball coach, and I think
I think a pretty good one at a place that
I have earned a decent amount of respect and will
continue to try and earn everyone's respect in it. And
this is just the first fifty. And then I got
three great kids. You know, I'm blessed beyond all measure,
(25:41):
and two years to the date later, I have not
lost that. It's not lost on me how cool this is.
And if you liked the first two years, he thought
it was fun, wait to see the next two. So
this is not the Lebron James show, but I'm gonna
(26:02):
pile on Lebron James for a second. So the story
that made its rounds on ESPN, this is a really
weird one. Okay. So I was flying from LA to
Green Bay and I land in Chicago O'Hair and I'm
not feeling well at all, and so I go directly
to the bathroom. And I'm sorry if this bothers you,
(26:24):
if this is too graphic. Okay, I haven't vomited in
I don't know twenty five years. Like I even asked
my ex wife, like, when was the last time I vomited?
She's like, I don't remember you ever throwing up, and
I had. I got violently ill in the O'Hair bathroom
and I think, I don't know, and I get neurovirus.
I don't think I ate something bad because I got
(26:45):
the chills. And then I would like the next day
I was I still wasn't feeling great, and then I
didn't really eat much anyway, so maybe that was part
of it. I don't know. So I get done, like hurling,
yelling at the pavement, you know, screaming of the porcelain God,
all the different Why do Canadians call it booting? I
booted forget about it anyway. And I'm walking to my
(27:08):
next flight and I hear Doug Godley and I turn
around and it's Rich Paul. And Rich Paul is the
best friend of and started the agents that Clutch agency
with Lebron James the same day that the story comes out.
Lebron James feels like the Lakers don't appreciate it, and
(27:29):
we just talked about gratitude and I obviously it's missing,
and I understand when you reach the level of Lebron James,
you probably do feel like you're being used. And I
think there's a reality to it. I think, yeah, they
probably kept him to set the all time scoring mark
and then would have liked for him to ride off
into the sunset, and he did not. But it's always
(27:50):
super interesting and we experienced that here right where somebody
you do a million things. I had a player who
was a star this year. I think if I give
away too many details. You know who I'm talking about,
so I won't do that. But I had a player
who started this year and I just felt like there
(28:12):
was no gratitude at all and he ended up leaving.
And one, it's bad business because they all call us.
And two also, we would have offered him some money
to stay, and I don't know if he you know,
that would have been at least a baseline for him
to get money elsewhere. But the lack of gratitude is again,
(28:34):
you have it even at this level as well. Not everybody.
We have really gracious kids, but this one struck me
as and the family struck me as like, do you
realize how good he had it, how much we cared
about him, how we treated him. Okay, have fun, bye bye.
So Lebron is bothered by the fact that they didn't
give him a game ball when he became the all
(28:56):
time winningest regular season NBA player, Like that is a stretch,
armstrong stretch. And if you watch the video which does exist,
it was a night when when JJ Reddick won his
one hundredth game. It was also night when Luka don
Chik scored his fifteen thousandth point. I don't know if
any of this stuff matters to anybody, but Lebron is
(29:18):
in his feelings because he thinks they take him for granted,
and maybe they do. Maybe they do, but this is
the This is the price you pay for being a team,
being a guy who's hopped from team to team to team.
This is the price you pay when you make them
draft your son. I don't think Lebron has taken and
(29:39):
you know, Rich Paul and I talked about it for
a little bit. I don't know if they realize how
everybody really felt about them drafting Bronni and even playing Bronni. Now,
he doesn't belong on the full or especially in the playoffs.
Just doesn't. And that can sound like hating or knocking
or whatever, like Okay, fine, there's four hundre and fifty
(30:00):
NBA players. That's four hundred fifty best players in the world.
There's four billion men, give or take in the world.
So the four hundred and fifty best those are who
should play. He's not one of those guys. Doesn't mean
he's not a good basketball player. It just means he's
not one of four hundred fifty best players on Earth.
But man, the lack of wherewithal understanding. And this is
why every time he came up there was he was
(30:23):
in Cleveland once, in Miami once and one time in
LA that people say, you know, he might play for
the Spurs. So Greg Popovich still kind of shadow runs
the Spurs, right, They still operate under his his guidance,
even though he's obviously aged and he's gone through a
(30:44):
lot personally and emotionally and whatever the Spurs thing was,
Get over yourself. If you're concerning yourself with a game
ball from some made up stat that nobody gives a
damn about, you are not over yourself. And I do
understand when you're one of the all time greades at
(31:05):
anything you do. You have an ego is why you
have gotten to where you've gotten to. No one's ever
done it without super belief and self confidence, and you
want to be out avoid for it. But to anyone
thinks that he's going to walk out of the NBA
and not have a victory tour, a going away tour
(31:26):
when the guy is bitching about not having a game
ball for some made up stat that only exists because
one he's a great player and two he's played forever,
and he thinks the Lakers are wrong. Lebron will not
be a Laker next year. Lebron will play next year,
(31:47):
and he will do it because he wants a going
away tour. Even if he tries to tell people or
let him be said, well, maybe he won't, maybe he'll
just walk away. All of these stories come out for
a reason. And if you think that sounded petty, you're right.
But a petty story that comes out comes out for
a reason because he's trying to set a narrative of
(32:09):
they don't appreciate me, they don't like me, they're gonna
lowball me. I'm gonna go elsewhere where I'm more appreciated.
This is not a hop on Lebron James, but this
is just tell me a great player where it ended? Well,
it's few and far between. Go through them. Farv right
(32:33):
and yeah, Farv had the first year in Minnesota that
was unbelievable. But the second year he got hurt. And
do you guys remember the Metrodome actually deflated? It did
feel like a sign from above, did not? Aaron Rodgers
going limping into the I guess he's gonna be a
stealer this year. I don't know. It goes back and
(32:54):
forth and back and forth, and Johnny United is famously
finished up a charger, right, Michael Jordan came back with
the bulls. I don't know if that was the way
to go out. He should have just gone out. I
mean he came back with the Wizards. Should cry out
with the bulls. I mean Tim Duncan's like the only
guy and classic Tim, I don't even remember when you
were retired. There was no ceremony, no nothing, just like, hey,
(33:17):
I'm done, wasn't it. But for the most part, none
of them end well. They just don't. You know. Clayton
Kershaw pitched last year in the playoffs got lit up.
Why because this was the last time we're going to
see Clayton Kershaw And that's why. But this is sort
(33:41):
of par for the course that it does end poorly,
and I do understand it, you know, Alan Iverson, I
don't know any MVP to come off the bench, right,
It usually ends very very poorly, and it just does.
And unfortunately it feels like it's going to have the
same for Lebron James. This is the gotlib show. M
(34:25):
HM
What up? Welcome in. This is the Doug Gottlieb Show,
and it's steadrooly sweet here in well in America, really
not just in Green Bay America. But I was the
power of the NFL is really remarkable. And I've said
this on national radio for the twenty years that I've
(00:27):
done it, or I think I did it for more
than that, but that's okay. The point is I've said
this before, but not necessarily to this audience, which is,
you know, there was a chunk of time there where
people thought that Roger Goodell should be fired, right, and
they would find something they didn't like, and you're out
(00:47):
of your mind, really, And I don't know how many
of the decisions he makes or it's the people he
empowers to make the decisions. But here's how big the
NFL has gotten under Roger Goodell. There were no games
played last night, right. No one wants to put their
games against NFL games. That's just dumb. And the NFL
has said like, oh Christmas, Oh the NBA, you like Christmas,
(01:10):
We're going to take that. And then last night it
was completed with Bears Packers on Christmas. Come moment, it's
a rap. You're gonna watch the Lakers and Bulls. Are
you gonna watch are you gonna watch the Bears and
the Packers? But I want you to think about this.
Last night there were no games played. Some of the
(01:30):
schedule had been leaked. Most of the schedule had been
leaked by the time that the schedule actually came out. Right,
So if you just go on social media, you type
in your favorite team, you get the schedule out. If
you want to get every team, you could do that
and print them all out, have them all. You don't
even need to watch TV. And yet the NBA is like,
we're good, We're not going against that. No, thanks, nope, brilliant.
(01:53):
I remember before Goodell, they did play some internationally, but
now they're playing in Australia, they're playing in South America.
They're playing and here's what those do. You're like, what
does that do? Like how many people? There's some ancillary
benefits considering I'm sure they get a bunch of money
to send teams down there. Right, let's just and those
(02:14):
are all sponsored and whatever the reality to it is.
Right now, the NFL, okay, they have completely changed the
model with TV partnership. It used to be about exclusivity.
That's what you paid for. You paid for exclusivity. We
are the home of the NFL, and we're only gonna
have it on two networks, maybe three. Now you're on ABC, ESPN,
(02:37):
you're on CBS, you're at NBC, you're on Fox, you're
on Amazon, you're on Netflix. Did I miss anything? I
feel like I missed something. There's also a game that's
on Nickelodeon and oh yeah, by the way, all these
are available on YouTube as well. And the point is
there's not anywhere you can go that you can't you're
not gonna watch the NFL and what those kind of
(03:01):
odd start times do, especially when you go and play
in Europe, You're like those games are I wake up
and my favorite team's playing. If you're I've been a
West Coast guy for what was it said, nine in
the last eleven years before the last two years here
in Green Bay, so you'll you'll miss games. You'll like,
wake up, like what happened? That game's over? How is
(03:23):
that over? I don't even I didn't set my fantasy team.
I'm screwed up by But it's a different window for
you to sell to TV if you keep stacking them everything, well,
I mean, and we keep paying for Sunday ticket. I
pay for Sunday ticket because I want to see the Packers.
I want to see the Chargers, and I don't care
where they play, and I don't want to be blacked out,
(03:43):
and I want to watch it, and I want to
be watching wherever I am. With my YouTube TV on
the with the Red Zone channel, I can literally watch
it on my phone wherever I am. But the fact
is that a lot of those games aren't on those
anymore on Red Zone because we have so many other
start times and start days as the season goes on.
It's brilliant because the numbers keep rising in terms of viewership,
(04:05):
so it's not like the odd start times hurt their numbers.
And all it is is you can increase how much
you charge to these TV entities because now you're running unopposed. Yes,
it's Sunday morning at I don't know, nine am on
the East Coast, it's a really early start time, but
there's no other NFL game on, so there's no competition.
(04:27):
It's a standalone game. Even in the midst of all
the games you have at one and at four, and
then the Sunday night football game, which is I think
it's seven thirty or eight fifteen or something East Coast time. Anyway,
the whole thing is brilliant. Even go back to Chargers
and Rams in LA. It's not a perfect fit. It's
(04:48):
slowly but surely people are going to forget about how
murky it was. It was. The Raiders do fit Vegas.
They fit LA probably better. But the only team that
really fit in Vegas was the Raiders. So if you
really want to know what happened there, there was a
concussion lawsuit and the NFL knew they were going to
(05:08):
have to settle or lose, and it would be in
the neighborhood. They thought of two billion dollars, Well, they
settled for like, I don't even think it was a billion,
which you know, it's a lot of money, right, But
why did they expand suddenly the Los Angeles, Well, the
franchise fees were seven hundred and fifty million dollars apiece.
(05:28):
Those franchise fees went directly to pay for the lawsuit.
Roger Goodell works for the owners. It don't work for
you, you don't work for me, don't work for the players,
work for the owners. So he came up with a way.
He came up with a way to pay off a
two billion dollar lawsuit that those owners were going to
have to pay without them ever having to go in
and pocket. Do you know how rich guys are so cheap?
(05:53):
That's how they got rich. That's how they got rich.
And when you tell a multi multi, multi billionaire that
owns a billion dollar franchise that you don't make a
ton of money on a yearly basis, Listen, we got
a two billion dollar bill, but I'm going to take
care of it. Don't worry about it. You'll pay nothing,
and then I'm go'll make you more and more money.
(06:14):
And all we got to do is send you once
every couple of years to Melbourne, to Germany, to South America,
to Mexico to wherever. Rodger Goodell is going to go
down as the greatest commissioner in the history of sports,
Yet social media will tell you that he's an idiot,
doesn't know what he's doing, should be fired or whatever. Yeah,
it was weird to have the COVID draft in his basement,
(06:37):
although honestly I kind of liked that draft. THO was
kind of cool and the bro hugs are awkward on
Draft day, even going back to when I was at
Lambeau last year. But that's not what he's here for.
He's here to make money to grow the league. And
if you're like me, you watched NFL Network or ESPN
last night and you just couldn't get enough even though
you knew what the backers for me Packers in Chargers
(06:59):
schedule was and I still want to watch. And then
kudos to the Packers and Chargers Falcons a couple others
cults were really good as well, where it's become about
the it's like a competition between the social media teams
to put out these digital movie a little like mini movies,
(07:19):
and they're all new and creative. Like it was. It
was kind of fake Claymation with with the with the
Packers one the Chargers was based on Halo, right. The
Falcons was like, this is Sports Center. That's really good.
The NFL is king, the NBA knows it. Now you
(07:39):
know it as well. Today is my Cotton anniversary, Like
what's the cotton anniversary? Cotton anniversary is the second anniversary
of my hiring it at GB May fifteenth of twenty
twenty four, actually May fourteenth, to twenty four. I got
(08:00):
on a plane Burbank, California, and I mean, like, here's
the here's the actual progression of what happened. Okay. So
May fourteenth was a Tuesday. So thirteenth was a Monday, twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth,
May ninth, I'm driving home on the four oh five
(08:23):
four or five Freeway. I had just gotten back on
a trip with my son to Oklahoma, where we were
considering moving there. My ex wife's from there, and she
wanted him to go to high school in a more
kind of normal spot, if you will. And I was
(08:43):
going to do the live there and in Oklahoma, go
back and forth when I when I needed to, And
that was kind of my my life plan was was
what we were, what we were doing. And a friend
had told me that the coach at Wyoming was considering
leaving and it was kind of a late date in
the cycle, and I was like, oh really, and then
(09:06):
it popped up he was leaving for Texas Tech to
be an assistant coach. So of course I texted Josh Moon,
who I had remained close with since being a finalist
the year before, and Sunday and Twicks was hired Wyoming
question Mark. Fast forward to May tenth, the next day,
and at twelve oh four, which was four minutes into
(09:29):
my radio show, Josh Moon calls me and I'm like, well,
I call you back, call him back, and he says,
are you still interested in the GB job? Hell? Yeah,
so he said, let's talk later. So I'm driving home
on the same four h five. This is on a
Friday traffic pad. But when I get out of work
(09:50):
at two, if I got out really quick, it's pretty
good some other day weekend. And he said, look, I
don't know if Sunny's going to take the job or not,
but if you, I mean, you were finally this last time.
We really liked you. You know, if you're still interested
and you have a plan whatever, we I think this
is a good fit. So now I got to drive
(10:12):
home and there was no offer. I hadn't spoken with Sundance.
I didn't know if you mean. I assumed everybody assumed,
like that's where he's from. He loves it there, they
love him. There, they needed they needed new energy, like
the whole thing just worked. So I assumed he was.
(10:34):
But I couldn't. You can't, like, you can't say, hey,
this is gonna happen when I don't know what's gonna happen.
So you fast forward to Mother's Day Sunday and I
talked with Josh later on that night, talked to him Saturday,
(10:56):
talked to him Sunday. Sunday night, he calls me and
he's like, I still haven't heard from Sunny. He told
me he needed the weekend to think about it, but
I'm pretty sure he's going to take it. They got
to come up with the buyout. So Monday morning, Monday morning,
it started to get real, and Tuesday morning I was
(11:20):
offered the job. Tuesday afternoon, I was on a plane
southwest to Arizona, Arizona to Milwaukee on southwest, and I landed.
I think it was like ten thirty. And I learned
something that night which I know to be true. I
know it's like an hour forty to Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee,
(11:45):
but there's something about those last thirty minutes which feel
like an hour and fifteen minutes. Anyone else notice that
I don't know what it is. We're like, am I
not in Green Bay yet? Why am I not? And
I'm telling you I've made that drive two years. I've
probably made that drive sixty five seventy times, and every
time it sneaks up on me. How long those last.
(12:06):
Maybe it's because you get excited about getting home. Maybe
it's because I don't know, there's there's no especially when
it's dark. It's not like there's any markers. Right Like,
once you get past Sheboygan, it feels like it should
be fifteen minutes from there, and then it feels like
it's like an hour and a half from there, and
it's not. So. I rolled in at one thirty, stayed
(12:27):
at the Hyatt. At six am, I was woken up
with a knock at the door. Young man named Cayden
le Captain who Shaka Smart had recommended to me his
head manager, Mav is his nickname, and Mav met me
with a cup of coffee and we went to works.
That was two years ago, and Caden just left to
(12:52):
be an assistant coach at Siena where he's working with
some of the guys from Marquette. And and what's interesting
about it is now two years later. I remember speaking
with Chancellor Mike when I first got the job, and
he's like, look, it's gonna be really hard. It's late.
(13:12):
We have a lot of money. It's hectic, we're on
academic probation. Place has been down. You'll be fine. And
he said, look, what you start with is not necessarily
what you're gonna end with. He said, by my second year,
there was only one person in my office who was
there when I started. And Hark Sanders is the last
(13:37):
of the Mohicans who's a lifelong friend. He played for
my brother at San Diego State and he's still my
recruiting coordinator. But yeah, we've had departures, really good ones.
Kill Ganz, who you've seen on this podcast as a
head coach at Northern Michigan. Jordan McCabe, who's obviously beloved
from around here from being from Kacana. He got a
great job at at GCU. Dennis Harrington left after year
(14:00):
one and went to the Air Force Academy. He and
his wife Molly are expecting. They're great people and now
and now Caden is gone and he's going to Siena,
and so part of the challenge to this job. There's
a lot of challenges at this job, but the biggest
challenge is you kind of got to remake yourself every
(14:20):
year and you got to be smart about it, and
we're trying to build. I'm trying to build something sustainable.
I'm not trying to just Hey, I'm all in. I'm
gonna win this year and then I'm gonna leave. That's
what some people do. I don't believe in it. I
don't I'm not thinking about a next job. This I believe.
I truly truly believe this. You can obviously this is
gonna last in perpetuity. It's on record. I believe that
(14:42):
Green Bay should be the best job in the league.
And you know, like it would be my vision that
us in Milwaukee at some point get together and go like,
is the Horizon League the best fit for us? You know,
is the Valley a better fit? I don't know. I'm
not trying to start anything with the lead. I'm just
talking about fits and perception of league. I do think
(15:04):
that there is whether it's our league or Summit League
or OVC. I do think that there are some of
these schools that are going to really really struggle to
compete because it's really, really, really expensive to compete. In
order to have the money to compete, you have to
have support, and the support has to come from the community.
Can't just do it from the school, but you do
(15:25):
need to do it from the school. You can only
do it from the school in schools making money in school,
it can only make money when they're growing. Our school
is growing. Most of the schools in the league are not.
This town supports sports. Most of the schools in this
league do not. They don't. But two years, wow, it
seems like two minutes. Obviously, the first year was really
(15:47):
really miserable and hard, but I learned a lot, and
most of you stuck behind me, and some of you didn't,
And now you're behind me, and that's cool. I don't care.
I've done things where I've had to growth thicker skin
than anybody, and I'm just trying to build something that
you guys are proud of. But it has been a
fascinating two years, right, fascinating, And to be able to
(16:10):
share it with you here on this pod and radio
and TV show is going to be really really fun.
And again here's the perfect example of things you don't know.
We talked in the first segment about scheduling, So now
we're trying to schedule, and I want my schedule to
be a sustainable style of schedule. So this may be
(16:32):
too much information for You may not care, but I'm
going to educate you really quickly on it. You get
thirty two college basketball games. Previously to this year, you
only got thirty one, but you got thirty one plus one.
You're like, what, there's these things called mtes, the tournaments
in the non conference. We went to the US Virgin
Islands last year, so US Virgin Islands if by playing there,
(16:55):
you got one more game on your schedule. And I
think the idea is everybody's just trying to win twenty games. Man,
just the more games the better. We have twenty games
in our league, that means twelve games in the non conference.
We have to make money, you know. Part of this
(17:16):
level is you have to make money at play. It's
called a guarantee game. So we played Minnesota last year, right,
and we partnered the Minnesota game with the Saint Thomas game,
which was previously scheduled previous to my arrival here. And
the Tommy's beat us pretty good, and then two nights
later we played Minnesota. I thought should have won the game,
(17:38):
lost in overtime. Minnesota paid US ninety thousand dollars, which
is a little bit below the actually going rate. But
they picked up our hotel rooms and it was a
bus trip and we got to partner it and I
don't know, I in hindsight, we should have made him
pay one hundred grand. But the point is that every
year you have to make a certain amount of money
(17:59):
and those games can be very, very difficult, And like
the Kansas game where we made one hundred and ten thousand,
but we took a bludgeting and the guys, you know,
it really hurts your team's confidence because they don't think
that they're any good, not realizing that that team is
just way way better than anybody we should be playing against.
You just are. It's like if you if you ever
(18:19):
play in a youth sports and some of these tournaments
have like gold level, silver level, copper level, right and
you're like, okay, we're a silver level or a copper
level team. They're a gold or a platinum level team.
Like this is what happens, you know. So the challenge
to this year is how do I get home games?
How do I get home home games? Are gold, Gold,
(18:42):
but how do I get home games on a yearly basis?
Because there are a couple teams that all play US
that are Pritton aren't good. But that means we have
to go back there next year, and then I get
back in the same cycle of playing teams on the road,
and I don't get more home games. So here's the
working philosophy behind what I'm trying to do with our schedule.
I'm going to play four by games four Okay, We're
(19:07):
already playing Bradley on the road and that's a payback
for Brian wordled. I'm an amazing contract that we worked
out and we played them last year in exhibition, got
them tickets to the Packers game, and then the return
was ninety grand in a guarantee, which is great, great
(19:27):
FUS trip for US. Hard game. They're gonna be really good,
but guarantee games you're not. It's like nine to nine
percent times you lose, you just do. So we have
that one on the schedule. We're looking for three more.
We had to play Saint Thomas on the road again.
We've already scheduled West Florida on the road and the
(19:47):
UMKC on the road. Why West Florida, Why UMKC. Well,
we're trying to partner West Florida with Florida State. They're
fairly close to each other. But West Florida is in
the first year Division one and I want to go
out and play them because they're going to come back
here next year. Remember, hardest thing to get his home games.
The goal in my scheduling is to get five non
conference home games, five, which is not bad. Last year
(20:11):
we had three two non D one's Haskell and Ripping,
and then we had UC Santa Barbara, which was again
a home and home that they came back to. So
we're trying to get I want to get three teams
to come back every year. So next year we'll have
Saint Thomas at home, We'll have UMKC at home, We'll
have West Florida at home, and then we'll play likely
two we ACT schools at home as well. There's your
(20:34):
five games. That's a good solid schedule that you can manage.
Talented teams, but teams that you can compete with. Hey,
then you go and play four likely four guarantee games. Okay,
that's nine. Now what do you do with the other Now,
what you do with the other three games is again
you go and schedule three more of those road games
(20:56):
which you think you could compete in to partner with
those by games, and then you have them come back
and every year you have five home games. If you
have five home games non conference, your expectations should be
to win four of them, if not all five of them.
Now you go into conference play twenty game conference schedule,
and you know your goal should be at our level
(21:19):
to be above five hundred coming out of non conference.
It's hard to do. Okanks, Remember you're playing those four
four guarantee games, are going to lose all four, maybe
win one here if you're zero to four, okay, and
then you're five and oh, now you're five and four.
What you do with those next those other three games
is paramount, and then you hope to be at the
(21:40):
top half of the league. This year we're in the
top half the league, the top three in the league really,
and you can get close to those twenty wins, put
yourself in position to win the league, pushed up position
to win twenty games, and so on and so forth.
But the process of getting to that is super super
hard because you have to move dates around, you got
to massage things, you got to stay on to people. Meanwhile,
you're rebuilding your team at the same time, and I'm
(22:02):
rebuilding my coaching staff at the same time as well.
But I'll leave it with this. I remember two years
ago everybody had left the Cress. It was like five
in the afternoon, May fifteenth, twenty twenty four. It was
(22:22):
a beautiful day. And there's a lot about This has
been really hard for me. Obviously, I haven't been able
to I have two girls that are in college. One
that switched schools mid first year. It's had a kind
of rough go of it socially, but academically she's amazing.
The other one's been great socially and it's good academically.
(22:44):
But they're both at Oklahoma State right now. My son's
in Oklahoma. It's it's hard, man, when you you go
through all the things and you want your you want
to come home and your family be there and your
kids be there to kind of live it with you.
And I mean, I really know the soul when I
moved here. But I can't think of a better first
(23:05):
job and opportunity than in Green Bay, Wisconsin, because I
do think people get what you're about when they watch
you and they see you go through tough times and
you don't point fingers at other people and you just
get back to work, because that's what Green Bay people do, right,
they got a blue collar Let's just get back to
work and figure it out and fix it. But on
(23:27):
May fifteenth of twenty four, it's like eighty degrees and
I went outside the crest and nobody's around, and I
just laid down in the grass and just kind of
grounded myself. And I had such amazing gratitude for it,
for the opportunity that Josh Moon and Chancellor Mike Alexander
have given me. And two years later, I still have
(23:48):
that gratitude, and I think that's the that's kind of
one of the secrets to life is. And people say, like,
never forget where you came from. I do not. I
come from Orange, California. I grew up in a house
my mom still lives in three eighties South Liberty Way.
Look it up. It ain't say anything special, And I
make no apologies for my career path. It's a squiggly
(24:10):
line of all kinds of things. But I remember I
used to work with a man named Tom Brenner's great dude,
who was head coach at University Vermont. Remember they beat
Syracuse the NCAA tournament. And his expression was my boy,
I want to be sick when I die. And his
point was he got to live, man right, got to live.
(24:32):
He had to try new things. And I don't plan
on leaving this earth for another I think a man
a one hundred. I really do. I'm pretty healthy. But
if I don't leave this earth for another forty years,
the first fifty have been pretty dope, right. I've played
for two grade schools, two great coaches. I've done the
(24:56):
transfer thing. I've done the junior college thing. I didn't
play there. I've traveled the world old played in Russia
and France and Israel. I've worked for ESPN where I
thought when I thought ESPN was at its peak to
cover the NCAA term for CBS. I launched a radio
network with Cbsports Radio. I worked for Fox Sports Trader,
did Fox TV and it all kinds of digital stuff.
(25:17):
And now I'm a head basketball coach, and I think
I think a pretty good one at a place that
I have earned a decent amount of respect and will
continue to try and earn everyone's respect in it. And
this is just the first fifty. And then I got
three great kids. You know, I'm blessed beyond all measure,
(25:41):
and two years to the date later, I have not
lost that. It's not lost on me how cool this is.
And if you liked the first two years, he thought
it was fun, wait to see the next two. So
this is not the Lebron James show, but I'm gonna
(26:02):
pile on Lebron James for a second. So the story
that made its rounds on ESPN, this is a really
weird one. Okay. So I was flying from LA to
Green Bay and I land in Chicago O'Hair and I'm
not feeling well at all, and so I go directly
to the bathroom. And I'm sorry if this bothers you,
(26:24):
if this is too graphic. Okay, I haven't vomited in
I don't know twenty five years. Like I even asked
my ex wife, like, when was the last time I vomited?
She's like, I don't remember you ever throwing up, and
I had. I got violently ill in the O'Hair bathroom
and I think, I don't know, and I get neurovirus.
I don't think I ate something bad because I got
(26:45):
the chills. And then I would like the next day
I was I still wasn't feeling great, and then I
didn't really eat much anyway, so maybe that was part
of it. I don't know. So I get done, like hurling,
yelling at the pavement, you know, screaming of the porcelain God,
all the different Why do Canadians call it booting? I
booted forget about it anyway. And I'm walking to my
(27:08):
next flight and I hear Doug Godley and I turn
around and it's Rich Paul. And Rich Paul is the
best friend of and started the agents that Clutch agency
with Lebron James the same day that the story comes out.
Lebron James feels like the Lakers don't appreciate it, and
(27:29):
we just talked about gratitude and I obviously it's missing,
and I understand when you reach the level of Lebron James,
you probably do feel like you're being used. And I
think there's a reality to it. I think, yeah, they
probably kept him to set the all time scoring mark
and then would have liked for him to ride off
into the sunset, and he did not. But it's always
(27:50):
super interesting and we experienced that here right where somebody
you do a million things. I had a player who
was a star this year. I think if I give
away too many details. You know who I'm talking about,
so I won't do that. But I had a player
who started this year and I just felt like there
(28:12):
was no gratitude at all and he ended up leaving.
And one, it's bad business because they all call us.
And two also, we would have offered him some money
to stay, and I don't know if he you know,
that would have been at least a baseline for him
to get money elsewhere. But the lack of gratitude is again,
(28:34):
you have it even at this level as well. Not everybody.
We have really gracious kids, but this one struck me
as and the family struck me as like, do you
realize how good he had it, how much we cared
about him, how we treated him. Okay, have fun, bye bye.
So Lebron is bothered by the fact that they didn't
give him a game ball when he became the all
(28:56):
time winningest regular season NBA player, Like that is a stretch,
armstrong stretch. And if you watch the video which does exist,
it was a night when when JJ Reddick won his
one hundredth game. It was also night when Luka don
Chik scored his fifteen thousandth point. I don't know if
any of this stuff matters to anybody, but Lebron is
(29:18):
in his feelings because he thinks they take him for granted,
and maybe they do. Maybe they do, but this is
the This is the price you pay for being a team,
being a guy who's hopped from team to team to team.
This is the price you pay when you make them
draft your son. I don't think Lebron has taken and
(29:39):
you know, Rich Paul and I talked about it for
a little bit. I don't know if they realize how
everybody really felt about them drafting Bronni and even playing Bronni. Now,
he doesn't belong on the full or especially in the playoffs.
Just doesn't. And that can sound like hating or knocking
or whatever, like Okay, fine, there's four hundre and fifty
(30:00):
NBA players. That's four hundred fifty best players in the world.
There's four billion men, give or take in the world.
So the four hundred and fifty best those are who
should play. He's not one of those guys. Doesn't mean
he's not a good basketball player. It just means he's
not one of four hundred fifty best players on Earth.
But man, the lack of wherewithal understanding. And this is
why every time he came up there was he was
(30:23):
in Cleveland once, in Miami once and one time in
LA that people say, you know, he might play for
the Spurs. So Greg Popovich still kind of shadow runs
the Spurs, right, They still operate under his his guidance,
even though he's obviously aged and he's gone through a
(30:44):
lot personally and emotionally and whatever the Spurs thing was,
Get over yourself. If you're concerning yourself with a game
ball from some made up stat that nobody gives a
damn about, you are not over yourself. And I do
understand when you're one of the all time greades at
(31:05):
anything you do. You have an ego is why you
have gotten to where you've gotten to. No one's ever
done it without super belief and self confidence, and you
want to be out avoid for it. But to anyone
thinks that he's going to walk out of the NBA
and not have a victory tour, a going away tour
(31:26):
when the guy is bitching about not having a game
ball for some made up stat that only exists because
one he's a great player and two he's played forever,
and he thinks the Lakers are wrong. Lebron will not
be a Laker next year. Lebron will play next year,
(31:47):
and he will do it because he wants a going
away tour. Even if he tries to tell people or
let him be said, well, maybe he won't, maybe he'll
just walk away. All of these stories come out for
a reason. And if you think that sounded petty, you're right.
But a petty story that comes out comes out for
a reason because he's trying to set a narrative of
(32:09):
they don't appreciate me, they don't like me, they're gonna
lowball me. I'm gonna go elsewhere where I'm more appreciated.
This is not a hop on Lebron James, but this
is just tell me a great player where it ended? Well,
it's few and far between. Go through them. Farv right
(32:33):
and yeah, Farv had the first year in Minnesota that
was unbelievable. But the second year he got hurt. And
do you guys remember the Metrodome actually deflated? It did
feel like a sign from above, did not? Aaron Rodgers
going limping into the I guess he's gonna be a
stealer this year. I don't know. It goes back and
(32:54):
forth and back and forth, and Johnny United is famously
finished up a charger, right, Michael Jordan came back with
the bulls. I don't know if that was the way
to go out. He should have just gone out. I
mean he came back with the Wizards. Should cry out
with the bulls. I mean Tim Duncan's like the only
guy and classic Tim, I don't even remember when you
were retired. There was no ceremony, no nothing, just like, hey,
(33:17):
I'm done, wasn't it. But for the most part, none
of them end well. They just don't. You know. Clayton
Kershaw pitched last year in the playoffs got lit up.
Why because this was the last time we're going to
see Clayton Kershaw And that's why. But this is sort
(33:41):
of par for the course that it does end poorly,
and I do understand it, you know, Alan Iverson, I
don't know any MVP to come off the bench, right,
It usually ends very very poorly, and it just does.
And unfortunately it feels like it's going to have the
same for Lebron James. This is the gotlib show. M
(34:25):
HM
Host
Doug Gottlieb
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