Speaker 1: H m hmmmm mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to all the smoke. Day two in our
Speaker 2: new building.
Speaker 3: It's still pretty naked, but we just met with the
Speaker 3: designer this morning to get some final touches. It's it's
Speaker 3: gonna come alive, trust me, Jack. I was really excited
Speaker 3: about this one because one, first of all, I have
Speaker 3: a lot of respect for what he's done to this
Speaker 3: space and and and the longevity's had. But also I've
Speaker 3: been outwardly what's the right word, I can use critical?
Speaker 2: Critical?
Speaker 3: There you go where we're gonna. We're in the world tidy.
Speaker 3: I could tell you're already finishing my senses. I've been
Speaker 3: critical of of sometimes some of his critiques, but you
Speaker 3: you know me, I'm someone that wants to learn and
Speaker 3: have conversations about people that I may disagree with or
Speaker 3: you know, stuff like that. So before I picked my
Speaker 3: bone with you, mister Bayless, yes, I want to really
Speaker 3: give you your flowers for what you've been able to do.
Speaker 3: I really got a chance to kind of study up
Speaker 3: on you and your journey with your family and just
Speaker 3: kind of the way you grinded to the absolute top
Speaker 3: of this business.
Speaker 2: If there is a hall of fame for this.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you will be in it one day, but
Speaker 3: really just what you've meant and the inspiration you've been
Speaker 3: to a lot of people. You know, you gave Jack
Speaker 3: his first opportunity, and we'll talk about that in a
Speaker 3: little bit, but really just wanted to let you know,
Speaker 3: you know now that you're officially kind of off TV,
Speaker 3: still in the game, but off TV.
Speaker 2: That we really appreciated everything you've done in this space.
Speaker 4: Honored by everything you just said. Much respect for you
Speaker 4: and the man to your right. I've been on TV
Speaker 4: with both of you, and I'm looking forward to being
Speaker 4: in your space. Yeah, the view and I hand flowers
Speaker 4: back to both of you, because you have blazed a
Speaker 4: new trail and I'm in awe of it. And when
Speaker 4: I first heard about it, I thought interesting because you
Speaker 4: both have wisdom and edge that you brought from many
Speaker 4: many years of playing on the edge, and you brought
Speaker 4: it together here. It's a great pairing and you broke through,
Speaker 4: both of you, and you're on the rise and rising
Speaker 4: and you haven't seen the top yet. And you should
Speaker 4: both be congratulated because as players, you both had to
Speaker 4: fight your way up. That man went, where'd you go? Australia,
Speaker 4: Dominican where else? Venezuela right just to get to the league,
Speaker 4: and you did your G league time and then you
Speaker 4: both broke through in the league in different ways in
Speaker 4: different places, and then you recreated here and this is
Speaker 4: more successful than either of you ever were to me
Speaker 4: in the league, no question. So congratulations, thanks you and
Speaker 4: fire away.
Speaker 3: Let's get to let's get to the ship now. So
Speaker 3: obviously again, you know, you guys changed the dynamic with
Speaker 3: Debate TV. But I felt like, kind of like the
Speaker 3: last three years and where I kind of was outwardly,
Speaker 3: you know, critiquing as you would critique, was I kind
Speaker 3: of felt it went from critiquing the game, it went
Speaker 3: poor play, shitty team to personal attacks and two people
Speaker 3: in particular, I felt kind of it got personal at times.
Speaker 3: Was with Russell Westbrook and Lebron James. From your experience
Speaker 3: and understanding who you were, your role, how you really
Speaker 3: found your niche and again as sail to the top
Speaker 3: what at one point I felt like there was a
Speaker 3: line again it was critiquing because I was the job,
Speaker 3: and then I felt like the line kind of race
Speaker 3: and it was more personal attacks. Can you kind of
Speaker 3: address your thinking during that and reasoning or the way
Speaker 3: you looked at it.
Speaker 4: Okay, we got to go one at a time, different
Speaker 4: situations and circumstances for both of those players. Do who
Speaker 4: want to start with Lebron?
Speaker 2: Whoever you would like to?
Speaker 4: Okay, I say what I see and I still believe
Speaker 4: to this moment, Lebron has been the most overprotected superstar
Speaker 4: in the history of the game. I have thrown him many, many,
Speaker 4: many flowers when it's time to throw flowers. I have
Speaker 4: constantly consistently, though nobody wants to hear me do this,
Speaker 4: but I've said to this day, to this moment, he's
Speaker 4: still the best passer in basketball on a nightly basis.
Speaker 4: As I always say, I watch every dribble of every game.
Speaker 4: He will take my breath away twice a game with
Speaker 4: a pass he'll make where I'll say, that's just special,
Speaker 4: that's that's a gift. He's a generational passer of the basketball,
Speaker 4: and I've said a thousand times sometimes to that man.
Speaker 4: He is easily the greatest driver of the basketball I've
Speaker 4: ever seen, because he's ambidextrous at six ' nine whatever
Speaker 4: we give him now to sixty issue and obviously an
Speaker 4: explosive athlete with the highest IQ in basketball. It's somewhere
Speaker 4: between him and Magic with the highest IQ. Ever, to me,
Speaker 4: that's just me, and I know that's pretty subjective. I
Speaker 4: frame all this with the positivity, and obviously what he's
Speaker 4: done off the court is stellar. It's not a leid,
Speaker 4: but in this day and age, it's close. We know
Speaker 4: all the racial social justice what he just did with Kamala,
Speaker 4: but highest marks. Okay, So now we take this man
Speaker 4: who is the greatest score in the history of this game,
Speaker 4: and let's start with this. By his standards, he's a
Speaker 4: poor three point shooter, and by his standards, he's a
Speaker 4: pathetic free throw shooter. At seventy four percent for his career,
Speaker 4: Jordan was eighty four percent Magic Bird, they're ninety ish
Speaker 4: percent KD ninety percent. There have been so many flame
Speaker 4: out moments for Lebron in his career. And remember on TV,
Speaker 4: I was often thrown up against Shannon Sharp, who loves
Speaker 4: Lebron like a brother, I mean, like like a stalker, right,
Speaker 4: I mean it got a little scary for me. Sometimes scared,
Speaker 4: all right, But he's just proclaiming Lebron better than Jordan. Well,
Speaker 4: I'm the biggest Jordan fan.
Speaker 2: In his I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm I'm withky.
Speaker 4: Okay, Like I get goosebumps talking about Michael Jeffery Jordan
Speaker 4: because I got to know him. I was there in
Speaker 4: Chicago in ninety eight for the Last Dance Season. Listen,
Speaker 4: this man is. He's in another universe to me from
Speaker 4: Lebron Bleeping James. So if you're gonna compare them, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna say Jordan never had any epic fails and anything
Speaker 4: he did in the playoffs, even when they lost, when
Speaker 4: he didn't have Pip yet, he'd score sixty three in overtime.
Speaker 4: But Boston and Larry Bird would say, I just saw
Speaker 4: God in sneakers, you know, like, Okay, all right, So
Speaker 4: that's the framework of what I'm doing again. Do I
Speaker 4: hate Lebron? I don't know Lebron. I'm actually happy I
Speaker 4: don't because I'm afraid if I were around him very much.
Speaker 4: I think he's a really good guy, a really nice guy,
Speaker 4: sometimes nice to a fault. Because I was around Jordan
Speaker 4: a lot, not a nice guy all the time. He
Speaker 4: was a bad MF man and he wore it on
Speaker 4: his sleeves and when it was time to be a
Speaker 4: bad MF. He scared the hell out of the rest
Speaker 4: of the league. I don't think Lebron scares the hell
Speaker 4: out of the rest of the league because I think
Speaker 4: they all really like him and he wants to be
Speaker 4: liked to a fault.
Speaker 3: Can you give us your reason behind the Westbrook situation?
Speaker 4: So this runs deep for me, and there is some
Speaker 4: personal here. I will admit I was a Kevin Durant
Speaker 4: fan since he was at Texas. So I was on
Speaker 4: a show called Cold Pizza in two thousand and four
Speaker 4: in New York City. I start watching this kid from
Speaker 4: DC and I say, this is something, man, this is
Speaker 4: going to be revolutionary. He looks like he's seven feet
Speaker 4: tall and he's long, and he can shoot the hell
Speaker 4: out of it from mid range. I mean shoot the
Speaker 4: hell out of it like he's shooting little free throws,
Speaker 4: you know, like it's just it's gimmes where nobody can
Speaker 4: touch it because he's shooting it up so high that
Speaker 4: you try to defend him, and hey, you can try.
Speaker 4: What what are you six eighthesay? So you can go
Speaker 4: up as hard and as high as you go right
Speaker 4: on time, you can time it perfectly. You can get
Speaker 4: as hot, you can hit your apex of reach, and
Speaker 4: if he goes up correctly, you got no shots. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because it's over you. And he's too damn good at
Speaker 4: what he does, and he works hard at it, and
Speaker 4: he shoots a billion shots. He's just one of those guys.
Speaker 4: He just loves to be in the gym. He's a
Speaker 4: gym rat and he loves to practice fifteen feet, fourteen feet,
Speaker 4: thirteen feet, seventeenth feet automatic. So I'm watching him at
Speaker 4: Texas and he's already a man. I'm on boys, and
Speaker 4: he's playing against some kids who are twenty years old,
Speaker 4: twenty one, twenty two, and I'm saying, wait a second,
Speaker 4: this is this is going to revolution shots. So I
Speaker 4: start saying it on Cole Pizza. I'm on with Woody
Speaker 4: Page and Jay Crawford. They are laughing at me on
Speaker 4: the air, like stop it, it's way too soon. You're overreacting.
Speaker 4: Then we had Bill cellphone coach at Kansas obviously, and
Speaker 4: Jay Crawford our moderators interviewing him. It's not on with us,
Speaker 4: it's just Jay and Bill. And Bill says, could I
Speaker 4: take a left turn here on paraphrase and I said it,
Speaker 4: but he said, I just wanted you to tell Skip
Speaker 4: he's right about Kevin Durant because we can't deal with him.
Speaker 4: Kansas couldn't deal with Kevin Durant. Okay, so he winds
Speaker 4: up in Seattle. But then, okay, I'm from Oklahoma City.
Speaker 4: So they he plays a year in Seattle, but they
Speaker 4: wind up in Okay. See, I never in my life
Speaker 4: could have imagined my hometown would have any pro sport,
Speaker 4: especially an NBA team of magnitude, because they land in
Speaker 4: Oklahoma City and they got Katie and Russ and James.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me? You have three Hall of Famers
Speaker 4: there and you got Surge.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's like you got to deal with We had to
Speaker 4: deal with it. Okay, So right away what happens is
Speaker 4: little brother starts taking more shots than big brother. Russ
Speaker 4: starts taking more shots, and UCLA got your CLA guy.
Speaker 4: But I didn't see Russ coming at UCLA. Stayed for
Speaker 4: two years, and I watched him in the playoffs and
Speaker 4: the marsh Madness and finals, the NCAA Finals or the
Speaker 4: Final four, and I could I don't know if you did,
Speaker 4: but I couldn't see it. Coming. I didn't see this coming, right,
Speaker 4: because go back and look at what is happening, Like
Speaker 4: six or seven points just coming off the bench. I
Speaker 4: could he didn't even catch my eye. Right, It's Kevin
Speaker 4: Love and Collison and you know, like it is a
Speaker 4: good team. Okay, So night after night I'm watching my
Speaker 4: Oklahoma City Thunder and Russell Westbrook is taking more shots.
Speaker 4: I just go back and show you the numbers. He's
Speaker 4: taken more shots than Kevin Durant. I know Kevin's the
Speaker 4: most efficient scorer we've ever seen, but still I'm saying
Speaker 4: that's that's not right. And so I start to criticize
Speaker 4: Russ for taking more shots. This is now I'm on
Speaker 4: first take. And Kevin didn't lie because it was bad
Speaker 4: for their unity, for their their their camaraderie, for their chemistry, because.
Speaker 2: Right, okay, it was bad for the team.
Speaker 5: Okay, if Russ and Katie on the team, Katie should
Speaker 5: be taking more shots. That ain't no shot at Russ
Speaker 5: is just so.
Speaker 4: Kat When when evening before a game, he calls over
Speaker 4: the reporter from the Oklahoma who covers the team, and
Speaker 4: he says, I got something for it, and he blasts me,
Speaker 4: and they put it in the Oklahoma and then I
Speaker 4: have to go on TV the next day and defend
Speaker 4: myself because Kevin said Skip doesn't no ship about basketball,
Speaker 4: and I'm like, yeah, I do. I actually do. And
Speaker 4: what I'm saying is completely true and fair. Kevin, I'm
Speaker 4: your I'm your biggest fan. How can you do this
Speaker 4: to me?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 4: I didn't matter to Kevin, but Russ really really mattered
Speaker 4: to Kevin.
Speaker 2: I want no division in the locker room.
Speaker 4: Okay, So God bless him because you would have done that.
Speaker 4: You would have done that because in the end, all
Speaker 4: that matters is that basketball. And remember, Kevin chose to
Speaker 4: leave Russ. And I was told by somebody very close
Speaker 4: to Kevin Durant the main reason he left OKAC going
Speaker 4: into his tenth year. That was ten years. That's a
Speaker 4: long time he left because this was the quote I
Speaker 4: was told. He finally decided he'd never win with Russ
Speaker 4: as his primary decision maker because Russ is dribbling the
Speaker 4: ball up to court, and it's like Rusk gets to
Speaker 4: choose every time, near you, near you, because Kevin's usually
Speaker 4: just over there like can I have it? No, I'm
Speaker 4: going solo. And sometimes he'd get to the rim and
Speaker 4: slam it and you say, my god, that was spectacular.
Speaker 4: And sometimes the ball is flying into the ninth row
Speaker 4: and you're saying, poor Kevin Durant. And he finally said,
Speaker 4: you know what, you can shame me all you want
Speaker 4: to shame me. I'm going with those guys because I'm
Speaker 4: gonna go get me a ring. And did he not
Speaker 4: do that? Did he not rise and shine in two
Speaker 4: straight finals and take the finals over? I loved it
Speaker 4: because they knew Steph and Clay and Draymond and Steve
Speaker 4: Kerr knew full well they were not going to beat
Speaker 4: Lebron and whoever was left with him we didn't know
Speaker 4: about Kyrie at that point, or Kevin loved but but
Speaker 4: there was no way that they were going to beat
Speaker 4: Lebron without Kevin. And Kevin tilted the playing field. Man.
Speaker 4: He just like like, now there, he's too good. It's
Speaker 4: not that STEP's too good or play's too good. Kevin,
Speaker 4: that guy you you tried to guard and did a
Speaker 4: very You did the best job on him. Seriously, I've
Speaker 4: ever seen anybody do over what was it six games? Okay,
Speaker 4: because because he's just gonna wear you out mentally, and
Speaker 4: physically because you can give all you want, but that
Speaker 4: that's the best I've ever seen anybody do on him
Speaker 4: because nobody can deal with it.
Speaker 2: Nobody.
Speaker 5: I agree with you on on certain things too, about
Speaker 5: Lebron and clutch moments and the rust situation. But you know,
Speaker 5: I don't see I can see how some people take
Speaker 5: it personal.
Speaker 4: Me.
Speaker 5: I'm I think I'm Russ's biggest fan. I talk about
Speaker 5: Russ Moore than everybody. Yeah, and you know I'm how
Speaker 5: I'm brown too. But sometimes people got to understand not
Speaker 5: to twist where they easily twist your words, but if
Speaker 5: they just look at the play and talk about the game,
Speaker 5: A lot of things you're saying are true. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think you say about them are true because when you're
Speaker 5: talking about the game, you're not making it personal. When
Speaker 5: it's about the game, you watch the game. A lot
Speaker 5: of players feel the same way. We think Broun should
Speaker 5: take over some times in games, Like I remember one
Speaker 5: game he passed to Kyle Koba. He did for three
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, And I gotta thing like,
Speaker 5: you got to take that shot. It's not a personal
Speaker 5: shot at him, But me if I was on that team,
Speaker 5: I would have told him, bro, take that shot. I
Speaker 5: don't care if I'm open, you gotta take that shot.
Speaker 5: That stuff you do be saying just for your for
Speaker 5: your side, I agree with because as a basketball player,
Speaker 5: you won't throw stars to make those plays.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you have a photographic memory? You just fucking
Speaker 3: love it that much, you study it that much. You
Speaker 3: were getting the night Friday Night Game three. I'm just
Speaker 3: like clock you said, do you remember something like fuck, No,
Speaker 3: I don't remember. I mean, Jesus, I love it.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a happen question.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, being in this space for such a
Speaker 3: long time, when did you realize that your words really
Speaker 3: started to carry weight? And it really kind of whether
Speaker 3: it was a positive or a negative, it really kind
Speaker 3: of had people talking at what point in your career.
Speaker 4: I take what I do like crazy, Seriously, I'm obsessed
Speaker 4: with it to this moment, I'm more obsessed than ever,
Speaker 4: as I just demonstrated. But off camera, I don't think
Speaker 4: like that, like I'm important or my words carry weight.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It started in two thousand and four
Speaker 4: called Pizza, when I would be shocked when Bill self
Speaker 4: would take a detour on live National TV and say, hey,
Speaker 4: Skip was right about Kevin Durant. And I'm thinking Bill
Speaker 4: self knew that I said that about it Kevin. That's
Speaker 4: interesting because I actually covered Bill when he was a
Speaker 4: coach at Illinois way back when. And I know him
Speaker 4: a little bit, but he's really good at what he does.
Speaker 4: I know they've had some issues and whatnot, but but
Speaker 4: he's just really good. So if he said that he
Speaker 4: knows basketball, and he knows that I know basketball, so
Speaker 4: so that that had gravity to me, That that had
Speaker 4: foundation to me where I said, Okay, people are listening
Speaker 4: watching taking me more seriously than I take myself because
Speaker 4: I'm just spilling because I'm a fan. Nobody loves the
Speaker 4: game you played more than I do. Nobody trust me
Speaker 4: on this. I just spill it every night. I like
Speaker 4: to night. I already looked at the schedule. I'm gonna watch.
Speaker 4: I like the thunder Way more than I like the
Speaker 4: Westbrook Durant Hard and thunder They were hard to love
Speaker 4: for me, just because Russ and then James and it
Speaker 4: was just different. Hey, this thing what they got going
Speaker 4: right now?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 3: H and if they got an unprotected pick next Clippers protected?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, they do, and I have been so hard
Speaker 4: over the last twenty years on white American centers being
Speaker 4: taken in the lottery. Anybody seven foot and above who's
Speaker 4: white and American. I can just show you chapter and verse.
Speaker 4: They're disasters. You know what they're You know why, because
Speaker 4: they're classic, they're classic stiffs. They're just all they got.
Speaker 2: All they got is.
Speaker 4: That they're seven foot one. That's all they got. But
Speaker 4: they can't play basketball. I can do a whole long listed,
Speaker 4: but the one I got I just did on my
Speaker 4: podcast this week. You remember Meyers Leonard? Okay, all right,
Speaker 4: so you cross his path? Okay you did, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: That was the one where I got in trouble at
Speaker 4: ESPN for saying on Draft Day, because the rumors were
Speaker 4: he was going to go late lottery. I said, no,
Speaker 4: bad idea, really bad idea, and I used on the
Speaker 4: air because he's white America. Now is the eurocenters, you know, joker,
Speaker 4: And we can just go on back to Valancunos and
Speaker 4: all the way back to Sabonus's dad and all those.
Speaker 4: So the point is that the white American sinners have
Speaker 4: been disasters until I saw this video to what two
Speaker 4: years ago, this kid up in Minneapolis whose father played
Speaker 4: at Minnesota and was probably a white stiff at Minnesota.
Speaker 4: But this kid named Hongrid, he could jump, like quick jump,
Speaker 4: and he was long and like bean pole skinny, but
Speaker 4: he could run. I mean he can run. And his
Speaker 4: shot is textbook pure stroke, like like pretty stroke, Like
Speaker 4: you couldn't teach your kid to shoot it much better
Speaker 4: than he strokes it from three and he shoots it
Speaker 4: like he means it with conviction. I'm saying, hey, that
Speaker 4: that kid can play. And the thunder wind up with
Speaker 4: him and listen, he's off to a ripple and start
Speaker 4: this year because he went to Joker on opening nine
Speaker 4: and busted his We did a number on with.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean as great as Wimby is, And
Speaker 3: obviously we don't know the future, but we had a
Speaker 3: debate with Kendrick Parkins and can you possibly see Chet
Speaker 3: being just as good, if not better than Wemby And
Speaker 3: obviously they both have long, great careers, long to pointers.
Speaker 4: But chat out played Wimby the other night and then
Speaker 4: Wimby plays at Utah last night and they haven't won
Speaker 4: a game and marking and didn't play and Wimby puts
Speaker 4: up fives where he's got five steels and five blocks.
Speaker 4: Well obviously, well I mean, and yet you know I'm
Speaker 4: gonna do this with you just real quick, because you
Speaker 4: know I've long been a Spurs fan back to George
Speaker 4: Gerbin because his finger rolls and all his magic at
Speaker 4: the basket. It just I was mesmerized by the iceman.
Speaker 4: But I can't wrap my arms around Pop. I just can't.
Speaker 4: You had your issues. He's just like Belichick to me.
Speaker 4: With Brady, I think Pop was in large part a
Speaker 4: product of Tim Bleeping Duncan, because Timmy was such a
Speaker 4: great locker room leader like Brady was. That Pop could
Speaker 4: be old school tough, you know, hard ass and all that,
Speaker 4: like Belichick, but Tim would tell everybody it's cool, it's cool,
Speaker 4: just just just tune it out or whatever. We're gonna
Speaker 4: win a whole bunch of games. And obviously Edmin and Tony,
Speaker 4: but once remember Pop used to say, when Timmy walks
Speaker 4: out that door, I will be right behind him. Well
Speaker 4: guess what, ladies and gentlemen. That was eight years ago,
Speaker 4: and Pop signed for another three years. Because that was bullshit,
Speaker 4: That's what that was. And people swallowed that bullshit from Pop,
Speaker 4: and ever since Timmy walked out that door, show me
Speaker 4: what Pop has done. Do you see the goat coach?
Speaker 4: Because I don't see it. And with Wimby last year,
Speaker 4: he ran away with the blocks. Lead crushed chet and
Speaker 4: blocks last year and he was obviously by the end
Speaker 4: of the year, he was extraordinary. And they only won
Speaker 4: twenty two games, and they're not off to a great
Speaker 4: start this year. And you say Chess got a better team,
Speaker 4: Sure he does. I mean they're just loaded, They're like
Speaker 4: ten deep. But the Spurs have some talent on that team,
Speaker 4: and I don't see it reach any fruition. And I'm
Speaker 4: wondering how long is the honeymoon for Pop?
Speaker 5: Well, right, what I will say about that is if
Speaker 5: you look at the coaching staff when I was there,
Speaker 5: with Mike Brown and coach Bud, they both went off
Speaker 5: to have great careers and great coaches in anybate to
Speaker 5: this day. Okay, So I would say Pop is not
Speaker 5: a great basketball coach. Good he's with you.
Speaker 2: He's a great leader of men, all right.
Speaker 3: Because for me, You're gonna take some heat for that shit,
Speaker 3: But that's fine, that's okay.
Speaker 5: That's fine because because he had great coaches up under him.
Speaker 5: I think Papa is a great leader of men. You
Speaker 5: know what I'm saying, putting guys in the right position
Speaker 5: a perfect example.
Speaker 2: I would say this.
Speaker 5: If I didn't go to San Antonio or the beginning
Speaker 5: of my career, I wouldn't learn how to be a professional.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't learn how to be approciate that I want
Speaker 5: to learn how to prepare. And that's what Pop does.
Speaker 5: He brings He makes everybody buy into a championship idea,
Speaker 5: what should happen, what a championship, a team and organizations
Speaker 5: should look like. And he he brings the right pieces around.
Speaker 5: That's why he had Mike Brown is white had, but
Speaker 5: news his white had, PJ. Carlossimo, all these guys. He
Speaker 5: even brought Sam Presty, and Sam Presty is doing it okay. See,
Speaker 5: So he's good at bringing the right people around there
Speaker 5: and leading men together.
Speaker 4: To be you afraid of him.
Speaker 2: Not at all. I'm not afraid of nothing. But God,
Speaker 2: I was not afraid of him.
Speaker 4: Most guys are.
Speaker 5: And I challenged him a lot. I challenged him a
Speaker 5: lot because a lot of the things he was doing.
Speaker 5: It wasn't because I wasn't a good basketball player. He
Speaker 5: was trying to He was trying to make me a
Speaker 5: mature man, right, being in games and mad because I
Speaker 5: didn't get the ball or something like that, and arguing
Speaker 5: with my teammate that wasn't that wasn't the winning way
Speaker 5: in San Antonio. So he was trying to raise me
Speaker 5: as a man. I didn't understand that at the time.
Speaker 5: I thought he was just being just picking on me.
Speaker 4: But you fired back at him enough times he finally
Speaker 4: said that's enough.
Speaker 2: I had enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, well, actually, you know, he didn't give me
Speaker 5: my big contract ifter.
Speaker 2: Won the championship. That was his way of saying, I'm
Speaker 2: in control. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So things like that that'll bother you with pop. But
Speaker 5: as a leader, I don't think you're gonna find a
Speaker 5: better leader.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: R C.
Speaker 4: Buford. You played around and under him as the GM
Speaker 4: of that team. Yep, I'm gonna remind everybody.
Speaker 2: R C.
Speaker 4: Buford did not play basketball. He was a walk on
Speaker 4: college football player at Oklahoma State, and he talked Larry
Speaker 4: Brown at Kansas into letting him be a Gopher on
Speaker 4: their basketball staff. I don't even know how that started,
Speaker 4: but it did, and that led to one thing after another,
Speaker 4: and he winds up in San Antonio and you can
Speaker 4: make a case he was the greatest builder of a
Speaker 4: dynasty we've ever seen. Because it's pretty easy to take
Speaker 4: Tim Duncan, but it wasn't easy to take Tony Parker
Speaker 4: at the end of the first round. And it was
Speaker 4: definitely not easy to steal My Nugenobali at the bottom
Speaker 4: of the draft, right, And it was not easy to
Speaker 4: go steal Kawhi Leonard from Indiana for George Hill. Remember
Speaker 4: it was basically that was the trade. It was George
Speaker 4: Hill and the seventeenth pick, and you get Kawhi. Really,
Speaker 4: you got Kawhi Leonard. That's how you build a dynasty.
Speaker 4: So was Pop not blessed to have RC Buford?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Okay, so it all came together. But ever since Timmy
Speaker 4: walked out that door, I'm not seeing a whole lot
Speaker 4: from him. I'm not seeing special where There'll be a
Speaker 4: night I'll be watching Wemby and I'll say, you know what,
Speaker 4: they got something cooking here, you know, because strategically they
Speaker 4: know how to play defense or whatever. I don't see
Speaker 4: any defensive commitment and Wemby is still taking way too
Speaker 4: many threes. He's shooting twenty three percent from three and
Speaker 4: he's got a beautiful stroke. But it's just like to say,
Speaker 4: work seven and four seven. I don't want him just
Speaker 4: standing out there all the time taking eight threes a game.
Speaker 4: He took thirteen last night at Utah and made four
Speaker 4: of them.
Speaker 2: Way to go.
Speaker 5: But what a lot of what populack Tim Duncan picked
Speaker 5: up on, like you said, yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: At a lot of stuff like they worked hand in hand,
Speaker 5: so you know he's It's definitely everybody knew it wasn't
Speaker 5: gonna be the same once Tim walked out that door.
Speaker 2: We all knew that.
Speaker 4: You were in that locker room with him. Was he
Speaker 4: not as as powerful a quiet force as there ever was?
Speaker 2: By far? By far?
Speaker 4: He ran He ran there say a whole lot you
Speaker 4: just knew, yep.
Speaker 5: And he said that tone that you had, that he
Speaker 5: demanded that respect, you know what I mean. And I
Speaker 5: think that's why they had so much success, because if
Speaker 5: you got that respect at the top, it's gonna trinkle
Speaker 5: down and everybody's gonna buy in. I've been to a
Speaker 5: lot on his organizations where you never know who the
Speaker 5: owner is one and and everybody's not buying in. You
Speaker 5: got coaches with their own way of doing things. You
Speaker 5: got coaches talking behind each other back that don't happen
Speaker 5: in San Antono. Everybody's buying in on the same page.
Speaker 5: That's done when you have that much success.
Speaker 4: You said it, I didn't. You said not a great
Speaker 4: basketball coach.
Speaker 5: Right, No, he's a great leader though, bringing but he's
Speaker 5: not a great basketball coach's leader because he might he
Speaker 5: comes from a military background, in my right or wrong,
Speaker 5: I've come from so that alone. Being able to put
Speaker 5: people in the right place and to lead guys in
Speaker 5: like that's not easy, as you think.
Speaker 2: He's not ancent That's why he had.
Speaker 5: But that's why you see the coaches that leave from
Speaker 5: him or email you dope. All these coaches that leave
Speaker 5: him become great coaches on their own because there were
Speaker 5: great coaches under him.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. He was just leading them
Speaker 2: and putting them in the right positions. It's a good
Speaker 2: quality to have. Absolutely, Yeah, he's a great leader.
Speaker 4: Probably who was the strongest coach you played for, the
Speaker 4: most powerful force in the locker room? Somebody you really
Speaker 4: looked up.
Speaker 3: To Bill Jackson really quiet though quietly. But I only
Speaker 3: got a year of him, and I got the end
Speaker 3: the end of his rule.
Speaker 4: Which year was.
Speaker 3: Ten or eleven eleven, where he had cancer and he
Speaker 3: was going to step away from the game. But the
Speaker 3: aura of his in his presence is strong.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And I came in the year they had just one
Speaker 3: tune we were going for a three p and that
Speaker 3: you know, hurt myself and towards the end of the playoffs.
Speaker 3: But the trust he instilled in you, if you put
Speaker 3: you out there, he trust you. He's not going to
Speaker 3: be a coach. I mean, we know he's not up
Speaker 3: there screaming and doing all kinds of ship. When he
Speaker 3: puts the guys out there, he trusts him and he
Speaker 3: allows you to play the mistakes and make mistakes.
Speaker 4: He wants you to figure it out on the court,
Speaker 4: and he's not a time out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I really, I really, you know, And I
Speaker 3: got a chance to play for you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of good coaches, but I think Phil is the one
Speaker 3: that jumps to the top as far as because I'm
Speaker 3: really mental too, you know, I love the mental side
Speaker 3: of it. Yeah, absolutely. When I tore my knee. He
Speaker 3: was calling me after the games like would you see
Speaker 3: out there? And I'm like, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: Who was this again? Is my coachs?
Speaker 3: Give me what I saw with Kobe and Big Drew
Speaker 3: and pas So, yeah, it was interesting.
Speaker 4: Well, because he respected your acumen, you view your knowledge,
Speaker 4: your eyes. Yeah, So did you ever challenge him?
Speaker 2: I didn't need.
Speaker 3: There was there was no need to. All right, the interview,
Speaker 3: I'll just say no, I'll say the reason why I
Speaker 3: never there was. There was never need because the way
Speaker 3: he talked to Cod set the tone. He wasn't going
Speaker 3: for cod ship, and Cod wasn't going for his ship.
Speaker 3: But the fact that he could say that the Cod
Speaker 3: made everyone else just like, well shit, if he's gonna
Speaker 3: say that.
Speaker 2: The cold with the fuck that we had.
Speaker 3: Was king in a book before the before Yeah, but
Speaker 3: in person and way, him and Ronalds used to go
Speaker 3: at each other.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they were talking real ship.
Speaker 3: Ron started talking about Phil's feet one time, how fucked
Speaker 3: up they were, and we lost.
Speaker 5: Well two thousand and seven. What what did you see
Speaker 5: in Steven ad to give him a shot?
Speaker 4: Okay, we go way back before that. Okay, first time
Speaker 4: I laid eyes on. Stephen A. Smith was at the
Speaker 4: United Center, the house that Michael built nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: I'm at the Chicago Tribune covering the Bulls. Philly was
Speaker 4: in town. Steve and I was covering Larry Brown's team
Speaker 4: at that point, I think it was covering the sixers
Speaker 4: for the Philadelphia Choir. And he came in the media
Speaker 4: room before the game and he was suited and booted,
Speaker 4: coat and tie. Sports writers didn't wear coats and ties,
Speaker 4: and I was impressed because he was trying to send
Speaker 4: a message. I'm legit. I take this very seriously. I'm
Speaker 4: here to do a job and I'm dressing appropriately. He
Speaker 4: later told me that Larry Brown was the one who suggested, well,
Speaker 4: why don't you do because I'm gonna wear a coat
Speaker 4: and tie, you should wear one too. And Steve and
Speaker 4: I didn't have coats and ties, and Larry, I think,
Speaker 4: hooked him up at a mall, at a shop and
Speaker 4: a mall where he had some discount or something so
Speaker 4: that Steven A could go buy enough suits to last
Speaker 4: through a road trip. So that impressed me. Then probably
Speaker 4: two thousand, we're here in La now, but there was
Speaker 4: a network pre fs one on that same Fox lot
Speaker 4: not too far from here called Fox Sports Net, and
Speaker 4: Jim Rome had an afternoon show, a TV show called
Speaker 4: The Last Word, and I don't know how this happened,
Speaker 4: but faithfully we got paired on a show with Jim
Speaker 4: as the wingman. So Jim would sit in the middle,
Speaker 4: Steven over here, I'm over here. He would. Jim would
Speaker 4: throw up a topic and we'd start going at it,
Speaker 4: and right away I just liked him, and we clicked
Speaker 4: and connected off camera because he started to a respect
Speaker 4: me and be trust me in ways that me coming
Speaker 4: from Oklahoma City and him coming from Queens was a
Speaker 4: billion to one shot. But we just clicked and we
Speaker 4: were both We had newspaper hearts, sportswriter hearts, so we'd
Speaker 4: come from the same business, and he respected my ability
Speaker 4: to write, and I definitely respected his bill report. And
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, Jim Rowl was saying, it's like
Speaker 4: watching a tennis match where he's just his head's just
Speaker 4: on a swivel, boom boom boom, and Steven A would
Speaker 4: let me go hard at him. And he's got a
Speaker 4: huge ego, bigger than my ego, which I love about
Speaker 4: him because that's who he is and what he is
Speaker 4: that makes him Stephen A. Smith. I love that he
Speaker 4: called himself Stephen A.
Speaker 2: Smith.
Speaker 4: That was just a cool name to me because Steve Smith,
Speaker 4: you know, it's not that great. We know some Steve
Speaker 4: Smith and it's okay, but but you're not going to
Speaker 4: be quite as big unless you're Steven A Smith.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: Smart branding, It was brilliant branding. But I could go
Speaker 4: hard at him in ways that there's no way he's
Speaker 4: going to let anybody else go at him on camera
Speaker 4: on air because he knew in the end I still
Speaker 4: had his back, and we can go hard about a
Speaker 4: basketball topic because that was his forte. I'm football, basketball, whatever,
Speaker 4: but it's mostly basketball and it would be explosively great
Speaker 4: to watch. And we both knew it. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: like it was contrived.
Speaker 2: It was real.
Speaker 4: It was natural. We just naturally disagreed on just about everything.
Speaker 4: So Jim got a contract Snapfoo and left, and they
Speaker 4: wanted us to replace Jim with the show PTI had
Speaker 4: just launched. It was maybe three or four months old
Speaker 4: obviously on ESPN, so they wanted a PTI esque show
Speaker 4: with edge. That's how they proposed us with Edge and
Speaker 4: a producer is still a close friend of mine and
Speaker 4: Steve and A's name, John Johnston, came up with the
Speaker 4: title sports in black and White. This is two thousand
Speaker 4: and two, so we're way ahead of our sort of time.
Speaker 4: And we did a pilot and we did sort of
Speaker 4: PTI ED two. Yeah, just the two of us going
Speaker 4: back and forth with a guest that we brought in
Speaker 4: just for the pilot, Raymond Sini, the boxer. George Green
Speaker 4: ran the network, came flying out of the control room
Speaker 4: when we finished and said I could put this on
Speaker 4: the air tonight. Okay, so we're starting to talk to
Speaker 4: John about moving to LA and we're going to launch this.
Speaker 4: This is a long time ago. This is twenty two
Speaker 4: years ago, so this would have changed history and it
Speaker 4: ran up the flagpole to the top. And I'm not
Speaker 4: going to name names, but somebody way upstairs said no
Speaker 4: to Steven A because he was just too edgy for
Speaker 4: them at that point. And I'm like, he's not edgy,
Speaker 4: it's just he's a showman. He's people don't take it
Speaker 4: that seriously, that like they're not going to overreact to it,
Speaker 4: that they'll love it, because that's what you want, you
Speaker 4: want this kind of edge. I'm edgier than he is
Speaker 4: to all the questions you asked me, because steven A
Speaker 4: doesn't take it quite as seriously as I do. But
Speaker 4: we're a great click. Okay, So I'm so we got
Speaker 4: left at the altar on that one. So when I
Speaker 4: got to ESPN Pizza, we started to overlap he was
Speaker 4: doing quite frankly. We're both based in New York, so
Speaker 4: we would be on each other's shows. And then his
Speaker 4: plug got pulled and then they took us up to
Speaker 4: Bristol and rebranded us first take. We had about a
Speaker 4: three or four year run where steven A got pushed
Speaker 4: out the back door in Bristol. I mean, they did
Speaker 4: not renew him, and I don't know, you have to
Speaker 4: ask him the real backstory. But he came out here
Speaker 4: to Fox Sports Radio and he was here for two years.
Speaker 4: And you can ask my wife about this. He would
Speaker 4: call me every day and say can you get me
Speaker 4: back on the Worldwide Leader? And I would beat on
Speaker 4: every door in that building. You can ask them all
Speaker 4: if I didn't just keep saying, what are we doing?
Speaker 4: This is ridiculous. He's gifted. He's a force. We got
Speaker 4: to get him back here, and finally, I think it
Speaker 4: took two years. They imposed their will on him, you know,
Speaker 4: because he was too full of himself, I guess, and
Speaker 4: made him sort of crawl back, if you will, and
Speaker 4: they let him ease back in on New York Radio
Speaker 4: and writing for New York ESPN dot com. I was
Speaker 4: just ashamed of it, but I kept fighting because then
Speaker 4: I was going solo on first take with a rotation
Speaker 4: of guest debaters. We had all kinds of people coming in,
Speaker 4: Jamel Hill, Michael Smith and two live stews, and Chris
Speaker 4: Brusard was in the mix, and we had all kinds
Speaker 4: of different people coming in. And we had a run
Speaker 4: in the t Bow season, which was twenty eleven, where
Speaker 4: we just were just rating through the roof. But at
Speaker 4: the end of that season, I told Jamie Horowitz, who
Speaker 4: was our showrunner, they would let us have Steven A
Speaker 4: once a week for one segment at the top of
Speaker 4: the second hour, and that was it, because he was
Speaker 4: still being punished or whatever. And I said, just get
Speaker 4: me him. The rotation's fine, and our ratings were great,
Speaker 4: but I need him daily where I could wake up
Speaker 4: thinking I got him, because that's where you don't lose
Speaker 4: any sleep because I got a new you know, a
Speaker 4: new opponent so to speak. The next day, I wonder
Speaker 4: how he's going to be. I wonder what this is
Speaker 4: going to be. We got a whole new dynamic tomorrow,
Speaker 4: wonder how that's going to work. I wanted to be
Speaker 4: able to sleep peacefully because I had my man back.
Speaker 4: So to your question, that that's how we fought through
Speaker 4: that and finally got him back full time. And the
Speaker 4: rest is his year.
Speaker 3: What year did you guys reconnect and finally back full time?
Speaker 4: Twenty eleven he became at the very end. It was
Speaker 4: like we were. I went to the Super Bowl. It
Speaker 4: was the Brady It was in Indianapolis, the Brady Giant
Speaker 4: second Super Bowl. So it was right in that week.
Speaker 4: That was the first time he came back on full
Speaker 4: time and we launched, re relaunched.
Speaker 5: Even I said this, Who knows why I'd be if
Speaker 5: SKIP didn't put me on first take.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I just still I look back at
Speaker 4: that time, you push him out the back door. No, seriously,
Speaker 4: like it's it's the dumbest thing ESPN has ever done
Speaker 4: in the history of ESPN. I know some dumb things
Speaker 4: have happened. That was dumb.
Speaker 2: They making up for it. Now they taking care of
Speaker 2: him now.
Speaker 4: Okay, well good, he deserves it. He's worth every penny of.
Speaker 2: Money. Right, he'll get it.
Speaker 5: Good friend, What do you have to say about people
Speaker 5: feel like first take debate and hot take format was
Speaker 5: bad for sports media.
Speaker 4: I don't have any respect for that. As stephen A
Speaker 4: would say, they can all kick rocks. Okay, so I
Speaker 4: know we spawned a million imitators, but I already explained
Speaker 4: to you what we had. You want to talk about
Speaker 4: rare chemistry. I can't make it up, coach it. I
Speaker 4: can't teach it. I can say thank you God for it.
Speaker 4: And that's all I can say, thank you God because
Speaker 4: we connected and they all tried and failed whatever. Because
Speaker 4: if you don't know how to do it, or you
Speaker 4: don't have any rapport with your debate partner, it will
Speaker 4: flop miserably and it'll be hard to watch, and it
Speaker 4: will be contrived and tricked up, and you have to
Speaker 4: have natural disagreement or it won't work. Because I'm not
Speaker 4: sure stephen A really really disagreed with a lot of
Speaker 4: what I said. He just it just pissed him off
Speaker 4: that I would saying, you know, we're just it would
Speaker 4: just as he would say, you get on my last nerve,
Speaker 4: you know, and I would get on his last nerve
Speaker 4: and we'd be off to the races. He as opposed
Speaker 4: to Shannon. It was very different than Shannon our chemistry
Speaker 4: because stephen A would always say you go first, you
Speaker 4: go first, because he wants to do this.
Speaker 2: He would be character back.
Speaker 4: And listen to me because he knows I'm going to
Speaker 4: prep harder than him. I got the photograph memory. So
Speaker 4: he's like, just spew, just go ahead and just just
Speaker 4: regurgitate all over the table, you know, just vomit everywhere,
Speaker 4: throw all your stuff out. And he would sit back,
Speaker 4: classically greatest gift of gab I ever experienced, arms folded
Speaker 4: and say wait a second, did you just say so
Speaker 4: and so and so and so? And I'd say, yeah,
Speaker 4: I did what of it?
Speaker 2: And oh we go?
Speaker 4: But he would pick a little like part C of
Speaker 4: my ABC argument and jump all over it. And the
Speaker 4: control room is saying, what the hell are they doing?
Speaker 4: Because we've left the topic way behind and we're going
Speaker 4: way over here and magic is happening. Okay, I can't.
Speaker 4: I can't teach your coach.
Speaker 3: That you were able to catch lightning in a bottle twice?
Speaker 3: The magic ew and Shannon had How did how did
Speaker 3: that partnership beautiful come apart or come together?
Speaker 4: On Undisputed? I needed a new partner, and faithfully and fortunately,
Speaker 4: near the end of my run with steven A, there
Speaker 4: was a week in which steven I had to go
Speaker 4: do something somewhere. He was always gallivant and all around
Speaker 4: the country doing whatever he did, being steven A Smith.
Speaker 4: And we tried Shannon Sharp, I think for three days,
Speaker 4: and I really liked him in a very different way
Speaker 4: than I loved steven A. But I liked our click
Speaker 4: and it was a whole different dynamic because he's out
Speaker 4: a year mold. Obviously he's in the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4: So now we had ex player. We didn't have journalist journalists.
Speaker 4: We have X player journalist. We both are fitness obsessed,
Speaker 4: so we had that in common, and he right away
Speaker 4: respected me because I'm like a workout addict. I just
Speaker 4: like it. I'm sorry, I apologize for it, but I'm crazed,
Speaker 4: but I just do it because I like it. And
Speaker 4: so to see, and he used to say to me,
Speaker 4: we're way more alike than people think, and I believe
Speaker 4: that's true. I'm coming out here because Jamie Horowitz, do
Speaker 4: you guys know? Okay, So Jamie's here and they're struggling
Speaker 4: and they're going to try to relaunch this FS one
Speaker 4: and Jamie's point to me was, I just need you
Speaker 4: to come here or we're not gonna make it. And
Speaker 4: he had given me a start. Remember when we first
Speaker 4: went up to Bristol, when it was still kind of
Speaker 4: cold pizza ish. We had four segments a show, but
Speaker 4: it was still that show they tried to launch in
Speaker 4: New York in two thousand and four, which was a
Speaker 4: bad idea, but it was the idea of kind of
Speaker 4: a GMA Good Morning America of sports, where it's loosely
Speaker 4: based on sports, but we'll have these four debate segments
Speaker 4: to spice it up and bring back the sports fans.
Speaker 4: And what we found and when we got to Bristol
Speaker 4: was the only thing that rated, and the whole show
Speaker 4: where we'd have four spikes of show, because that's all
Speaker 4: anybody cared about was the debate. They didn't care about
Speaker 4: the pat segments and the ballpark food segments. And the
Speaker 4: cigar segments and all those segments. Nobody cared about that.
Speaker 4: Jamie was the one who took over a year before
Speaker 4: steven A joined full time. And Jamie said, how with
Speaker 4: all this, I'm gonna blow out what's left to cole
Speaker 4: Pizza and we're gonna go all debate for two It's
Speaker 4: a two hour show, obviously there, We're gonna go all
Speaker 4: debate for two full hours. And a lot of people
Speaker 4: in the hallways stopped me and said, this is career
Speaker 4: suicide for you and for Jamie. It'll never work. And
Speaker 4: the rest is history. So Jamie then came round about
Speaker 4: he went to the Today Show, then he wound up here.
Speaker 4: So I felt like he gave me that show. He
Speaker 4: blew it out and sort of rebuilt it around me
Speaker 4: in the two hours of full time debate. So it
Speaker 4: was up to us to select should we do a
Speaker 4: rotation like we did in the beginning. We thought about it,
Speaker 4: and I pushed hard for Shannon because he works hard,
Speaker 4: he prepares hard, and he shows up for work on
Speaker 4: time and love to compete with me. Well, I can't
Speaker 4: make that up. Maybe it's not as many magical is
Speaker 4: the steven A kind of chemistry. But from day one
Speaker 4: it flew and it took off. And to your point,
Speaker 4: I appreciate that I got blessed twice because we took off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know the numbers at the time
Speaker 3: would First Take and undisputed, But I would say from
Speaker 3: just a fan perspective, you guys were right there, if
Speaker 3: not above.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I don't know the numbers.
Speaker 3: But the chemistry you and Shannon had kind of overshadowed
Speaker 3: whatever stephen A was doing on ESPN.
Speaker 4: I'll remind you when I left, First Take was still
Speaker 4: on ESPN two, which has maybe a fifth of the
Speaker 4: eyeballs that regular ESPN has, And as soon as we
Speaker 4: launched here took a month, they moved from it. They
Speaker 4: moved the show up to the big eyeballs to protect
Speaker 4: it because we were going to catch it and pass it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely obviously great chemistry and Shannon had a great run.
Speaker 3: Any regrets on how that partnership ended. Yeah, for the show,
Speaker 3: and then he regrets on how the relationship ended.
Speaker 2: And what did you think about the character, the Uncle
Speaker 2: Shay Shake character.
Speaker 5: He didn't come on, He didn't come on the show
Speaker 5: doing that with the black and mind the do raging,
Speaker 5: hennisy and all that.
Speaker 4: Stuff when he first started it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he didn't come on with that at first when
Speaker 5: he first got on the show. So when all that
Speaker 5: came about, what you think about that.
Speaker 4: Too, Okay, it's better for you guys to respond to
Speaker 4: that than me. But I was still very close with
Speaker 4: steven A at that point. He did not love.
Speaker 2: It, no, yeah, okay, and I defer to you nobody did.
Speaker 4: But you know what you talk about branding, you talk
Speaker 4: about stephen A. Smith to be uncle was big for
Speaker 4: Uncle Shannon, and out of that which which he I
Speaker 4: think it went away.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't remember him doing it much over the last
Speaker 4: couple of years. I don't think he ever did it.
Speaker 4: But whatever unk stayed, Shaya stayed, so it ended up
Speaker 4: being positive for him. It made me pretty uncomfortable from
Speaker 4: my seat. But look, yeah, you ask about regret, I
Speaker 4: just have one huge regret. We weren't nearly as close
Speaker 4: as steven A and I were close, but I just
Speaker 4: wanted us to finish together on time. Because over the
Speaker 4: last year or so, I would watch what you guys
Speaker 4: have done here, I would watch what happens to me
Speaker 4: on Twitter now X. I would watch what happens to
Speaker 4: my videos and I'd say, the audience is starting to
Speaker 4: erode on lenear what they call linear TV shows. It's here.
Speaker 4: You guys were ahead of that curve and then right
Speaker 4: on time on that curve, and now I want to
Speaker 4: chase you guys. You know I want to do this
Speaker 4: because I saw it for about a year. But I
Speaker 4: wanted Shannon and I because I saw his podcast was
Speaker 4: starting to take hold when he was at Fox. I
Speaker 4: wanted us to finish together. And I don't know, as
Speaker 4: God is my witness, I'm not exactly sure what happened upstairs,
Speaker 4: but it fell all apart and he got pushed out
Speaker 4: and I was blindsided and dumbfounded by that, and I
Speaker 4: don't like it to this day. And I'm not a
Speaker 4: regrets type. I don't look back and say, oh, if only,
Speaker 4: But that was one where it was just wrong. I
Speaker 4: didn't That's not how I envisioned because our contracts were concurrent,
Speaker 4: so I knew when mine was up, I wanted to
Speaker 4: go my separate way, but I wanted us to end
Speaker 4: the way it should have ended, because man, we had
Speaker 4: seven really good years. We had on just pure ratings.
Speaker 4: We had about five through the roof years, and that
Speaker 4: matters to me. You guys like like you guys, I
Speaker 4: don't know if you ever have any spats or anything,
Speaker 4: or you disagree on things or whatever, but your link
Speaker 4: for life.
Speaker 2: Now their respect doesn't change though respect.
Speaker 4: But you're linked for life because you've been in this
Speaker 4: foxhole together and you've had all kinds of guests on
Speaker 4: here and yet calmly here it's big and you will
Speaker 4: look back. I don't God only knows where it's going
Speaker 4: to take all of us in the next twenty years.
Speaker 4: But twenty years, if God is good and you're still moving,
Speaker 4: you'll look back if you're not doing this anymore, and
Speaker 4: you'll have a deep connection and a deep connection. Okay,
Speaker 4: That's how I feel about steven A and Shannon. We
Speaker 4: went to I don't want to say war. We went
Speaker 4: to battle together every day. And listen, Shannon, you're showed
Speaker 4: up for work man. He he came. He's extremely competitive
Speaker 4: and I am crazy competitive, and so we went at
Speaker 4: it in different authentic ways than steven A and I
Speaker 4: did because steven A he takes it seriously. But their
Speaker 4: showmanship involved with steven A, that is fun to watch
Speaker 4: with Shannon, and I trust me, it got seriously you
Speaker 4: sat out there.
Speaker 5: I've watched you prepare for a show Skip and my boy, say,
Speaker 5: you right there. It is intense watching skill prepared for
Speaker 5: a show, Like it's just as intense to get ready
Speaker 5: for a basketball game.
Speaker 2: Bro, it's the super intense.
Speaker 4: Well that's my basketball?
Speaker 2: Was it? Thank you? Did it ever?
Speaker 3: Because, like I said, sometimes you got into some heated
Speaker 3: debates with did it ever feel personal? Did you ever
Speaker 3: knalk away from the desk and like, damn that hurt
Speaker 3: a little bit? Or no?
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have say.
Speaker 4: I told him from day one. Yeah, I prep hard,
Speaker 4: I'm intense, I'm over intense, But as soon as that
Speaker 4: little red light goes off, I let it go. Man,
Speaker 4: and I never take it home. And if if you do,
Speaker 4: you tell me about it and let's sort it out.
Speaker 4: And we had some sit down so we would sort
Speaker 4: things out. But he knew early on I always had
Speaker 4: his back and that there's no need to do like
Speaker 4: I was say on first take, my slogan was no
Speaker 4: punch is pulled, but none thrown. You can't get to
Speaker 4: the point where you want to throw. Come on, you
Speaker 4: you know, like then nobody wants to watch that, but
Speaker 4: they like genuine heat, and Shannon and I produced genuine heat,
Speaker 4: and I truly love him for that. Like those are
Speaker 4: magical moments to me where I look back. We got
Speaker 4: into one time about Tom Brady. I didn't even know
Speaker 4: where it went. It just flew off the handle. And
Speaker 4: we did have to have a sit down after that one,
Speaker 4: and we hugged, you know, like it's it's okay. But
Speaker 4: I think back on yes, because I remember that one
Speaker 4: because because now we're getting to punch is thrown right,
Speaker 4: like okay, And by the way, if he threw one
Speaker 4: punch at me, that'd be the end of me. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: So I'm still not sure how it went there because
Speaker 4: this stuff is so unscripted. You you're in the middle
Speaker 4: of it, like there's there's kind of a quasi plan,
Speaker 4: you know, we kind of know what the top the
Speaker 4: topical question is, but then it just goes off over here.
Speaker 4: You guys just riff off each other. I don't know,
Speaker 4: you can't half the stuff that's happened so far in
Speaker 4: the show. You couldn't have planned, right, because we're just
Speaker 4: vibing off each other and with Shannon. I'm vibing and
Speaker 4: it's going here, and you asked me, is it personal
Speaker 4: between you and lebron or Westbrook? After a while, I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: is it personal between Shannon and Brady? Because he just
Speaker 4: hated Tom Brady to me and it got vitriolic, you
Speaker 4: know where it started to get nasty angry on the air,
Speaker 4: and I'm saying and I like, I don't know Bray,
Speaker 4: I never met him before, but he's really good, you know,
Speaker 4: like he was, he was really good at what he did.
Speaker 4: I think it drove Shann crazy. He's playing a position
Speaker 4: it's not even like a football position, like it's they
Speaker 4: protect him. So so all these guys, they're playing football
Speaker 4: and you can really get hurt doing all these other
Speaker 4: things except kicker or punter. But all these guys are
Speaker 4: doing this and they're running into each other the way
Speaker 4: humans should never run into each other. And here's this
Speaker 4: guy called the quarterback and all the rules protect him.
Speaker 4: He can slide if he wants to, and nobody can
Speaker 4: touch him. And Tom Brady's just standing back there patent football,
Speaker 4: just throwing deadly accurate passes and just surgically carving people
Speaker 4: up at won him seven Super Bowl. I think he
Speaker 4: should have won eight Super Bowls out of the tea.
Speaker 4: And he played in Shanon's in the Hall of Fame obviously,
Speaker 4: and I think there was some resentment of how can
Speaker 4: he be this great because he's not all that athletic
Speaker 4: and he can't run a lick, right, He can just
Speaker 4: speed read, process poison under fire. He took some shots.
Speaker 4: He would get hit occasionally, but in the end, it's
Speaker 4: like Wayne Gretzky and hockey. He's just playing this game
Speaker 4: above everybody else, and it's all finesse, you know, he's
Speaker 4: he's just operating on a higher plane than all these
Speaker 4: hockey goons down here running into each other. So was Brady, Well,
Speaker 4: I'm defending Brady, and Shannon went crazy, and then at
Speaker 4: some point he's suggesting he's as good as Tom Brady,
Speaker 4: or was as good as Tom Brady. At that point still.
Speaker 2: Was He did not say that. Huh. He did not say,
Speaker 2: well he did.
Speaker 5: That's how I interpreted, Oh yeah, I would have been
Speaker 5: mad to put your glasses back on you say some
Speaker 5: shit like that.
Speaker 6: Okay, I'm like Shannon, and I told him on the air,
Speaker 6: I said, this guy's in another echelon from everybody else
Speaker 6: who ever played, there's never been anything like this guy
Speaker 6: what he achieved.
Speaker 4: And Shannon said, I'm in the hall. I said, I
Speaker 4: got it. And then he's really mad and he takes
Speaker 4: his class off. Okay, what are we gonna do? Fight?
Speaker 4: Because now you got me? You know, like, I can't
Speaker 4: win that one. But let's just cease and desist and
Speaker 4: let's go on to the next topic. Because that's what
Speaker 4: that's as close as we ever got to eruption explosions.
Speaker 5: If you do an our cardio every day, you got
Speaker 5: you got good footwell you can move.
Speaker 2: Shan hips bad.
Speaker 5: He can't move. He just top heavy. But have you
Speaker 5: ever seen he just topped. He can't move, He just
Speaker 5: top head our cardio.
Speaker 2: He can move. You can stick and move.
Speaker 4: Okay, he couldn't catch me. I know he couldn't catch it,
Speaker 4: but that m F is strong.
Speaker 2: Rip. He's a big, big.
Speaker 4: Boy and works hard at being a big boy, and
Speaker 4: it's just hard to Okay, I can't compete with that.
Speaker 4: But it's funny. Right before we launched, he's would send
Speaker 4: me videos. He sent me a video of him and
Speaker 4: spin class. So he's on the bike just just killing it,
Speaker 4: you know, and just dripping, I mean like dripping wet,
Speaker 4: and caption is I'm gonna kick your ass like he's
Speaker 4: telling me, I'm going to kick your ass. And I
Speaker 4: showed my wife, Ernstine, I said, I do this every day.
Speaker 4: What really, I'm not I'm not at all intimidated by that.
Speaker 4: So I laughed when I saw him. You're not gonna
Speaker 4: get me that way.
Speaker 2: Get me on TV.
Speaker 4: You got me. You can't give me that one.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 4: So I don't know I could. Maybe I could land
Speaker 4: a little jab.
Speaker 2: Here or something. Don't let Jack get you.
Speaker 5: Let's go back early bringing, early up bringing, Oklahoma City. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm my dad owned a ran a barbecue spot. Yep,
Speaker 5: you're a big barbecue guy. The Hickory House.
Speaker 4: Never ate it after I was forced to all the
Speaker 4: way through high school, never touched it. After that. I
Speaker 4: had my feel and I can't even look at ribs anymore.
Speaker 4: And I got nothing against them, but I grew up
Speaker 4: on them, seriously grew up on them. I got forced
Speaker 4: to work in that little hole in the wall barbecue
Speaker 4: place on the south side of Oakland City, which is
Speaker 4: the wrong side of town. It's tough side every summer,
Speaker 4: every Christmas break, every spring break, no questions asked. I'm
Speaker 4: working at the restaurant. I hated the restaurant. I have
Speaker 4: a brother two years younger who loved the restaurant, and
Speaker 4: he became a big chef in a restaurant tour in
Speaker 4: Chicago and won the James Beard Award for Best Restaurant
Speaker 4: in America and Best Chef in America Obama. It's his
Speaker 4: favorite restaurant in Chicago called Topolobampo Room. So my brother
Speaker 4: literally ate it up being in the restaurant, and I
Speaker 4: despised it because I was sports obsessed, and nobody in
Speaker 4: my family liked sports, so they couldn't understand why I
Speaker 4: wanted to play football, basketball, baseball. And my father, who
Speaker 4: never liked me and was a hardcore alcoholic, said you're
Speaker 4: going to learn this so you'll have something to do
Speaker 4: with your life. And so I'm forced to do crap
Speaker 4: I don't like, which is preparation work, cutting up green
Speaker 4: peppers to put in a potato salad, and then every
Speaker 4: lunch and dinner rush I had to clean off the tables.
Speaker 2: Busboy.
Speaker 4: It's some nasty business when you're cleaning up after people,
Speaker 4: because everybody smoked, so it's just smoking ashes and butts,
Speaker 4: and it's disgusting. And if you do that for a
Speaker 4: two hour lunch and then he says, take your lunch,
Speaker 4: you're not going to be real keen on eating anything,
Speaker 4: trust me, you know, especially barbecue. So after a while,
Speaker 4: and they did a good job, and they did. It
Speaker 4: would come and go. Sometimes we'd have a little money,
Speaker 4: and sometimes we'd be busted because that's the restaurant business.
Speaker 4: But that was my life.
Speaker 5: You still talking about your dad being an alcoholic, complicated
Speaker 5: relationship with your mother with any alcoholic, and you talk
Speaker 5: about that a little bit.
Speaker 4: They both had alcohol issues very differently. My father was
Speaker 4: a functional alcoholic. He could wake up in the morning.
Speaker 4: I saw this every morning. He would march to the
Speaker 4: kitchen and he would pour himself a vodka and orange
Speaker 4: juice and just gulp it. And then when we were
Speaker 4: coming home, if I worked the lunch and dinner, I'd
Speaker 4: have to ride home with him. I had no choice.
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, nobody wore seat belts. I
Speaker 4: don't know how we made it. But functional alcoholic. He
Speaker 4: would also take always take a big cup, just a
Speaker 4: soft cup, fill it with half Coca Cola, and then
Speaker 4: we'd go to the car and he'd pull the vodka
Speaker 4: from under the seat and Phil, it is a big
Speaker 4: gold and he's drinking this via straw all the way home.
Speaker 4: And I'm not even thinking. I don't know enough to
Speaker 4: know you're driving drunk. But he seemed to be able
Speaker 4: to function. Mom slowly fell to the bottom of the bottle.
Speaker 4: But she was a fall down drunk where when she
Speaker 4: got drunk, she got silly, sappy, lovy, crazy, can't function drunk.
Speaker 4: And so I'm the oldest and I'm dealing with two
Speaker 4: of them. He left when I was sixteen, ran off
Speaker 4: with the woman three doors down who is my mom's
Speaker 4: best friend. They eloped to Tulsa, up the road from
Speaker 4: Oklahoma City, and I was kind of left running the household.
Speaker 4: But it was just tough on me because I was
Speaker 4: the first coming.
Speaker 2: Up in it.
Speaker 4: You have to figure it out, you guys know what
Speaker 4: you have to figure it out. You have to figure
Speaker 4: you know, how do you do this? How do you survive?
Speaker 4: How do you do this? Because I got no guidance.
Speaker 4: The other the good part was I had no rules,
Speaker 4: I had no curfew, I had no guidance. I could
Speaker 4: do anything I wanted. And the weird part was when
Speaker 4: I turned fourteen, my mother made my father buy me
Speaker 4: a motorcycle. And they weren't expensive. It's a hon to ninety,
Speaker 4: their tiniest, like a sewing machine engine and it'd go
Speaker 4: like forty miles an hour. But she just said, I
Speaker 4: don't want to take him anywhere anymore. He wants to
Speaker 4: go to all these practices and all this stuff. Just kidding,
Speaker 4: even just get him out of my hair, Just give
Speaker 4: him the motorcycle. So I go down on my fourteenth birthday.
Speaker 4: I aced the test, made a hundred on the written test,
Speaker 4: and he takes me right to the Honda shop and
Speaker 4: I'm off to the races. And it's December the fourth
Speaker 4: and it's cold. I got a church league basketball game
Speaker 4: and I literally strapped onto the banana seat my back,
Speaker 4: my basketball bag and it's freezing cold, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to First Christian Church to the gym to play basketball.
Speaker 4: And I was free man. And so that was fun
Speaker 4: where I could do whatever I wanted. But the problem
Speaker 4: with it is you can't trust anybody at home. That's
Speaker 4: the problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somewhat similar, I bring my parents were functioning drug addicts,
Speaker 3: and I saw a lot of abuse and violence and
Speaker 3: times where we had no money, and times we fell
Speaker 3: out we had a little bit of money.
Speaker 4: What your dad do.
Speaker 3: My dad was a butcher by day and sold drugs
Speaker 3: by night, and my mom was a stay at home mom.
Speaker 4: That did he do well selling?
Speaker 2: He did?
Speaker 3: He did well enough to make ends me. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: say well, but well enough. But you know my mom
Speaker 3: that was I was born in the eighties. That was
Speaker 3: a cocaine phase and era and a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: So I just saw a lot at a young age.
Speaker 3: Where were you in I'm the oldest of three. Yeah,
Speaker 3: until three years ago I found out I have two
Speaker 3: older brothers.
Speaker 5: Everybody in the eighties, everybody was doing nobody.
Speaker 3: But I say all that to say, I mean, I
Speaker 3: read when I was going through your stuff that you know,
Speaker 3: and I was wondering if that was the reason you're
Speaker 3: tough upbringing? Was that the reason why you chose not
Speaker 3: to have children? But me, before you answered on the
Speaker 3: flip side, I think I saw a lot. My mom
Speaker 3: was super mom, and my dad and my relationship are
Speaker 3: great now. My mom passed in those seven and I
Speaker 3: felt like when I lost my mom, I gained the
Speaker 3: dad and now we're great and he's a great grandpa
Speaker 3: grand key.
Speaker 2: He did start to keep it. It's in his DNA wrestler.
Speaker 3: I never fucked with heavy drugs, but I saw that
Speaker 3: to say, like, I saw a lot of not what
Speaker 3: to do for my dad. My dad had Now that
Speaker 3: we're closer, and he told me his upbringing and I
Speaker 3: understand he didn't know how to love. Was no examples
Speaker 3: of loving. I wanted to beat the greatest father ever
Speaker 3: because I didn't feel like I had a dad there.
Speaker 3: Although he was there every single day, I just didn't
Speaker 3: feel like I had that connection with them.
Speaker 2: What was your reason for choosing not to have children.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to turn into him, and I was
Speaker 4: afraid I would because I got his genetics. And he
Speaker 4: tried rehab twice because he was a veteran of the
Speaker 4: Air Force, so he went to VA Hospital to meet
Speaker 4: with psychiatrists twice, and the first time female psychiatrists asked
Speaker 4: me as the oldest, do you drink alcohol? I was
Speaker 4: thirteen inch maybe no, no, because he had forced me
Speaker 4: to drink alcohol when I was like four five and six.
Speaker 4: When they would throw parties at home for their little clique,
Speaker 4: and their party trick was to get their oldest son
Speaker 4: to come in and they would give them and give
Speaker 4: me hard something bourbon, you know, because it's just bitter.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's foul. It's like castor oil taste
Speaker 4: to me. So I would sip it and spit it
Speaker 4: out and they would all laugh. It didn't bother me
Speaker 4: at all, but it actually saved me because I'm thinking,
Speaker 4: I don't what do you want that for? You put
Speaker 4: that in your mouth. That's disgusting. So she said to
Speaker 4: me that day, you're doubly predisposed. You've got double alcohol
Speaker 4: genes in you, alcoholic jeens, so you better be careful,
Speaker 4: you better not start. So you say, why do you
Speaker 4: do an hour of cardio? Because I've channeled all that today.
Speaker 4: Whatever that obsession, compulsory behavior, obsessive, compulsive, it all goes
Speaker 4: into this. So at least it's a positive addiction. Or
Speaker 4: I'm probably I could go right down your dad's path
Speaker 4: to my mom's path.
Speaker 2: How instrumental.
Speaker 3: As someone myself again, and we all probably had our
Speaker 3: own versions of childhood trauma. At my age of forty four, Now,
Speaker 3: you know, seek counseling, and my fiance is very instrumental
Speaker 3: on me kind of unpacking my childhood and learning how
Speaker 3: to not be a man because I feel like I've
Speaker 3: been a man for a long time.
Speaker 2: Just deal with shit different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you don't mind me asking how you know
Speaker 3: obviously instrumental.
Speaker 2: Has your wife been in that process for you?
Speaker 3: And do you seek outside help to kind of deal
Speaker 3: with some of the older shit or what is your
Speaker 3: way of kind of dealing with it?
Speaker 4: Sometimes she says maybe you should, maybe you should. I don't.
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm good with it so that I've
Speaker 4: worked through it. I have to point this out and
Speaker 4: you guys can laugh at me if you want, But
Speaker 4: my saving grace in my life, what centered me and
Speaker 4: saved me, was a black woman named Katie Bell Henderson.
Speaker 4: And the reason I hate to bring it up is
Speaker 4: because you guys probably dismiss it as, oh, it's like
Speaker 4: the help or it's plantation mentality. Trust me, wasn't. She
Speaker 4: worked for my grandmother, who was not a wealthy woman,
Speaker 4: but she traveled for her work. So Katie Bell ran
Speaker 4: her household for by day because she wasn't there a lot.
Speaker 4: So because my home life was such a wreck. I
Speaker 4: got left at my grandmother's a whole lot more than
Speaker 4: I wanted to get left at my grandmother's And because
Speaker 4: of that. Katie Bell Henderson a black woman born in
Speaker 4: near Birmingham, Alabama, but raised on the South side of Chicago.
Speaker 4: So she was Chicago tough. She she wasn't deep South.
Speaker 4: She was she was more Chicago and you know Chicago,
Speaker 4: both of you do, okay. So she saw what was happening,
Speaker 4: and she was she was my mother, you know, she
Speaker 4: just took over and like five six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Speaker 4: all in there in my formative form year right in there,
Speaker 4: it's Katie Bell taking over my life. She's my role model,
Speaker 4: she's my guidance counselor. And she was hard on me.
Speaker 4: She was not afraid. It wasn't like she's playing like
Speaker 4: the old black lady, you know, like that's that's not
Speaker 4: how it was. She would treat me by the shoulders
Speaker 4: and shake me. She taught me the word hypocrite when
Speaker 4: I was seven years old, which I did not know.
Speaker 4: She said, you're being a hypocrite. Shake me.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 4: She would tell me the evils of alcohol. You can't
Speaker 4: start just look look, look what scorn was all.
Speaker 2: Through my family.
Speaker 4: I'm from extended family. Don't start just don't don't. And
Speaker 4: she taught me right and wrong, and I have good
Speaker 4: right and wrong in me. I have decent character. And
Speaker 4: it all came from that woman. I'm telling you, as
Speaker 4: God is my witness, I would not be the same.
Speaker 4: I would not be stable without what she brought into
Speaker 4: my life when it really mattered, and it also helped me.
Speaker 4: She had a granddaughter named Audrey who would come every
Speaker 4: summer and stay with her for three months of the
Speaker 4: summer from Chicago. So I got left over there. And
Speaker 4: so now I'm six seven and eight and I'm making
Speaker 4: up games in the backyard with Audrey, my age from
Speaker 4: the South side of Chicago. You want to talk about education,
Speaker 4: because Oklahoma City was still segregated, but it's not deep South.
Speaker 4: It doesn't feel like like wrong band, you know, like
Speaker 4: it's that's not the sort of the mood of the city.
Speaker 4: And so for me, even though it was segregated, I
Speaker 4: got to interact with this black girl from from Chicago.
Speaker 4: This is gold Man because I'm getting it, I'm feeling it.
Speaker 4: And the main thing Katie Bill taught me was we're
Speaker 4: all the same. We're pieces of God, every one of us.
Speaker 4: You're that callor you're that color, I'm this colle okay,
Speaker 4: pieces of God. And if he was okay, yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 4: it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 4: So the final piece to my puzzle was my wife, Earnsteine,
Speaker 4: sitting across from us. Five years ago. She had a
Speaker 4: what do you call him? A shaman mystic uh okay,
Speaker 4: named Joseph, a black man from New Orleans living in
Speaker 4: New York City that she had connected with, and he
Speaker 4: really enlightened her over the phone. He could see things
Speaker 4: in her life that that she was blown away by.
Speaker 4: So she said, just try it. I said, I don't
Speaker 4: buy it. I'm not I'm not there. She said, just
Speaker 4: just open your mind up a little bit. This isn't
Speaker 4: like therapy. Just just see what he has to say
Speaker 4: about your life and times. Maybe he'll give you just
Speaker 4: a tidbit that that will really open you up somehow.
Speaker 4: So I get on with Joseph. I don't know, it's
Speaker 4: kind of awkward. How do we start?
Speaker 2: What do we do?
Speaker 4: He said, as well, tell me what you want to
Speaker 4: know from me? I said, really nothing. So we're just
Speaker 4: going back and forth and it's not it's not cool.
Speaker 4: And all of a sudden, Joseph says, and there's no
Speaker 4: way he could know any of this. He says, somebody
Speaker 4: wants to join us, and I'm like, stop, you know
Speaker 4: somebody wants to join us. And he said, yeah, it's
Speaker 4: a woman. And my first flash is it's my mom.
Speaker 4: If you're buying into this what we're doing, and I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't want to communicate with my mom.
Speaker 2: I'm good.
Speaker 4: I put that dressed into bed. God bless her, you know,
Speaker 4: like I made peace with that. I don't need to
Speaker 4: redo all that. And he says, it's a black woman.
Speaker 4: And I'm like what, because I you know, we lost
Speaker 4: Katy Bill when I was in college, so it's been
Speaker 4: a long time, you know since I really thought. I mean,
Speaker 4: she's in my heart, but I don't think about her
Speaker 4: on a daily basis. I said, Katie Bill. He says, yeah,
Speaker 4: Katie Bell. And she wants you to know how proud
Speaker 4: she is of you. That's the God's truth. She wants
Speaker 4: you to know how proud she is of you. Well,
Speaker 4: I just I got tears in my eyes because of
Speaker 4: all the things that have ever happened in my whole life.
Speaker 4: Nothing from my father, my mother, even from Ernestine, my wife,
Speaker 4: nothing could mean as much as me being told whether
Speaker 4: you buy this or not, but but it rang true
Speaker 4: at the moment, she wants you to know how proud
Speaker 4: she is of you. And I don't think Joseph could
Speaker 4: have had any idea because my wife barely knows about
Speaker 4: Katie Bell and all the details of it, so it's
Speaker 4: not like she could prep him tee him up for this.
Speaker 2: That was the spirits, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: It was spiritual. It came from somewhere else, so that
Speaker 4: when you say, do I need therapy? I got Katie
Speaker 4: Bell in my heart. And you can laugh if you want,
Speaker 4: but that's the God's truth.
Speaker 3: Thank you for sharing, h I mean, obviously that was
Speaker 3: very personal. I appreciate you opening up and sharing that
Speaker 3: with us.
Speaker 5: After college, you quickly became a star journalist Dallas Morning
Speaker 5: News columnists the twenty six years old.
Speaker 2: What are your best memories of covering the game as
Speaker 2: a younger man.
Speaker 4: I had so many good ones. I've been so blessed. Well,
Speaker 4: you and I share something, mister Jackson, A misguided love
Speaker 4: for the Dallas Cowboys.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's not misgott it.
Speaker 5: You know, you know it's very misguid It's not misguided.
Speaker 2: We want a championship more recent than y'all. But we've
Speaker 2: been there enough. We sniffed it. Y'all been there, but
Speaker 2: y'all lost. Y'all have we kind of losses?
Speaker 5: Now? Are we doing that again? Yeah, we want a
Speaker 5: championship more recent than y'all. Fact of fiction, facts, but
Speaker 5: y'all still suck. But go ahead, skip. It's not about
Speaker 5: I don't like the facts though. They don't like the
Speaker 5: facts though.
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm being interviewed here, Thank you, thank you. It
Speaker 4: was like a god thing. I wind up as the
Speaker 4: lead columnists of the Dallas Morning News right on time
Speaker 4: for what was actually the beginning of the end of
Speaker 4: the Landry Dynasty, and I got to live inside it.
Speaker 4: I got to know Roger Staubat really well. And those
Speaker 4: teams had huge star power, Tony dor Set, Charlie Waters
Speaker 4: and Cliff Harris. I don't know, if it goes back
Speaker 4: a little before your time, you're kind of being molded
Speaker 4: as a cowboy, die hard. I went to my first
Speaker 4: game when I was ten. My uncle in Dallas took
Speaker 4: me to the Old Cotton Bowlt to see the Cowboys
Speaker 4: play a team that was my favorite team at the
Speaker 4: time because it was the only team we could get
Speaker 4: on television in Oklahoma City was the then Saint Louis Cardinals.
Speaker 4: They were a high flying, offensive juggernaut, and so I
Speaker 4: wanted to see them play this Cowboy expansion team. And
Speaker 4: of course I sit in my seat and within five
Speaker 4: minutes I'm looking down at those stars. They had them
Speaker 4: on the helmet and on the shoulder pads, and I'm saying, love,
Speaker 4: I want me some of that, right, And then you're
Speaker 4: just you're lost.
Speaker 2: You who's the first player you fell in love?
Speaker 5: First Cowboy player that you attached the Cowboys today you
Speaker 5: fell in love with?
Speaker 2: Mine? Was Bill Bates?
Speaker 4: Really, Yes, I'm interesting. I knew him.
Speaker 2: He was an animal.
Speaker 4: Well, he's just crazy.
Speaker 2: Flying down the field. Yeah, that was my guy. Bill
Speaker 2: Bates is my guy.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well Starbach was my guy just because listen, I
Speaker 4: know he's before most of the times of the people
Speaker 4: who are watching our show right now, But Roger Stabach
Speaker 4: was it. He was beyond Aikman, beyond Don Meredith. He
Speaker 4: was the ultimate competitor. And speaking of basketball, later after
Speaker 4: he retired back in my twenties. I played with and
Speaker 4: against him a lot of basketball, and he was completely
Speaker 4: psycho as a basketball really like like crazy, competitive, was
Speaker 4: like scary crazy.
Speaker 2: Like a good crazy. I don't know, he wasn't good,
Speaker 2: he was just.
Speaker 4: I had a friend. You won't know this guy named
Speaker 4: pat too May. He's a great rid played for the
Speaker 4: Cowboys as a defensive end. He was really good. It's
Speaker 4: before your time, but he was. He was a good
Speaker 4: basketball player and he's six six. So we used to
Speaker 4: play Roger two on two with a guy from his work.
Speaker 4: He just easing into his real estate career at that point,
Speaker 4: and one day we just beat the hell out of
Speaker 4: him because Patick comes set picks for me and Roger
Speaker 4: couldn't get to the pick because he's a mountain of
Speaker 4: a man, and I would just get off the pick
Speaker 4: and make shots. And it was driving Roger crazy. So
Speaker 4: he rescheduled another game against us and brought Cliff Harris.
Speaker 4: Do you remember Cliff Harris. It's again before your time,
Speaker 4: but he was Bill Bates before Bill Bates, and he
Speaker 4: was certifiably crazy. They called him Crash because he had
Speaker 4: no scruples, you know, like he didn't care about his body.
Speaker 4: So Roger brought Cliff Harris to guard me, which is
Speaker 4: hitting a NAT with a sledgehammer, right, And that's what happened,
Speaker 4: you know. It was sledgehammer on NAT. But that was
Speaker 4: Roger because he's not going to lose to the sports writer,
Speaker 4: the sports car. He's just not going to do it.
Speaker 4: He's gonna take me. Cliff's gonna take me out, Okay,
Speaker 4: So he he was. I was in awe of him,
Speaker 4: but I had the blessing of just getting to know
Speaker 4: him in those teams. So even before that, I was
Speaker 4: at the La Times out here right out of college,
Speaker 4: and I was in the middle of stuff right and
Speaker 4: left that The Steve Garvey Dodgers were huge at that
Speaker 4: point with Ron Say and David Lopes, and they didn't
Speaker 4: like Steve Garvey and they didn't like his wife. So
Speaker 4: I got that they came to me and wanted me
Speaker 4: to write the story. So I was always in the
Speaker 4: middle of something like Controversy found me a lot in
Speaker 4: my writing career, and I don't know why, but I
Speaker 4: didn't run from it.
Speaker 2: Attack m favorite team to cover, most favorite team to
Speaker 2: cover of.
Speaker 4: All time, Yes, ninety eight Bulls. I mean last dance.
Speaker 4: I'm dancing, man, I'm there. Michael liked me, and he
Speaker 4: didn't like many in the media. But I don't know why.
Speaker 4: I think he liked me because I was my own
Speaker 4: guy and I didn't care what anybody thought. And he
Speaker 4: got a kick out of me, and and he opened
Speaker 4: to me and would call me if I left him
Speaker 4: a message, he'd call me back. And listen that championship
Speaker 4: run with that team, watching that stuff unfold because they
Speaker 4: went against Reggie's Pacers, and it was a battle of
Speaker 4: royal man. It was seven games with controversy just spilling
Speaker 4: right and left because Phil would get into it with
Speaker 4: the referees and and it got that Reggie and company.
Speaker 4: They forced it all the way to game seven. Chris
Speaker 4: Mallen was on that team and the Davis's and yeah
Speaker 4: they were they were legit now and Reggie was obviously
Speaker 4: a legit shooter. Score and they got it to game
Speaker 4: seven and then Michael said it no, not in my house.
Speaker 4: So that was the end of that. But that's my
Speaker 4: favorite team by far.
Speaker 5: Which player was your best interview?
Speaker 4: You know, I've been thinking about this because the World
Speaker 4: Series just ended. Reggie Jackson, do you know do you
Speaker 4: do you have a field.
Speaker 3: I just got to to pat you off. I just
Speaker 3: got a chance to play in his celebrity softball game.
Speaker 3: It was the last game in the coliseum.
Speaker 2: Wow at the baseball game he played? Yeah, yeah, did.
Speaker 3: You incredible his energy or the passion he still speaks
Speaker 3: with like he was really cool game.
Speaker 2: So let's go golf.
Speaker 4: Yeah, really you should take him up.
Speaker 2: Definitely, Definitely, he's done in county now really?
Speaker 4: Wow? Yep, okay, so name he was coming off a
Speaker 4: game six at Yankee Stadium in which he had hit
Speaker 4: three straight runs on three straight pitches. Never see anything
Speaker 4: like that. They're in Fort Lauderdale for spring training. The
Speaker 4: LA Times assigned me to do a big sit down
Speaker 4: if I could get him to sit down. And I'm
Speaker 4: a nobody kid reporter on twenty four four probably and
Speaker 4: I caught him as he was entering on a Sunday
Speaker 4: morning before an afternoon game in Fort Lauderdown. You know
Speaker 4: what it was in Baltimore? I mean it was Baltimore's
Speaker 4: in Miami because the baltim the Oriels were in Miami,
Speaker 4: so it was at their ballpark, the old Municipal State
Speaker 4: in Miami. Anyway, I caught him, introduced myself, and he
Speaker 4: couldn't have been nicer than me. And I don't know why,
Speaker 4: because he was big. He was because baseball was way
Speaker 4: bigger than it is now. So he was NFL, NBA stature.
Speaker 4: He was lift off. You know, he was the biggest
Speaker 4: name in sports because he was always into it with
Speaker 4: Billy Martin. And he said, let's do this, and he
Speaker 4: sat down in his locker and I just caught him.
Speaker 4: You know how, we're all in moods, and I caught
Speaker 4: him in a good mood, and he just gushed to
Speaker 4: me and that man is brilliant about sports life, what's
Speaker 4: really happening. And I was just mesmerized, but I got law.
Speaker 4: I was just taking notes and I would get lost
Speaker 4: in what he was saying because it was so pure
Speaker 4: to me and it was so enlightening. And then I
Speaker 4: would see him occasionally because I was in in Dallas
Speaker 4: and he would come to play the Rangers at Arlington
Speaker 4: Stadium and he would always remember my name, and so
Speaker 4: he's my that's my guy. We had him on Undisputed
Speaker 4: at least one time, and I'm in all of his presence,
Speaker 4: just his all. You can feel it, right, you want
Speaker 4: to talk about a powerful human being God to watch
Speaker 4: him swing and unleash.
Speaker 5: The game we played in I think a Rod asked
Speaker 5: me a question of what he went through when he
Speaker 5: was playing. That went viral and broke down, really really
Speaker 5: broke down and broke it what he went through as
Speaker 5: a player.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we played at some charity softball game in Alabama
Speaker 3: at the first ballpark what was it called Dammit Banham
Speaker 3: in Birmingham, Yeah, Burmah.
Speaker 4: I watched it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You had a quote saying I made some money on TV.
Speaker 3: Now it's time to make my mark. You've obviously transitioned
Speaker 3: off a very successful linear journalistic career. Yep, you're transferring
Speaker 3: over into this new form of sports media. I guess
Speaker 3: it is. It's the new wave. What do you expect?
Speaker 3: How you liking it? And have you kind of found
Speaker 3: your footing yet?
Speaker 4: I am more excited than I've ever been because I'm
Speaker 4: challenged like I've never been. You guys know this landscape
Speaker 4: way better than I do. And I'm serious, I'm like
Speaker 4: chasing you guys now. But I needed this. I wanted this.
Speaker 4: I know I can do it. We're taking baby steps.
Speaker 4: We're developing three other shows than my current podcast, which
Speaker 4: is Solo Podcasts, never even had a guest on it.
Speaker 4: But but we've got three in the works and we're
Speaker 4: expanding and we're excited. So it's a brave, new world
Speaker 4: and frontier again. I'm learning from you guys. I'm watching
Speaker 4: closely how you do it. It's been educational to see
Speaker 4: what scope you have here and how your crew operates,
Speaker 4: and how this show operates. I'm learning and I'm starting fresh,
Speaker 4: and I like it that I'm against all odds because
Speaker 4: that's when I'm at my best.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: Where do you think you know? I always feel like
Speaker 3: you know in this space, there's been a huge shift.
Speaker 3: Athletes voices are more present than ever. Where do you
Speaker 3: feel the ESPNS and Fox kind of sit in this
Speaker 3: new era where I always feel like they'll be there,
Speaker 3: but if they're not, necessarily you have to be there
Speaker 3: now to be heard or be seen. Where do you
Speaker 3: kind of feel like traditional or I hate to say
Speaker 3: old school, but almost old school ish media sits compared
Speaker 3: to this new wave of digital media.
Speaker 4: I think you answered your question as you asked it,
Speaker 4: because you guys' voices are much more powerful, your platforms
Speaker 4: are more powerful and than they used to be. And
Speaker 4: it's everywhere because of digital so your voices can resonate
Speaker 4: and echo louder than they they used to. And it's
Speaker 4: a beautiful thing to watch. But is there still room
Speaker 4: for people who didn't play, who also have a different
Speaker 4: perspective on it? Sure there is, so do I think
Speaker 4: studio shows will go completely away? I hope not. I'm
Speaker 4: knocking on would from our friends in the business. But
Speaker 4: this is the new way, and this is where you
Speaker 4: have to go if you're going to survive in this business.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Just the other night we saw a huge meltdown by
Speaker 3: Dylan's Yankees in the fifth inning they gave the Dodgers
Speaker 3: six outset inning, and yeah, and gave them the World Series.
Speaker 3: Just thoughts on that series. I really thought Yankees had
Speaker 3: a sloppy season. I feel like, very talented, but I
Speaker 3: think they're you know, they're sloppiness up to But I
Speaker 3: really felt like there's a lot of great baseball in
Speaker 3: this actual World Series the world.
Speaker 4: Yes, I haven't gotten over the fifth inning of what
Speaker 4: became a close out game that I did not see
Speaker 4: coming because it's five to nothing. Judge has found his stroke.
Speaker 4: He's escaped his slump. It looked like he was back.
Speaker 4: It looked like they were back. Stanton was back, Soto
Speaker 4: was back, and it felt like they were taking charge.
Speaker 4: And so I couldn't wait for We're taking the front.
Speaker 4: But what was going to be tonight a Friday night
Speaker 4: game six? Because it was going to get really interesting,
Speaker 4: especially if somehow the Yankees could maintain the momentum and
Speaker 4: get it to a game seven, then we could talk
Speaker 4: all time classic. And it's five to nothing, and it
Speaker 4: felt like fifty to nothing to me because Garrett Cale
Speaker 4: looked invincible to me. He looked untouchable to me, and
Speaker 4: he was so poised and so in command and control
Speaker 4: that I'm saying he might just go nine and just
Speaker 4: shut them out and do something that we hadn't seen
Speaker 4: since the days of my all time favorite baseball player
Speaker 4: Bob Gibson and my old Saint Louis Cardinals, who would
Speaker 4: just shut you out in two hours and two minutes
Speaker 4: and you'd beat the next game.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: It's what we used to call a can of corn
Speaker 4: fly ball. It's as routine as it gets to Aaron Judge,
Speaker 4: and he just muffs it because he took his eye
Speaker 4: off it for a split second. But it's something little
Speaker 4: kids don't do when they're seven or eight years old.
Speaker 4: It's just you just can't do that at that moment.
Speaker 4: But that now the floodgates still haven't opened yet. Then
Speaker 4: it's a pretty routine ground ball to Volpie and it's
Speaker 4: a pretty routine force out at third, and he just
Speaker 4: he gets a little too fine with it, just dirt balls,
Speaker 4: and it's it's like a ten foot throw. It felt like,
Speaker 4: you know, okay, but you're still you're still okay, and
Speaker 4: it's ground ball to first, and Garrett Cole just loses
Speaker 4: his mind for a second and he doesn't cover first.
Speaker 4: And now the floodgates have opened because you've done the
Speaker 4: three things in one inning that I didn't think you
Speaker 4: were capable of doing one thing in one inning, and
Speaker 4: you've tripled it. You've gone triple jeopardy to the point
Speaker 4: that you could just see the body language of the
Speaker 4: Dodgers like, we're gonna give us this seriously, And the
Speaker 4: floodgates open into the Yankees credit. They fought back and
Speaker 4: took the lead again, but you just knew what was coming.
Speaker 4: That was coming, okay.
Speaker 3: After every ear they made, I was telling Dylan, the
Speaker 3: baseball guys don't like this, Dylan, the baseball gods don't.
Speaker 2: They just don't. Baseball godsill like hot topic.
Speaker 3: Obviously, coming off what from the outside looking in was
Speaker 3: a very successful season for the WNBA, with the growth
Speaker 3: of the game and the young stars coming in the game.
Speaker 3: But when you look at the numbers, the league lost
Speaker 3: over forty million dollars. Do you see light at the
Speaker 3: end of the tunnel, and you, obviously because you were around,
Speaker 3: do you see any similarities to where the w is
Speaker 3: at this point and where the NBA was in their
Speaker 3: twenty seventh or twenty eighth year.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to step back from it and comprehend what
Speaker 4: just happened to this league. I wasn't a big Caitlin
Speaker 4: Clark fan when she was at Iowa, though I got
Speaker 4: into it a little more in the final four, and
Speaker 4: certainly the final game, I found myself captivated watching her,
Speaker 4: and I don't obviously she brought a lot more white
Speaker 4: people back to watch the game, but it seemed to
Speaker 4: all swirl around her whatever new popularity like. I'm not
Speaker 4: sure she saved it, but but she changed the game,
Speaker 4: and I still can't quite explain why, because I thought
Speaker 4: she was just a three point shooter and I didn't
Speaker 4: see this at Iowa. But but she's a lebron Asque
Speaker 4: passer of the basketball. Yes, okay, so I didn't see
Speaker 4: that coming. And she led the league by far and assists.
Speaker 4: But she shattered, I mean, like obliterated the all time
Speaker 4: turnover record and it wasn't She did it by like
Speaker 4: seventy five turnovers. Because she will try anything at any moment,
Speaker 4: thread the needle where there's seventeen hands in between and
Speaker 4: you're not going to get the basketball through, and she
Speaker 4: tries to get it through. But every once in a while,
Speaker 4: she'll throw some lead pass like Wes Unseld used to.
Speaker 4: You know, Kevin loves good ad. But she'll throw some
Speaker 4: lead passes just it's a touchdown, you know, where she'll
Speaker 4: hit somebody right in the hands for a lamp. You say, pooh,
Speaker 4: that's that's lebron ask. She has an effortless distance stroke
Speaker 4: the logo where was she jump shoots and a lot
Speaker 4: of the women before it weren't jumped their set shooters.
Speaker 4: They're like feet on the floor shooters. But she can
Speaker 4: actually leave her feet and hold the post and flick
Speaker 4: a wrist and get it that. As you guys know,
Speaker 4: it's a long easy man. It's not that easy to
Speaker 4: get the ball to the basket. And she'll make an
Speaker 4: occasional logo shot where I'll say, huh, that is obviously
Speaker 4: Steph like. Yet she's not a very good consistent three
Speaker 4: point shooter because her percentage was like thirty three percent.
Speaker 4: It was way down the list of three point shooters.
Speaker 4: Plus she's high volume, low make. And yet she completely
Speaker 4: changed the way that team plays basketball. And I got
Speaker 4: addicted to watching that team, not just because of her,
Speaker 4: because all of them, because it worked. Now they've fired
Speaker 4: their coach because they are going to bring in a
Speaker 4: better coach. They think they get the Connecticut coach.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 4: So my answer to all that, it's a great question.
Speaker 4: But all I know is I started watching because I
Speaker 4: was mesmerized by how great she was and how bad
Speaker 4: she was all at the same time, and it was
Speaker 4: captivating to my eyes. I don't know, so she became it.
Speaker 4: She's not very strong. She needs to get a lot stronger,
Speaker 4: and they're taking the ball away from her. But help
Speaker 4: me out. Would you watch her?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I'm really I enjoyed the W as a whole,
Speaker 3: and and we're working on kind of a little bit
Speaker 3: of a passion piece, kind of comparing where the W
Speaker 3: is now compared to the NBA was then, you know,
Speaker 3: and almost comparing, not because we still you have to
Speaker 3: see what these women are going to do, but kind
Speaker 3: of how Magic and Bird brought some life to the game.
Speaker 3: Caitlin and Angel brought some game life to the game.
Speaker 3: How there's a Juju and mj were coming down the
Speaker 3: pipeline with new breath, frash air in the game. There's
Speaker 3: you know, there's a gainful of similarities to where they
Speaker 3: are and in their respective times. Yeah, quick hitters, man,
Speaker 3: this has been amazing. First thing to come to mind.
Speaker 3: Let us know your this is gonna get spicy. Top
Speaker 3: ten in NBA players of all time.
Speaker 4: Of all time, all the time, she warned me. And
Speaker 4: I would have brought my list in my man Tyler's
Speaker 4: over here, maybe he could help me. Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 4: I think we all can agree on the number one
Speaker 4: name on that list, Jeffrey, Yes, thank you, Jeffrey. And
Speaker 4: I've got Magic too, And now I wish I had
Speaker 4: my list. I think I had Shack three kream four,
Speaker 4: Duncan five, Okay, Bill Russell, Kobe seventh, Larry eighth, and
Speaker 4: lebron Is ninth. Okay in Wilts, thank.
Speaker 2: You, Tyler.
Speaker 3: Any Larry Bird stories can you give us one? I'm
Speaker 3: a huge fan of Larry Bird.
Speaker 4: Two quick ones. So I'm at the Final Four, nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy nine, Salt Lake City. Gil Brandt then the Cowboys
Speaker 4: GM would always run a hospitality suite for the college
Speaker 4: basketball coaches under the auspices of he's trying to find
Speaker 4: the next Steven Jackson who can be a tight end
Speaker 4: for him that can sort of transfer height speed over
Speaker 4: into football.
Speaker 2: Allegedly.
Speaker 4: I think he just wanted to be a powerbroker. But
Speaker 4: he would have all the best coaches come through the
Speaker 4: suite because they weren't all participating in the Final Four.
Speaker 4: So on Sunday, ahead of the Monday night game, which
Speaker 4: is going to be Bird Magic Indiana State Michigan State,
Speaker 4: I'm in the hospitality suite and Gil pulls me aside
Speaker 4: and he said, listen, I've talked to all the best coaches,
Speaker 4: Dean Smith, the Bobby Knights. They don't believe Larry Bird
Speaker 4: can play at the next level. I said, seriously, because
Speaker 4: I hadn't been able to see I saw him in
Speaker 4: the semi final, but it wasn't enough. I think they
Speaker 4: played de Paul Mark acguire, who I got to know
Speaker 4: in Dallas, and he said, yeah, the quote I keep
Speaker 4: hearing is Larry Bird is too slow footed to make
Speaker 4: it in the NBA. So I wrote a piece for
Speaker 4: Monday Warnings, Dallas Morning News newspaper, in which I said
Speaker 4: that there are coaches here who don't believe Larry Bird
Speaker 4: can play. I didn't say it, but I said there
Speaker 4: are those here, because I don't think he was making
Speaker 4: that up or exaggerating that they lose obviously to Magic
Speaker 4: and Gregory Kelser, who was that were just too good
Speaker 4: for what Larry had in the nited state. And uh,
Speaker 4: that was real, like really really wrong because he could
Speaker 4: really really play for a thousand other reasons than slow
Speaker 4: feed because anticipating steals, he got his hands on a
Speaker 4: lot of basketballs defensively where slow feet didn't really come
Speaker 4: into play. And obviously he's shooting him back behind his
Speaker 4: head and it's like Kevin Durant, you just he's six
Speaker 4: y nine. You're not gonna be able to bother that
Speaker 4: shot a whole lot, and he was just deadly, especially
Speaker 4: when it mattered the most, and a great passer. So
Speaker 4: I'm in Dallas at Reunion Arena. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you ever played at old reunions, probably before your time,
Speaker 4: but he came for to play and was at a
Speaker 4: shoot around, and I just went up to him and
Speaker 4: apologized to him, and said he didn't care who I
Speaker 4: was or what I was, but I just apologized to him.
Speaker 4: So then we fast forward to the eighty six All
Speaker 4: Star Games played in Dallas, and it's the one in
Speaker 4: which he's in the three point contest where he shoots
Speaker 4: the last one and puts his finger up in the
Speaker 4: air while it's in the air, I got you, okay,
Speaker 4: And I'm told from a Mavericks insider who was in
Speaker 4: the locker room. I remember, this is nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 4: There's only one human who could get away with this.
Speaker 4: But do you know this story about what he said
Speaker 4: to his opponents?
Speaker 2: I heard a little bit before it, okay.
Speaker 4: So he walks into the locker room and it's only
Speaker 4: how many guys are in the three point eight and
Speaker 4: all the rest of them are not white, And Larry
Speaker 4: Bird says to them, this is what I was told,
Speaker 4: which one of you?
Speaker 1: And you knows huh no, oh, word word theliest word
Speaker 1: in the history of the human language, abolished, is going
Speaker 1: is going to finish second?
Speaker 4: Which one of you is going to finish seconds? They say, Okay,
Speaker 4: there's only one human and this is nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 4: Who could get away with that?
Speaker 2: To me?
Speaker 4: And it's that guy, That's what I was doing. But
Speaker 4: it's that guy. And they already knew what he was
Speaker 4: because he's winning championships and m vps. So I assume
Speaker 4: I think it's Craig Hodges was the best of his opponents,
Speaker 4: and they're probably just.
Speaker 2: Like, damn you. Okay, fuck you too?
Speaker 3: Ye?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean to Bird's created. He used to get white,
Speaker 5: I mean get mad when white guy's gardener. They said
Speaker 5: that was the insult. Nobody can Okay.
Speaker 2: Eight mile race, you broun tyreek Hill and Mookie Betts.
Speaker 2: Who wins? Who are the.
Speaker 5: You bron bron you braun tyreek Hill and Mookie Betts hate.
Speaker 2: That's a hell of a question my race. I'm going
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 4: I think I might beat him by a mile.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to skip.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, when have any of those humans the
Speaker 4: three miles. Okay, it's what I do every day. It
Speaker 4: wouldn't be fair. And it says nothing about me athletically whatsoever,
Speaker 4: except I'm in really good shape. Yeah yeah, but athletically
Speaker 4: it says zero. But they would have no chance. And
Speaker 4: if any of them, I would like to do it,
Speaker 4: if any of the if they're listening watching, now, let's go,
Speaker 4: I'll be there and bring your wallet hardly.
Speaker 3: And Skip what makes Skip Bayless happy?
Speaker 4: My wife does make me very happy, yes, I must admit.
Speaker 4: And my dog Hazel makes me very happy as she
Speaker 4: knows Maltese. As she ate now eight then she's ate.
Speaker 4: But those two keep me right. That they keep me upright.
Speaker 4: They they make me very happy. Tonight is date night
Speaker 4: and I'm looking forward to it. And I can say
Speaker 4: this about my wife, God's truth. Not once in my
Speaker 4: life with her, and we started in five, we got
Speaker 4: married in sixteen, but so five we're almost twenty years together.
Speaker 4: There's never been one moment with her I've been bored,
Speaker 4: not one moment. I do play golf, but I don't
Speaker 4: play cards with the guys on Wednesday night. I don't
Speaker 4: go out with the guys on Friday night, I just
Speaker 4: want to be with her. I'm obsessed with what I
Speaker 4: do and it makes me very happy. Because it's Saturday.
Speaker 4: Is fine, but I only look forward to the time
Speaker 4: with her because every second I have not doing this
Speaker 4: thing this microphone is dedicated to her and too Hazel,
Speaker 4: and so she does make me very happy, whether she
Speaker 4: believes it or not, and half the time she doesn't.
Speaker 2: Again for day night, No Oaklhoma.
Speaker 4: City's at Portland watching. We're going to watch the come on.
Speaker 2: Top three Jordan's to wear. Oh god, you like the ones? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you'll be a big one guy.
Speaker 4: You know what my top three?
Speaker 5: We used to compare shoes when I was working with Well.
Speaker 5: I used to check his drip every day less.
Speaker 4: I do like the Concords the elevens both high and lows,
Speaker 4: and so they would probably be high and low would
Speaker 4: be my second two because they're away beyond all the
Speaker 4: others that I.
Speaker 3: Had quickly explain their relationship, like, well, between you and
Speaker 3: Lil Wayne and then you guys seem like you guys
Speaker 3: are really good friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he loves Skipp. That's my boy.
Speaker 4: You know that he loved our show. This is pri
Speaker 4: Stephen a and I think you helped get him to
Speaker 4: My wife helped book this, but somehow she connected with
Speaker 4: his people. And because he was playing a concert in
Speaker 4: Westchester County and outside of New York City, it was
Speaker 4: a fairly handy to hour bus ride. He was on
Speaker 4: his tour bus to come to Bristol, and he wanted
Speaker 4: to come to Bristol and be on first take. And
Speaker 4: he came to the pre show meeting which started at
Speaker 4: seven thirty in the morning. I don't think he went
Speaker 4: to bed, no, right, nope, but they literally pulled their
Speaker 4: tour bus right up to the door and we start
Speaker 4: talking across the table about Steph Curry. And it was
Speaker 4: before the Steph Blake draft. And everybody at ESPN loved
Speaker 4: Blake Griffin and I didn't because I'm an Oklahoma fan
Speaker 4: by birth, and so I'd watched Blake for two full
Speaker 4: years at Oklahoma and he could make a shot from
Speaker 4: like a foot away, seriously, but he was, as you know,
Speaker 4: extremely explosively athletic at whatever six ' ten, could jump
Speaker 4: you know, to the next county as an explosive dunker.
Speaker 4: But I don't know, I just didn't. I didn't love him.
Speaker 4: He reinvented himself as a three point shooter and extended
Speaker 4: his career shooting threes. But I was in awe of
Speaker 4: little Steph at Davidson because I said, this is revolutionary,
Speaker 4: and I kept saying his handle is way better than people.
Speaker 4: He can play point guard because he's not a flashy passer,
Speaker 4: but he's a really good passer with a great handle,
Speaker 4: So forget just about the shooting. He can run the
Speaker 4: basket all team. So Wayne is agreeing with me, and
Speaker 4: no one had agreed with me at ESPN, and we
Speaker 4: clicked over Steph at Davidson because it's before the draft,
Speaker 4: and we agreed we would both take Steph number one
Speaker 4: in the draft above Blake And when do you go
Speaker 4: seven in the draft? Like, come on?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 4: Okay? So that started it, and then he took me
Speaker 4: after the show out to the tour bus where he
Speaker 4: has a recording studio. It's like a bathroom size studio
Speaker 4: on the bus.
Speaker 2: Did you did you get a contact?
Speaker 4: I don't. I don't do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I'm pretty susceptible to contact. And I
Speaker 4: was feeling real good.
Speaker 2: We could we could re enact that feelings.
Speaker 4: I'm sure I should try that sometimes maybe that would
Speaker 4: would sort of calm me down. But the point is
Speaker 4: then we just clicked. I don't know, but it's pure
Speaker 4: sports you want to talk about, coming from opposite ends
Speaker 4: of the earth. So it was that when he moved
Speaker 4: out here four years ago, my wife and I would
Speaker 4: go visit him. I don't know, every couple of months.
Speaker 4: We'd drive out to hidden hills out in the valley.
Speaker 4: And I know people won't believe this, but we would
Speaker 4: sit and talk, the three of us. He would include
Speaker 4: her because he does love her and has like a
Speaker 4: big sister, and we would just talk about not about
Speaker 4: sports because she's not the biggest sports fan. We would
Speaker 4: just talk life stuff, show stuff, I don't know, music stuff,
Speaker 4: behind the scenes stuff, a little sports. She says that
Speaker 4: it would work its way in, but but we would
Speaker 4: talk for four straight hours with no bathroom breaks, no food,
Speaker 4: and no drink but occasional puffs, you know, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: so but that's but we would sit outside because Ernestine
Speaker 4: doesn't deal great with the smoke. We just sit out
Speaker 4: on the back. Poorchold. You just talk, okay, So that's
Speaker 4: how it, that's how it happens.
Speaker 2: And whatever. People don't know wherever Wayne is.
Speaker 5: He's in the studio nominally from like eight in the
Speaker 5: evening to like nine in the morning. Normally, whatever he
Speaker 5: is basketball sports is on every TV. There's no TV,
Speaker 5: no shows, and sports on every whatever game is on ESPN,
Speaker 5: Like that's all he watched all night long.
Speaker 2: That's that's why he knows so much about sports.
Speaker 4: He is obsessed and also brilliant, like deep brilliant. My
Speaker 4: favorite communication with him is text because we kind of
Speaker 4: play can you top this when we're going back and forth,
Speaker 4: and I would look at the text chains and I
Speaker 4: would say this, this, this could be a book. He
Speaker 4: knows what he's talking about. And it's like deep passionate
Speaker 4: deep passion of what makes somebody tick tick, you know,
Speaker 4: like what's really happening with so and so so.
Speaker 3: He didn't see it a lot covered Mike Tyson in
Speaker 3: his prime. Yeah, thoughts on the upcoming fight with him
Speaker 3: and Paul at Jerry's World where Jerry, Okay, you're welcome.
Speaker 2: I'll be there.
Speaker 5: No, I know, I told you he was coming because
Speaker 5: any otherwise you can come down there, you eed the
Speaker 5: j Macney I can come. I called it, like Jerry,
Speaker 5: I'm bringing some party niners fans from Kelly.
Speaker 2: They cool.
Speaker 5: He was like, yeah, they're cool because it's a boxing match.
Speaker 5: But if it was a game, y'all couldn't come in.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool, exactly, skip the call in too.
Speaker 4: The closer we get, the more fascinated I get by it,
Speaker 4: because at first I scoffed like everybody else did, and
Speaker 4: then I start to think, that guy, there's some special guys,
Speaker 4: you know, who are just special, special whatever they're made of. Obviously,
Speaker 4: Mike didn't take care of himself when it was time
Speaker 4: to take care of or he could have done whatever
Speaker 4: he wanted to do. But when he was right, he
Speaker 4: was the baddest on the planet and arguably the baddest
Speaker 4: who ever walked, ever walked. And whatever that quality is
Speaker 4: is still percolating inside there. Yes, and he looks like
Speaker 4: he's in pretty good shape, because I'm in really good shape.
Speaker 4: And so I look at it and I say, he's
Speaker 4: fifty eight. Okay, okay. So at first I thought, there's
Speaker 4: no way he can beat this kid, because this kid's
Speaker 4: pretty athletic in his decent behind he does. Then I
Speaker 4: start watching it. I don't know what Jake's doing, but
Speaker 4: but he looked like he put on a little weight
Speaker 4: to me, just to just paunchy, excess weight that he
Speaker 4: does not need. And I start thinking, is Jake really
Speaker 4: taking this as seriously as you better take that? I
Speaker 4: hope he is. Or I know they're wearing big old
Speaker 4: pillowcase gloves, you know, like pillows. But still Mike could
Speaker 4: hurt him. If if Mike goes like Haywire screwy, you know,
Speaker 4: like where he calls upon that thing that's it's locked
Speaker 4: deep down side, then he could do some damage.
Speaker 5: But that's why I feel scared for Jake, because the
Speaker 5: best boxes are the ones that can inflict pain but
Speaker 5: also mentally in control. The best one was Floyd Terrence
Speaker 5: carp for those type of guys. So Mike is more
Speaker 5: peace than he's ever been. That's what's scary. That he's
Speaker 5: going He's not showing up to the fight. I want
Speaker 5: to eat your kids. He showed up with how Jake did.
Speaker 5: That's what's scary. So if you think Mike not showing
Speaker 5: up going crazy, it's more frightened than the calm Mike.
Speaker 2: You better think that. It's another thing you need to
Speaker 2: look at it. Bout boxing.
Speaker 3: Roy told us he wasn't. Mike was supposed to. They
Speaker 3: were supposed kind of supposed to.
Speaker 2: Chill. I saw Mike, he had movement, his powers is
Speaker 2: still there.
Speaker 4: No, he can't help. At first I thought Mike wasn't
Speaker 4: taking this very seriously. And then Jake started to insult
Speaker 4: in like personal shot, insulting. And after a while you
Speaker 4: could see Mike's eyes and and they're going crazy eyes
Speaker 4: like like good crazy.
Speaker 5: Like Mike had time to get his health right, like
Speaker 5: you want to play Jay, Okay, give me some time
Speaker 5: to get my health right.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm going to come knock your ass out. Shall
Speaker 2: see what should see? If you could see one guest
Speaker 2: on All the Smoke, who would it be? But you
Speaker 2: have to help us get your answer on the show?
Speaker 4: Donald Trump?
Speaker 2: Oh nice? I like that. Nice. I would definitely sit
Speaker 2: down with Nice.
Speaker 4: I can't help, but yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's that's a good one. I like that. A lot
Speaker 2: of people want to see that. I would like. Well,
Speaker 2: Skip Man, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: And before we get at it, I just want to think,
Speaker 3: Like I said, I've always had a lot of respect
Speaker 3: and been a big fan and and in this process
Speaker 3: of finding out.
Speaker 2: We were going to get a chance to interview.
Speaker 3: I got to dig deep and and do my research
Speaker 3: and kind of find out what you're about and who
Speaker 3: you're about, and and and hear you out, and it
Speaker 3: just made me.
Speaker 2: More of a fan of what you do.
Speaker 3: It was honored to get a chance to work with
Speaker 3: you early on and definitely looking forward to seeing what
Speaker 3: you do in this next step. As hard as you work,
Speaker 3: I know you'll be successful.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: So we just really want to on behalf of both
Speaker 3: of us extend our you know, our biggest gratity.
Speaker 5: And appreciation for opening that door. You know it undisputed
Speaker 5: for us too. That was big, but both thanks appreciate that.
Speaker 4: All that means a lot. I love both of you.
Speaker 4: She knows this, My wife knows this because of how
Speaker 4: you fought, because you're both your own men, and you
Speaker 4: believe so passionately and deeply in what was down inside
Speaker 4: of you that you fought back and you have true
Speaker 4: edge to both of you why this is exactly working now.
Speaker 4: I have deep edge in me because by nature, if
Speaker 4: you know me at heart, I'm a fighter, I'm a competitor,
Speaker 4: and I have kindred spirit to what you're achieving on
Speaker 4: this show. So God bless both.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I remember reading you stop fighting high school though, that's
Speaker 3: when you give it up, skip you the scrap I
Speaker 3: was reading that.
Speaker 2: I read about you the fift broken nose and two
Speaker 2: black guys still went to school the next day.
Speaker 4: Took one shot yea from Jamie Staley in fifth grade.
Speaker 4: I took one and my nose was flatten.
Speaker 2: I did remember his name.
Speaker 3: He wrote about that's how I do about it. I
Speaker 3: read that pieces like I love that gifts like in
Speaker 3: high school.
Speaker 4: I said, yeah, but it was a sucker punch.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Before we get out of here, we're gonna hey, thank you.
Speaker 2: We've launched the fight side of our company.
Speaker 3: So we got some all the smoke, fight some all
Speaker 3: the smoke, a shirt there looking over and then we're,
Speaker 3: you know, most proud of you know, we've we've teamed
Speaker 3: up with Simon and Schuster to do our first ever podcast,
Speaker 3: first podcast ever, Soldier boy can't.
Speaker 2: Say that you ain't off the table books.
Speaker 3: So again, in honor of just your greatness and and
Speaker 3: taking the time with us, we want to make sure
Speaker 3: we get all this to you and thank you for
Speaker 3: being on.
Speaker 2: The show today.
Speaker 3: Ship thank you, yeah, give it up, Skip, thank you.
Speaker 2: Hey man, now where can you catch this episode? Yeah? Man,
Speaker 2: that's a rap.
Speaker 3: Amazing at a great time today, sitting down with with Skip.
Speaker 3: But you can catch this on all the Smoke Productions
Speaker 3: YouTube and the DraftKings Network.
Speaker 2: We'll see y'all next week. See y'all next week. M h.
Speaker 4: Mm hmmmm mm hmm.