Pardon My Take
Opening Day With Jeff Passan, We Finally Got A Great Tourney Game, Lebron vs The World, Fyre Fest + Severance Finale
Fri, 28 Mar 2025
We finally got a classic March Madness game as Texas Tech takes down Arkansas and Cal. Duke, Bama and Florida roll to the Elite 8. Kevin Willard goes out in a weird way (00:00:00-00:23:04). Lebron went on McAfee and caused waves including his renewed fight with Stephen A Smith and a new one with Brian Windhorst (00:23:04-00:44:17). Jeff Passan joins the show to talk MLB opening day, the potentially historic Dodgers, rookies to look out for, sleepers and tons more (00:44:17-01:21:45). We finish the show with Severance season Finale and fyre fest of the week (01:21:45-01:50:17).You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/pardon-my-take
Chapter 1: What happened in the latest March Madness games?
Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by DraftKings. Bet the unexpected with DraftKings Sportsbook. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app. Use code TAKE, that's code TAKE, for new customers to get $200 in bonus bets when you bet just $5 only on DraftKings. The crown is yours. Today is Friday, March 28th. And boys, we finally had some madness. Texas Tech down 16 with 10 minutes left.
takes down John Calpapari and the Arkansas Razorbacks. And I feel bad for Arkansas fans, but I laugh at Cal because that was an all-time meltdown. And Hank just sent me a graphic. This is reading off. So Arkansas doesn't own all of this. 2021 missed the tournament. 2022 is all Cal. 2022 lost to 15 St. Peter's. 2023 lost in the second round. 2024 lost to number 14 Oakland.
2025 blew 16 points second half lead.
Yeah, I don't know that you can group this one in with the other ones because at least he got this far and he was a 10 seed. Yeah. It's a bad joke. Don't get me. It was a hog reveal. They're chokers. That was bad. It was a bad job in the second half for sure. I don't know that you would put this on the same level as losing to a 15.
This was a bad loss, though, especially the way that Texas Tech was playing. McMillan was out. They were not shooting the ball well. They were absolute monsters on the offensive glass. There was one possession.
I think Texas Tech got the offensive board like five times in a row and then finally wheeled the ball in the hoop because it felt like for the first 35 minutes of this game, Texas Tech, every time they scored was a miracle. And they found a way. They wheeled it. They scored that three with nine seconds left.
And then the real egregious thing by Cal is he doesn't call a timeout with nine seconds left. Just lets his team go down there. Boogie Flynn takes kind of a fade away, the front iron. That was avoidable, and Texas Tech, incredible fight by them. They deserve all the credit.
It was the classic Todd Bowles. You can't take him with you. Yeah. You got the timeout, burn a hole. I guess he was like, I guess maybe we can just catch him by surprise. Yeah. But maybe his thought was that Darian Williams would be winded after backing the guy down. He wouldn't get back on defense. Maybe a travel.
Darian Williams, by the way, I enjoy watching him play very much because he is just always bumping and grinding.
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Chapter 2: How did LeBron James stir controversy on McAfee's show?
It feels desperate of, like, trying to push, you know, I'm the GOAT conversation. And it always strikes me as weird when guys, like, bash the people who came before them, who not only, like, 70s NBA players, games were on tape delay, guys weren't being paid a ton of money, they were traveling like shit.
Like, those guys built what the NBA eventually became, so you should have a little more, like, reverence for those guys, I would assume. But it's also weird to me because if you're bashing guys from the 70s, what do you think is going to happen in 40 years? You're going to get bashed, yeah. Right. It's like having a conversation.
Everyone knows someone who's a big gossip and always has inside telling you, oh, this guy's doing this. And they ask you, what's going on in your life? And you're like, no, you're just going to tell this to everyone else. You can't – if you're going to bash the 70s, they're going to bash you eventually.
Or it's like hypothetically if a coach left a job unceremoniously. Right. What do you think he's going to do to your job at some point?
Right. It's just so weird to me. Like you're going to get – it's going to come around on you, LeBron. I don't know why – you could just take the high road and be like – The guys in the 70s were great in their own way. The eras have changed. Basketball has evolved. But I appreciate them, and I hope people will appreciate what I've done for the sport in 40 years.
Also, is he saying that if you took modern-day Giannis and then just teleported him back in time and dropped him in the middle of a game, he would dominate? Okay, that's probably correct. He'd probably be the best player by far. But also, if you were to take Giannis and then have him be born in that era... He probably would never play in the NBA because they didn't scout in Greece. Correct.
And so LeBron, if he had been born in that era, probably would have been a great player, great basketball player, one of the best. But he wouldn't be a carbon copy of who he is today.
Would he have been able to play for 20-plus years? No way. Super teams didn't exist. He might never have won a title. Yeah. But he also, like, his career longevity is because of how far we've come in sports science. You'd think... Like, to bash those guys, they were playing in fucking Converse and Chuck Taylors.
Yeah, I don't like him going at Wendy. Yeah, Wendy was too much. I don't like that. But I do like the fact that Stephen A. is like, I would have swung on him if he put hands on me.
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