Speaker 1: Charges. That's created by Portalais and Control Media. It's produced
Speaker 1: by dB Podcasts in association with I Heart Radio. This
Speaker 1: time a former Son's player who you might remember as
Speaker 1: t Rex. More video in just a moment, But this
Speaker 1: is Rex Chapman's mug shot, and we are learning a
Speaker 1: lot more about the charge of the Charge. When you
Speaker 1: google Rex Chapman, the first image that I see is
Speaker 1: your mug shot. But I've made it all the way
Speaker 1: through an NBA career and now I'm a full blown
Speaker 1: you know, OxyContin and Viking and attic. I feel so
Speaker 1: bad for what I did to my children. Oh man,
Speaker 1: oh I just want to cry. Welcome to episode one
Speaker 1: of Charges. I'm your host, Rex Chapman. Today we take
Speaker 1: a deep dive into my past and the trials and
Speaker 1: tribulations that I've gone through in my highly publicized career.
Speaker 1: To guide that conversation, we have my longtime friend, my dude,
Speaker 1: my guy, Michael Rappaport, filling in his guest host. I've
Speaker 1: known Mike since we were teenagers at the five Star
Speaker 1: basketball camp where I was his camp counselor. He couldn't
Speaker 1: play for ship. He's a talented actor, but his hoots
Speaker 1: game leaves much to be desired. Enjoy Episode one of
Speaker 1: Charges with Rex Chapman. Charges. All right, my name is
Speaker 1: Michael Rappaport, the guest host of my long time friend,
Speaker 1: someone who I was a fan of before I met
Speaker 1: him as a basketball coach in the nineteen eighties, Rex Chapman.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Charges with Rex Chapman. I am a special,
Speaker 1: one time only guest host. This is Rex Chapman's podcast.
Speaker 1: Will explain why I'm here, what I am doing here?
Speaker 1: Sexy Rex Chapman. How are you? My friend? My goodness?
Speaker 1: Charges with Rex Chapman. Who to thunk it? You? Me
Speaker 1: and you from teenagers now doing this? Let's just explain
Speaker 1: what people could expect why you're doing this podcast, Charges.
Speaker 1: You know how you came up with the name and
Speaker 1: the whole concept of it. Well, you know, I think,
Speaker 1: uh me as an athlete, uh, and we've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of people in every walk of life, but especially
Speaker 1: for athletes come under a lot of scrutiny when they
Speaker 1: when we get in trouble, and there's an never ending
Speaker 1: supply of athletes, young athletes a lot of money and
Speaker 1: uh a lot of free time that run a foul
Speaker 1: and UM kind of came up with the idea for
Speaker 1: this after bouncing back from you know, my troubles painkiller addiction, jail,
Speaker 1: and UH really want to let people know, with the
Speaker 1: people that we're going to talk to, that you're never
Speaker 1: as bad as your worst moment as long as you
Speaker 1: learn from it. You know, I'm ended on having guys
Speaker 1: on the guys. I know guys I don't know who've
Speaker 1: run a foul. Uh. We call it charges because you've
Speaker 1: been charged with something. Uh you know, a bit of
Speaker 1: a take on the old Twitter block or charge, but um,
Speaker 1: you know charges, you've been charged with something. It was
Speaker 1: an ugly time, it was a tough time in your life.
Speaker 1: You've let a lot of people down, You've let yourself down,
Speaker 1: and that moment when it happened to you is really painful.
Speaker 1: It's painful to talk about, but I think it's cathartic
Speaker 1: and I think people will get a lot out of it. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna get to your charges and uh,
Speaker 1: you know what I started, you know, asking you questions,
Speaker 1: but just to give people a little context. So, growing
Speaker 1: up in the nineteen eighties, I had dreams and aspirations
Speaker 1: of being a professional basketball player. At one point, uh
Speaker 1: the McDonald's High School All American Game was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge deal. I think it's a big deal now too,
Speaker 1: but we're so oversaturated with Instagram and this torn and
Speaker 1: in that tournent. But there was a time in the
Speaker 1: eighties where the McDonald's High School All American Game was
Speaker 1: that was the only game that mattered for high school stars.
Speaker 1: I found you. I think I had heard about your name,
Speaker 1: because again, this is the eighties, so it's not like
Speaker 1: you could google every single high school player. What year
Speaker 1: did you play in the high school the McDonald's High
Speaker 1: School All American Game? Six? So yeah, I would have
Speaker 1: been in a year or two ahead of you. Maybe, yes,
Speaker 1: a year or two ahead of me. So I was
Speaker 1: a a dreamer of playing high level college basketball, high
Speaker 1: level uh NBA basketball. This is my dream. And I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about Rex Chapman, but you didn't see clips.
Speaker 1: But I remember first seeing you play in the High
Speaker 1: School All American Game, and you were everything that I
Speaker 1: wanted to be. High flying, shoot, athletic, fearless, dunking white
Speaker 1: unicorn from down South. I didn't like the hair, I
Speaker 1: believe you did. You have a mullet at this point,
Speaker 1: was that a choice? Did you think that was cool?
Speaker 1: I did. I thought it was cool. Also, I didn't
Speaker 1: really call it a mullet. I called it a shag, Mike,
Speaker 1: you might know. You might have heard about the shag
Speaker 1: from back in the day. In fact, me and my boys,
Speaker 1: you know who, we would do. We would short you know,
Speaker 1: business in the front, but we would grow it out
Speaker 1: in the back and permit we would get it permed
Speaker 1: and then blow dry it, bless it out. Oh man, terrible,
Speaker 1: just terrible. It was like a basketball player with a
Speaker 1: wrestler's look like look like Billy ray Cyrus exactly. So
Speaker 1: I saw Rex play in the high school All American Game,
Speaker 1: and he had a great freshman year at Kentucky, which
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about, but just to you know,
Speaker 1: quickly contextualize how I met Rex. And then the summer
Speaker 1: after your freshman year of Kentucky, I was, I believe,
Speaker 1: going into the tenth grade of the eleventh grade, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. And Rex um was one of the camp
Speaker 1: counselors at the Covenant. Again it was the five Star
Speaker 1: basketball camp was everything. Abc D camp was coming along,
Speaker 1: but five Star was the place to be. And Rex
Speaker 1: Chapman was one of the camp counselors there and he
Speaker 1: had the pleasure of being my camp counsel for a
Speaker 1: week at the five Star basketball camp. And Rex was
Speaker 1: playing at quite the whole time. Uh. He had his
Speaker 1: short shorts, he had his hair, um, but he was
Speaker 1: a star. He had made a huge impact um in
Speaker 1: the basketball world, um, in my life. And it was
Speaker 1: just like dope, I mean, this is the high school
Speaker 1: basketball camp. I was there with Seawan Kemp. Shawn Kemp
Speaker 1: was probably older than you at the time. He had
Speaker 1: like a full beard and the goat. But this is
Speaker 1: the best of the best basketball game. Everybody went to
Speaker 1: this camp, Michael Jordan led by his Patrick Ewing war
Speaker 1: Dell Curry, and I was fucking with Rex the whole
Speaker 1: week and talking ship to him, trying to get, you know,
Speaker 1: attention from him because it was Rex Chapman, the high
Speaker 1: flying white unicorn from Kentucky. D And then we connected
Speaker 1: years later, but you remembered that time. What was most
Speaker 1: impressive about what you saw from me that week in
Speaker 1: my game and just my whole personna, Oh my gosh, hilarious. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I was there with Ramille Robinson. Both he
Speaker 1: and I had been at the camp as campers like
Speaker 1: two years prior, and so we decided to come back
Speaker 1: and be counselors for Garf Howard Garfinkel, and then we drafted.
Speaker 1: I end up drafting you on my team. You know,
Speaker 1: only guy, I think probably only guy in five Star
Speaker 1: history that could not do a jump stop. Just don't
Speaker 1: know how to do a jump stop. You're not a
Speaker 1: good player. You know the game, you know the game
Speaker 1: incredibly well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it. You're like
Speaker 1: Chris Mullen, but a lot slower and yeah yeah, no, man,
Speaker 1: you were hilarious with your New York bullshit all week long,
Speaker 1: just laughing, making people laugh. And the funny thing about
Speaker 1: that is, you know, after that, you know, I go
Speaker 1: on back to Kentucky and then I'm in the NBA
Speaker 1: and then I'm at a movie one time, a couple
Speaker 1: of years later, and I'm I'm looking, I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: beautiful girls. It was. It was one of your early
Speaker 1: early movies. And I I'm there and I'm like, who
Speaker 1: the hell is this guy? Who is he? Who is he?
Speaker 1: And one night I'm I'm asleep. I sat up in
Speaker 1: the bed and I went fucking five star. That's exactly
Speaker 1: who he is. That's Mike Rappaport, my boy six five
Speaker 1: guard Rex Chapman, the features story on Al McGuire's preseason special.
Speaker 1: And that's the way it was for this six Apollo
Speaker 1: basketball team, having to deal with unbelievable hype. Possibly the
Speaker 1: most publicized player in the history of Kentucky high school basketball.
Speaker 1: He wants another freshman, chap shows was watching the future heavyweight.
Speaker 1: First of all, at that time when you go from
Speaker 1: high school All American to that first year in Kentucky.
Speaker 1: And for people that don't know, and I'm really disappointed
Speaker 1: that a lot of the footage is grainy, it's not
Speaker 1: as good. It's not in high death um. But your
Speaker 1: freshman season at Kentucky, I mean, was it everything that
Speaker 1: you had hoped and dreamed from as a young kid,
Speaker 1: like to get to Kentucky, growing up at Kentucky and
Speaker 1: then having a very very good freshman season, Like, what
Speaker 1: do you remember about that time? It was a typical,
Speaker 1: my guy, It was a typical from a couple of standpoints.
Speaker 1: I dreamed of going to Louisville. I had committed to
Speaker 1: Louisville verbally, and then they Kentucky changed coaches, went from
Speaker 1: Joeby Hall to Eddie Sutton, and I flip flopped and
Speaker 1: went to Kentucky. I'll tell you though, Mike, I wait
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty pounds as a freshman. You know
Speaker 1: when I got on campus. You know, today they talk
Speaker 1: about high school seeing they first they talked about juniors
Speaker 1: reclassifying and going to college. I could have never done that.
Speaker 1: I mean I would have been broken in half. They
Speaker 1: talked about seniors, you know, going a year of school
Speaker 1: and then going in the NBA. I still in the way,
Speaker 1: like one seventy at the end of my sophomore year.
Speaker 1: And then the other part of that was my dad.
Speaker 1: I grew up watching my dad, watching his team's play,
Speaker 1: watching him coach. He coached at a high level Division
Speaker 1: two school Kentucky West Lynn. They want a couple of titles.
Speaker 1: I loved watching his teams play. That's how I learned
Speaker 1: to play basketball, just watching his teams play, his players.
Speaker 1: And he had me perfectly wired. You know. He when
Speaker 1: I left home, he was like, man, I hope they
Speaker 1: don't red shirt you this year, and he was being honest, um,
Speaker 1: and I believed him. We got to school. I got
Speaker 1: to school, the weightlifting was horrible. I could lift the
Speaker 1: bar forty I pounds, that's how much I can bench press,
Speaker 1: and um, the conditioning killed me. We got in the
Speaker 1: first day of practice and I'll never forget it because
Speaker 1: it was really awkward. And first day of practice and
Speaker 1: my coach, Ettie Sunnon hall of Famer, just passed away
Speaker 1: big big drinker though big drinker and a drinker at
Speaker 1: this time, and we're running like a three man fast break,
Speaker 1: three on two, two on one something like that. Very
Speaker 1: first practice, I caught a pass. I faked a pass
Speaker 1: ball fake threw it into the post. He stopped practice
Speaker 1: and went, see that right there, that's why he's the
Speaker 1: best player on the team. And I wanted to run
Speaker 1: and hide. I got a seniors, juniors, James Blackman, ed Damnder,
Speaker 1: Winston Bennett, the whole team of McDonald's all Americans that
Speaker 1: I'm now competing against every day. It's my first practice
Speaker 1: I did. I wanted to hide it. I just made
Speaker 1: a pass to the post. What I didn't realize was
Speaker 1: that everybody can't do those things. You know. I could
Speaker 1: shoot and run and stuff, but I, you know, I
Speaker 1: knew how to pass and how to play in time
Speaker 1: and score and all that. And that was just coming
Speaker 1: from my dad watching his stuff. So I was perfectly
Speaker 1: prepared for that. Once we got out of the weight
Speaker 1: room onto the basketball court, where I knew how to play,
Speaker 1: I felt completely at home. Now. I took my lumps
Speaker 1: in my freshman year plenty of times, but you know,
Speaker 1: I got my shots in I think early on before
Speaker 1: we played Louisville my freshman year, which was kind of
Speaker 1: a coming out kind of thing because it was on
Speaker 1: national TV. And let me just contextualize for those who
Speaker 1: don't know, Louisville verse Kentucky and in the eighties college
Speaker 1: basketball was as big as Lebron versus Steph. It's changed,
Speaker 1: but Louisville versus Kentucky explained the enormity of that game.
Speaker 1: Two people are non basketball fans, Yeah, it's huge. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of back in the day, it was kind
Speaker 1: of like Yankees Socks. You know, there were those rivalries
Speaker 1: that you knew and and they were the only real
Speaker 1: big rivalries that were on TV live on the weekend.
Speaker 1: And the other big rivalry here was Indiana. And so
Speaker 1: they're just right across the river louis and Kentucky hate
Speaker 1: each other, but Indiana and Kentucky hate each other too,
Speaker 1: And we played Indiana like I was three or four
Speaker 1: games into my freshman year. We played him at Indiana
Speaker 1: Bobby Knight. They actually won it that year. They had
Speaker 1: Steve Alford, and I had watched Steve Alford play in
Speaker 1: high school. I had watched him my whole you know,
Speaker 1: three years of high school. He'd been playing at Indiana
Speaker 1: and had mad respect for him all of that. Also,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: some of Steve Alford. And we played him in that game.
Speaker 1: They beat us in overtime, but I had like twenty
Speaker 1: six or twenty seven, and I thought I played against him.
Speaker 1: He was supposed to be player of the year, maybe
Speaker 1: player of the year. And that was the first time
Speaker 1: I went and they were talking about him going into
Speaker 1: the draft and getting drafted. That was the first time
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, if he can play in the NBA,
Speaker 1: maybe I can play in the NBA. And so a
Speaker 1: week or two later, we played louis at home or
Speaker 1: at Louisville in Freedom Hall. They had just won the
Speaker 1: title the year before. With my boy never nervous Purvis
Speaker 1: and Kenny Payne and Milt Wagner and that whole crew,
Speaker 1: and they were good. They were supposed to smoke us.
Speaker 1: And we went in there to Louisville. And also, I
Speaker 1: should backtrack. I didn't play high school basketball with the
Speaker 1: three point line. We didn't have a three point line.
Speaker 1: But my first year of college they had the three
Speaker 1: point line and I could shoot out there. I just
Speaker 1: never had practice shooting, you know, I being behind the line,
Speaker 1: I just shot out there on habit and so man,
Speaker 1: we went into Louisville and just blitzed them. Muhammad Ali
Speaker 1: was in the stands and uh we beat him eighty
Speaker 1: five to fifty one, and I think I had twenty
Speaker 1: six or so. And I just remember after the game
Speaker 1: going to do the media and I came back through
Speaker 1: talk about just I really remember very little about that
Speaker 1: day other than coming back after the press conference and
Speaker 1: our sports information person stopping me and saying, hey, Champ
Speaker 1: wants to meet you, and I went, wow, who what
Speaker 1: he said? Uh, Muhammad Ali? And I almost started crying,
Speaker 1: like this is this Dude's Louisville, Kentucky man. This is
Speaker 1: Cassius Clay And he came. We walked there in the
Speaker 1: hallway and he said a couple of things, and uh,
Speaker 1: I really don't remember. I could still almost cry to
Speaker 1: this day thinking about so dope man. So you know,
Speaker 1: after that Louisville game, you know, people knew nationally knew
Speaker 1: my name, and um, yeah, that's kind of how things
Speaker 1: got started. Now, I want to talk specifically about your athleticism,
Speaker 1: because the athleticism in basketball sports, but we're talking basketball
Speaker 1: for a white dude is just not a common thing.
Speaker 1: And then I want to go into race and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. You were a high flying, slam dunking fucking
Speaker 1: like you played, especially from New York, Like we didn't
Speaker 1: see white dudes that could dunk and jump. You know,
Speaker 1: we had our Chris Mullins and we had we had
Speaker 1: our dudes and you know Steve Alfred shoot KG crafty.
Speaker 1: You know, you were sticking out because you were in
Speaker 1: the high school the McDonald's All American dunk contes. You
Speaker 1: were banging on people your first year. You had lift
Speaker 1: on your jump shot. You essentially what they you know,
Speaker 1: in simple terms, you played like a black dude. When
Speaker 1: did you realize, like, obviously you can't that's god you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like jumping being quick is god.
Speaker 1: You know, I tried all the fucking I tried all
Speaker 1: the jumping drills, and they don't fucking work. They do
Speaker 1: not fucking work. If it's not in you, it's not
Speaker 1: even if you could jump forty inches like you probably could,
Speaker 1: maybe you could get to forty one inches, but when
Speaker 1: you're jumping three inches like me and you get two
Speaker 1: four inches, it means nothing. Talk about you know, your
Speaker 1: style of play, and then talk about race and sports
Speaker 1: and playing essentially like a black dude in like the
Speaker 1: fine line between it becoming the elephant in the room
Speaker 1: and also you're just like, I'm just trying to get
Speaker 1: to the fucking league. Speak on that, Rex. Yeah, you know, Mike,
Speaker 1: I just got lucky. Really, it's just luck. You know,
Speaker 1: my parents genetics that with my mom, you know, long
Speaker 1: arms and tall, and my dad's six six and you know,
Speaker 1: was a professional basketball player. So that part of it's lucky. Now.
Speaker 1: I didn't always have it. I dreamed for it every
Speaker 1: night growing up. I measured myself. I grew so late.
Speaker 1: I was a five seven, five eight freshman. I played varsity,
Speaker 1: but I didn't start on the varsity and we had
Speaker 1: my two best friends to this day still Greg Bond
Speaker 1: and Jeff Stanford. They started all four years of high school.
Speaker 1: I played freshman ball, JV ball and varsity ball my
Speaker 1: whole freshman year and then had a gross spurt. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't athletic before that even is just normal normal? No? No,
Speaker 1: I mean I was. I was skilled. I could shoot
Speaker 1: and handle and do all that stuff, but I wasn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just average. I mean, you know, I may
Speaker 1: have had quick burst and stuff, but I couldn't jump.
Speaker 1: You know, I was happy to slap the board on
Speaker 1: a layup man through my freshman year. And in about
Speaker 1: three months between freshman sophomore year, I grew about six
Speaker 1: inches from five seven to I don't know six to
Speaker 1: or so, and uh started being able to jump now
Speaker 1: And there wasn't a strong jumper, but I was long
Speaker 1: to getting longer reach and all that stuff. But you know, again,
Speaker 1: I dreamed for all the same ship my boys dreamed of,
Speaker 1: all the same ship you dreamed of. Many of their
Speaker 1: favorite players were guys like Larry Bird and Kyle Macy
Speaker 1: and the guys, the the white guys. And I grew
Speaker 1: up loving, loving, Darryl Griffith and David Thompson. You know,
Speaker 1: they were both you know, I thought, man, if I
Speaker 1: could get to be six three, six four, they can
Speaker 1: dunk it, maybe I can dunk it. And so that
Speaker 1: kind of became my I watched Darryl so much, honestly.
Speaker 1: And the weird thing is, if you look at Darren
Speaker 1: I became friends later on. If you look at our
Speaker 1: career numbers, we were kind of the same player. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, just jump shots and take it to the
Speaker 1: basket every now and then, get steals, get out on
Speaker 1: the break. But that's who I wanted to be. And
Speaker 1: the other thing I fought too, because I hated hearing
Speaker 1: on the news they would talk about an analyst would
Speaker 1: talk about Jeff Lebo playing, and I love Jeff, but
Speaker 1: he's the son of a coach. I hated here, and
Speaker 1: I hated when people said that about me because right
Speaker 1: away I thought it gave off the uh you're saying, well,
Speaker 1: he just grew up in the gym. He has all
Speaker 1: these advantages. It also said, and he's not athletic, because
Speaker 1: no coaches sons were athletic, and they didn't know, you know, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it seemed that way. So I was all
Speaker 1: kinds of messed up, but all kinds of motivated to
Speaker 1: Mike because I didn't mess around. I didn't drink, I
Speaker 1: didn't smoke. I was purely focused on being a basketball
Speaker 1: in high school and didn't have a drink. My I
Speaker 1: didn't have a drink till I was too years in
Speaker 1: the league. Yeah, all my boys, you know, smoke weed
Speaker 1: and got high and drank from the age of thirteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: Just me and my one other best friend who he
Speaker 1: ended up going and playing basketball for my dad at
Speaker 1: Kentucky Westland, really good high school basketball player. We didn't
Speaker 1: we didn't drink. We but we hung out with all
Speaker 1: our boys who did, and I do remember talking about
Speaker 1: jumping and athleticism. We used to go to parties out
Speaker 1: in the country and ship right uh farms and we
Speaker 1: get out there. There'd be a bunch of bales of
Speaker 1: hey and kids drinking and and just being stupid. But
Speaker 1: me and my guys used to we bet people that
Speaker 1: I couldn't jump over cars. They'd be like, you know,
Speaker 1: Rex can jump over that truck right there, and they'd
Speaker 1: be like, ah, fuck you man, No, I can't. And
Speaker 1: we'd you know, We'd get them to throw in a
Speaker 1: few bucks and then I'd go jump over the car.
Speaker 1: And that's what we did to entertain ourselves. Just stupid
Speaker 1: ship like that in high school. Um that came along,
Speaker 1: just came along out of wished there was some folds
Speaker 1: or some footage that you had, like a cell phone
Speaker 1: video if you jumping over a fucking car with a
Speaker 1: permed mullet. I know, gro so crazy, so crazy. But
Speaker 1: talking about the race stuff, you know, I had hurtful
Speaker 1: things said, and not only to me but to you know,
Speaker 1: I saw so much racism and whatnot growing up. I
Speaker 1: was lucky in that growing up in Owensboro, Kentucky. It's
Speaker 1: a town of about sixty people, and not far away
Speaker 1: is Evansville, Indiana. We have a larger percentage black population
Speaker 1: in Owensboro, and at two of the four high schools,
Speaker 1: the athletics programs at two of the four schools are
Speaker 1: predominantly black. My dad grew up playing basketball in our
Speaker 1: hometown and many of his best friends were the black
Speaker 1: friends he played against in high school. So they all
Speaker 1: had sons my age yea and about age six or seven.
Speaker 1: My dad. You know, I loved basketball. I was going
Speaker 1: to his practices, and I remember him telling me one time,
Speaker 1: I said, well, if you want to play basketball, you
Speaker 1: better start playing against the best players, because I was
Speaker 1: just running rush shot over the white kids and in
Speaker 1: first and second grade. So he would take me down
Speaker 1: on the weekends and drop me off at uh Charlie
Speaker 1: Taylor's house where two of my best friends were Avery
Speaker 1: Taylor and Chuckie Taylor, and uh, you know they lived
Speaker 1: in the projects. You know, two bedroom apartment, seven eight
Speaker 1: people in two rooms. Maybe no air in the summer,
Speaker 1: no heat in the winter, maybe eat once a day.
Speaker 1: So I got to see a lot of stuff at
Speaker 1: a very young age that I go home and that
Speaker 1: I had all the trappings. I had somebody there to
Speaker 1: make me get my grades. I had a parent at
Speaker 1: home all the time. Most of my friends that I
Speaker 1: and now these end up being guys that we played
Speaker 1: on different high school teams, but we were a U
Speaker 1: teammates until we were sixteen, and we killed people. I
Speaker 1: was the only white guy on the team playing with
Speaker 1: my guys from Owensborough High School. I went to Apollo
Speaker 1: High School, where all but one of my teammates was white.
Speaker 1: We had battles with those two had battles. Man, but
Speaker 1: those guys the advantage I had coming out UH and
Speaker 1: going to place like five Star. I knew my guys
Speaker 1: on my AU team. They just didn't get invited to
Speaker 1: five Star. They were good. They taught me how to play.
Speaker 1: I had to play. There was five games a year
Speaker 1: that I had to play hard, and it was when
Speaker 1: we played Owensboro High School. So I knew whenever I
Speaker 1: left Kentucky, I wasn't gonna really face anybody anymore athletic, UH,
Speaker 1: any tougher than what I've been playing against for seven
Speaker 1: eight years already. So it really helped him hold me.
Speaker 1: One of the ugliest things I remember said to me
Speaker 1: one time I was at AH. I was about fifteen,
Speaker 1: and I just started you know. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: sophomore and we were playing I won't say where it is,
Speaker 1: but we were playing it a little bitty place right
Speaker 1: outside of Owensboro, Kentucky. And we played the game and
Speaker 1: I had a pretty good game, I guess, and we're
Speaker 1: all kind of standing around waiting to get on the
Speaker 1: bus to go back home, and this dude comes out
Speaker 1: of the stands. He's a country dude. He's got on overalls.
Speaker 1: He looks like a guy straight out his easy top.
Speaker 1: And he put his arm. There are people all around,
Speaker 1: and he put his arm on my shoulder and I
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, look like you know, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? And he said exactly this to me. I'll
Speaker 1: edit it a little bit, but he said, my god,
Speaker 1: he said, you play just like an inn word, but
Speaker 1: you still get to be white. Mm hmm. It still
Speaker 1: makes me want to cry because it's the ugliest. That's
Speaker 1: one of the ugliest things you can say to He
Speaker 1: said it out loud to begin with. And then what
Speaker 1: what compounded everything was the kids, the adults, everyone standing around.
Speaker 1: Nobody said a fucking thing to this guy. I just
Speaker 1: looked at him kind of. I didn't know what to say.
Speaker 1: I'm fifteen. I got this old man that spewing racist
Speaker 1: stupidity in a gym full of people, and nobody's gonna
Speaker 1: call him out on it. And around that time, you know,
Speaker 1: I I started becoming a little bit more aware of
Speaker 1: my surroundings and what was going on racially, um and
Speaker 1: and and just because I'm sure we'll get into it.
Speaker 1: Around this time, I'm you know, playing ball with my
Speaker 1: guys in the summer. Uh, in the projects. And yeah,
Speaker 1: for the last two or three years, me and one
Speaker 1: of my teammates, sisters, We've become really good friends. And
Speaker 1: I've never had a girlfriend before. I mean I don't,
Speaker 1: but we just organically became boyfriend and girlfriend. She's black,
Speaker 1: I'm white. People were not having it. They weren't having especially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they weren't having it. And you're the great white hope.
Speaker 1: I was told to hide from an early age. She
Speaker 1: was told to hide. We hid in high school, you know,
Speaker 1: went to problems with other people. Oh yeah, dude, yes, dude,
Speaker 1: it's it was confusing. It was really confusing. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know. Then I went to Kentucky and there was
Speaker 1: a little bit more of that at u K. She
Speaker 1: went to UK as well. She also won the state
Speaker 1: hundred two years in a row in high school, could fly.
Speaker 1: Her brother Mark played in the NFL for years, Mark Higgs.
Speaker 1: But and and Sean and I my girlfriend were still
Speaker 1: good friends. She we talked regularly, but we kind of
Speaker 1: went through it, and she especially went through it. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell her about all the times that people
Speaker 1: were telling me to hide or be discreet or you know, racist. Ship.
Speaker 1: There were times that I told her though, and see
Speaker 1: they're telling me one thing. They're saying to me, you're
Speaker 1: better than dating her. There. What it's saying to her
Speaker 1: is she's not good enough for me. And it's just
Speaker 1: fucking racist, mean ignorance. I didn't have the courage to
Speaker 1: say any of that at the time. People are telling
Speaker 1: me to worry about my image. And again, Mike, I
Speaker 1: hadn't made a fucking dollar and so I don't these
Speaker 1: are people I should be trusting. But a lot of
Speaker 1: it was hurtful to both of us. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: as you said. Former Sons player Rex Chapman, he just
Speaker 1: got out here to the jail and police arrested him
Speaker 1: for shoplifting over fourteen thousand dollars worth of Apple products
Speaker 1: just like this. Now, the first round draft pick to
Speaker 1: Charlotte in now faces nine counts of organized retail depth
Speaker 1: and five counts of trafficking stolen property, all felonies. When
Speaker 1: you google Rex Chapman, and this is again in the age,
Speaker 1: with a person who's got a very active, very um
Speaker 1: beloved Twitter account, you would think something else would come up.
Speaker 1: But when I Google you, the first image that I
Speaker 1: see is your mug shot. Now being a fan of
Speaker 1: yours and you know, knowing you peripherally. But I remember,
Speaker 1: I think for some reason, when I heard about where
Speaker 1: you were at, I think I saw it in a
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated article about you, because I had a subscription
Speaker 1: to Sports Illustrated, and Sports Illustrated was everything. That's how
Speaker 1: you got your news. There was no Twitter and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Talk to the people, explain what was going on,
Speaker 1: how you wound up in an Apple store in Phoenix,
Speaker 1: stealing where your life had gotten you to that moment.
Speaker 1: And again I'm skipping forward because I can't do the
Speaker 1: life and times of Rex Chapman, because that's not what
Speaker 1: this podcast is about. Speak to me about how you
Speaker 1: wound up in an Apple store in Phoenix, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially trying to steal who the funk knows what? And
Speaker 1: it wasn't because you were broke. Yeah, uh man, it
Speaker 1: probably was in some part because I was going broke,
Speaker 1: you know, Mike, it's still it's so hard to talk about. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I know people know about it, you can
Speaker 1: read about it. Uh you know, I talk about it,
Speaker 1: you know when I go and speak and whynot, It's
Speaker 1: still really hard to talk about the details just because
Speaker 1: you man, I let so many people down, myself, my kids,
Speaker 1: my family, friends. But like I said to you, I
Speaker 1: didn't drink. I wasn't a drink or smoker anything like that.
Speaker 1: If I played, you know, twelve years in the NBA,
Speaker 1: if I had a dozen drinks the night before a game,
Speaker 1: that would be I just didn't. You know, I might
Speaker 1: go out on a night off with you know, Stevie Nask,
Speaker 1: Jason Kidd would go out and have a beer the
Speaker 1: night before. I just felt like I couldn't end. Maybe
Speaker 1: that was just my dad, you know, hearing my dad
Speaker 1: and about what are you doing drinking night before a game?
Speaker 1: Something like that. So I wasn't that guy. But I
Speaker 1: had a lot of injuries when I was playing, and
Speaker 1: my last three years of playing, I had seven orthopedic surgeries.
Speaker 1: Right at the end of my last year though, right
Speaker 1: before the playoffs, I had and I was going to
Speaker 1: retire at the end of the year because I just
Speaker 1: wasn't very good. I had I hadn't had. It was
Speaker 1: two thousand. I had had a dunk every year in
Speaker 1: my life since I was fifteen, and now I'm thirty two,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't had a dunk the whole season. I
Speaker 1: had been hurt on and off hamstrings hand, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't very good and the first time in my life
Speaker 1: I had an average double figures, probably since I was five.
Speaker 1: But out of nowhere, emergency happened deck to me and
Speaker 1: I'm fine, get off the plane. The next day at home.
Speaker 1: That happened in Oakland, I get off the plane. The
Speaker 1: doctor gave me prescription for oxy conton, and I took it,
Speaker 1: and in two days Mike maybe less, I knew I
Speaker 1: was in love. Man. I felt smarter and funnier, and
Speaker 1: it felt like I was walking about an inch and
Speaker 1: a half off the ground. And when people would come
Speaker 1: up and I want to talk to me, I've always
Speaker 1: had some social anxiety, you know, just being recognized from
Speaker 1: a young age and wondering if are they talking about me?
Speaker 1: Are they you know? As you do, you know, the
Speaker 1: older you get, especially if you're known a little bit.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I realized I didn't care
Speaker 1: if people came up and talked to me. I felt
Speaker 1: nicer and smarter and funnier, better dad and a better husband,
Speaker 1: all that, you know. And that was another part in
Speaker 1: a tough marriage because of me. You know, I've struggled
Speaker 1: with depression and probably some sort of form of mental
Speaker 1: illness since I was in my teenage years. I quit
Speaker 1: my high school basketball team, you know, so I had
Speaker 1: my issues, but i'd made it all the way through
Speaker 1: an NBA career and now I'm a full blown you know,
Speaker 1: OxyContin and Viking and addict. How quick did you realize
Speaker 1: or maybe you only know it now in hindsight, but
Speaker 1: like you're saying, two days, you were like, boom, you
Speaker 1: don't want to ever stop. Two days. It was kind
Speaker 1: of like that. I had been an addict, a basketball attict,
Speaker 1: a horse racing addict my whole life. Thoroughbreds gambling everyday,
Speaker 1: golf attict, baggae, jolly ranchers. Don't just give me one,
Speaker 1: I want fucking all of them. So I'm that guy.
Speaker 1: It had just never manifested itself in drugs and and
Speaker 1: you know, honestly, drug addiction and alcoholism on my mom's
Speaker 1: side of the family, gambling on my dad's side of
Speaker 1: the family. So I kind of come by it, honestly,
Speaker 1: I guess. However, when I took that medicine, man, I
Speaker 1: was kind of off to the races. And without going
Speaker 1: through all of the stupid details. About a year and
Speaker 1: a half of that, I was now living out of
Speaker 1: the house. I had moved out. We've got three children
Speaker 1: and another on the way. My life's going to hell.
Speaker 1: Danny Ainge shows up at this little apartment where I'm
Speaker 1: living one morning, our Danny Ainge with the Celtics and says,
Speaker 1: you gotta go to rehab. You're not right. Look at you.
Speaker 1: You look terrible. You're fat, you're gaining weight. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're doing to your kids and your wife,
Speaker 1: but Rex, it's too much. And for whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: listened to Danny. I love him and I think he's
Speaker 1: the best. I just love him to death. But I
Speaker 1: listened to him. I drove myself to rehab. And when
Speaker 1: I got in there, Mike I was. I had to
Speaker 1: tell him what I was taking, and uh, they said,
Speaker 1: what are you taking? I said, I'm taking about ten
Speaker 1: oxyconton a day and about forty viking in a day. Damn,
Speaker 1: I was, yeah, And I was just chewing him up.
Speaker 1: No water, no chair, good thing. I didn't drink because
Speaker 1: I for sure be dead. I mean, if I tried
Speaker 1: to wake up today, I would just chew him up
Speaker 1: just to get him in my system earlier, which with
Speaker 1: oxyconton is very dangerous because it has time release sort
Speaker 1: of thing about it, and you chew it up, you
Speaker 1: just break through all that time release. So I was
Speaker 1: perfectly just messed up all the time. But when I
Speaker 1: got in there and I told him that, I said,
Speaker 1: what's the detox like? They said, well, boxy conton. They
Speaker 1: said it's gonna be seven days, just like seven days
Speaker 1: of coming off of heroin. And when I heard that,
Speaker 1: I was like what what? And they were right it was.
Speaker 1: It was awful. I got out of that rehab and
Speaker 1: within six months I had to have another surgery on
Speaker 1: my wrist. They put me on vicing in. I probably
Speaker 1: should have told him I don't need to be taking this.
Speaker 1: I took it and I was back off to the
Speaker 1: races on Viking. And again, were you when they told
Speaker 1: you they gave you vicat in for the surgery? Was
Speaker 1: the addicting you like, oh cool, yes, yes, I don't
Speaker 1: need like you know, it's not right. You know what
Speaker 1: it does to you specifically, and you're kind of like,
Speaker 1: well I got surgery. Fuck, And exactly, Mike, You're exactly right,
Speaker 1: And the other part about it is and for me,
Speaker 1: the coward part of it was, yeah, but this is
Speaker 1: an OxyContin, right, this is just Viking and I can
Speaker 1: handle the Viking in. What is the difference between the two.
Speaker 1: Oxonton is Uh. It's a major, major drug. I mean
Speaker 1: it probably. I don't think it should be used on
Speaker 1: just people walking around if you're terminal, if you're you know,
Speaker 1: compound fracture surgery, stuff like that. But people just using
Speaker 1: it for back pain and knee pain. It's dangerous, Mike,
Speaker 1: It's really dangerous. It's synthetic, for lack of a better term,
Speaker 1: synthetic heroin, synthetic morphine. It's too good. It's too good.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I'm back on the Viking in and
Speaker 1: I'm on that for six eight months, and you know,
Speaker 1: I came clean and told my ex wife, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm back on it. I gotta go get clean again.
Speaker 1: So I went back to rehab, got off of it.
Speaker 1: They put on something called the box zone after that,
Speaker 1: and that's supposed to be something that weens you off
Speaker 1: of opioids. I was on that for ten years, from
Speaker 1: about two thousand four to two thousand and fourteen, and
Speaker 1: my life just kept getting worse and worse. My decisions
Speaker 1: kept getting worse and worse. Until I'm gambling every day.
Speaker 1: I gotta have my medicine every day. And I when
Speaker 1: I say, I'm gambling every day, Mike. You know, from
Speaker 1: the time I was about twenty, if I had an
Speaker 1: off day in the summer, I went to the track
Speaker 1: ten grand in my pocket, and you know, if I
Speaker 1: want to have it the next day. If I lost
Speaker 1: ten grand that day, I go get another ten grand
Speaker 1: and go to the That was my thing. That's what
Speaker 1: I did so and I got to support this habit,
Speaker 1: you know. And I can also look and go, oh ship,
Speaker 1: I'm starting for the first time in my life, going
Speaker 1: when's that investment come in? When's that payment, when's that
Speaker 1: licensing check coming in? And Mike, I played twelve years
Speaker 1: in the NBA and probably made forty million dollars. You
Speaker 1: should be good. Yeah, I mean not divorce and gambling
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But still, come on, man, and
Speaker 1: my two youngest girls are living with me part of
Speaker 1: the time. They're in middle school, confusing time. Before I
Speaker 1: know it, I don't really know. All I know is
Speaker 1: I'm I'm running. I think I'm running low on money,
Speaker 1: I'm running low on drugs, and I'm in an Apple
Speaker 1: store out of my mind, and there are people all around,
Speaker 1: and I just start putting stuff in my bag in
Speaker 1: a Nike stores right across the street where I've got
Speaker 1: a Nike bag. I've just come from the Nike store
Speaker 1: and I start putting stuff in my bag and left,
Speaker 1: and oh, man, oh, I just want to cry. Uh
Speaker 1: And I guess, well, I had decided I was going
Speaker 1: to take that stuff start pawning it fun. And I know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I should know that I'm Rex Chapman,
Speaker 1: the basketball player who everybody knows here, everybody you know,
Speaker 1: Phoenix suns Um. And I can't see it. I can't
Speaker 1: see any of it. I can't see that what I'm
Speaker 1: doing is illegal and wrong and criminal. I can't see
Speaker 1: that anybody knows me, you know, I can't see that.
Speaker 1: I think there were a handful of times that I
Speaker 1: was in there with my daughters, so man, it was
Speaker 1: so hard just and then okay, then so I think
Speaker 1: that happened several times. It did happen several times. And
Speaker 1: I don't know how long later, whether it was a
Speaker 1: year or six months. I'm at home one day and
Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to go pick my daughters up from
Speaker 1: school to thirty. I get in my car, I pull out.
Speaker 1: As soon as I pull out of my gate, there's
Speaker 1: like six uh Scott's Dale police officers just pen me in,
Speaker 1: him me in, and I don't know what the funk
Speaker 1: is going on. I truly didn't. I had had some
Speaker 1: problems with my driver's license, driving on a suspended license.
Speaker 1: I I hadn't had a license or insurance in years,
Speaker 1: but driving everywhere, so I've been pulled over taken to
Speaker 1: jail before for a suspended license. So I didn't really
Speaker 1: put anything together and I started at They got me
Speaker 1: out of the car, handcuffs, threw me on the hood.
Speaker 1: They're like six dudes, and I'm going, what's going on?
Speaker 1: And none of them are saying anything. One of them
Speaker 1: came back with a real smart answer and said light
Speaker 1: day on crime in Scottsdale. I guess huh, And I
Speaker 1: was like, will you tell me what's going on? They said,
Speaker 1: you'll find out, So they put me in the car.
Speaker 1: I went to the jail. I got to the jail.
Speaker 1: They put me in a cell right away with a
Speaker 1: naked dude who's jacking off? Um, straight, just naked dude
Speaker 1: jacking off and I'm sitting in the corner. Jesus yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and in jail they got those like
Speaker 1: they got high school mirrors that are just you can
Speaker 1: kind of seeing him, and it's like a piece of aluminum,
Speaker 1: you know. And Uh, I look at myself due jacking
Speaker 1: off in the corner. I look at myself in this mirror,
Speaker 1: and I'm wearing a fucking basket Nike basketball shirt that
Speaker 1: says basketball never stops. Sure as Funk did that day,
Speaker 1: I couldn't laugh at it, and I forgot about that
Speaker 1: story until about six months ago. I was on Sarah
Speaker 1: Spain's UH show and remembered it, told her about and
Speaker 1: started laughing about it. But it damn sure wasn't funny
Speaker 1: at the time. I remember them giving me my phone.
Speaker 1: They asked me if I could wanted to make a call?
Speaker 1: I said, or they said, do you want to make
Speaker 1: costs that I don't know anybody's numbers, Nobody. One dude
Speaker 1: grabbed my phone and said, here, find the number you need.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I opened my phone, the phone's
Speaker 1: just going crazy. People have started finding out. I guess
Speaker 1: and I had one message from my boy that I
Speaker 1: remember Josh Hopkins and you know Josh, I know actor.
Speaker 1: Uh he's my homeboy, Kentucky home boy I'm doing another
Speaker 1: podcast with. There was a message from him that said,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened. I just no, I love you, man.
Speaker 1: And I ended up living on Josh's couch for a
Speaker 1: couple of years after all that, but I went back
Speaker 1: into jail. I got out, Mike, and you know, I
Speaker 1: just felt broken. And about a week later I went
Speaker 1: to rehab in Louisville, Kentucky, and Uh, I took it seriously,
Speaker 1: learned a lot about started learning about myself. When that happened,
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of a relief. I remember
Speaker 1: getting into rehab and sitting back and thinking, alright, dude,
Speaker 1: this is where you need to be. I felt a
Speaker 1: little sense of peace for the first time in a
Speaker 1: long time. And I think when I look back about it,
Speaker 1: I always felt like a little bit of a fraud, Mike,
Speaker 1: just from a young age. People they had a view
Speaker 1: of me, or I thought they had a view of
Speaker 1: me as this all American white kid, and I had
Speaker 1: apparently sold out my whole fucking life to that ideal,
Speaker 1: knowing that's not who I was inside. You know, look,
Speaker 1: I'm a flawed dude. I got no patience, I have
Speaker 1: all kinds of wartz. I'm you know, depressed, I you know,
Speaker 1: but it was the first time in my life I
Speaker 1: really felt like, all right, now the facade has gone,
Speaker 1: you know, Now I can just see me. I can
Speaker 1: just you know. But I gotta get better, And so
Speaker 1: I did. I took it really seriously for a month,
Speaker 1: and then I went three months. I stayed with John
Speaker 1: Lucas out at Houston. Uh, I've loved forever. John has
Speaker 1: a story similar, and he really helped get me back.
Speaker 1: Then I moved out to l A, stayed with my
Speaker 1: buddy Mark Verge out there and my other buddy, Josh
Speaker 1: Hopkins for a couple of years, and really tried getting
Speaker 1: myself together. I had when I checked into rehab that year, Mike,
Speaker 1: I was two hundred and sixty pounds. God damn, how
Speaker 1: tall are you? Six three six four? Maybe? But I'd
Speaker 1: never played more than one ninety. So it took me
Speaker 1: a couple of years to lose get down about two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, and slowly but surely just doing the next
Speaker 1: right thing every day, you know. I started building back
Speaker 1: and then my guy named Paul Archie called me at
Speaker 1: uh j M I, which is the media arm of
Speaker 1: Kentucky Sports UK Basketball and Football Network, and uh, he said,
Speaker 1: you want to do our pregame shows back here? I
Speaker 1: said yeah. He said, we can't really pay you. I said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be paid. I don't give a ship.
Speaker 1: I love to. So I came back to Kentucky and
Speaker 1: started doing that. I've always had seventy five thousand or
Speaker 1: so Twitter followers from my MBA days, but when I
Speaker 1: got back here, I found some stupid video started doing
Speaker 1: this blocker charge thing, and then that Twitter thing took off,
Speaker 1: and now here we are. One thing that I mean,
Speaker 1: I've sort of taken on these battles because I consider
Speaker 1: you a friend. One of the things that where we
Speaker 1: are today in is like I said earlier, when you
Speaker 1: bring up Rex Chapman, you know, the first thing or
Speaker 1: the first or second thing is this, uh you know
Speaker 1: time in your life where you were at the bottom.
Speaker 1: It's not you dunking on this person, dunking on that person,
Speaker 1: hitting this iconic three point shot for the Phoenix songs.
Speaker 1: It's not even the tweets, the fun tweets, And I've
Speaker 1: sort of stepped into your battles because I'll see you
Speaker 1: make a tweet and people be like you fucking drug addict,
Speaker 1: you junkie, you this that, And I know that that
Speaker 1: because it bothers me, Like there, I have my my
Speaker 1: ship that I don't like to talk about or the
Speaker 1: things that I've said. And you know, and you've moved
Speaker 1: on with your life. But how how frustrating is it
Speaker 1: that when you're like, your whole life becomes this fucked
Speaker 1: up incident and you could be saving babies, saving cats
Speaker 1: and dogs for a burning building and someone would be like,
Speaker 1: you fucking junkie, you stole phones in Phoenix. How frustrating
Speaker 1: is that that that's always gonna be around you? Or
Speaker 1: is it a good thing that reminds you? You know,
Speaker 1: what's your take on that? It's a little of both, Mike,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, of course as a person, you know,
Speaker 1: I put out some we raised oh last year, this
Speaker 1: stupid Twitter account raised like grand for COVID relief across
Speaker 1: the country. I mean NBA teams to frontline workers, to
Speaker 1: food banks, to everything. And I put out some recap
Speaker 1: of that about three or four weeks ago, and I
Speaker 1: see one of the comments has my mug shot and
Speaker 1: saying this you Rex and I you know, it's frustrating,
Speaker 1: but every time I I do that because I joke
Speaker 1: about people, I do. I joke about people all the time.
Speaker 1: And life is hard. Life is also funny. And if
Speaker 1: you can't laugh at yourself some it's gonna be a long,
Speaker 1: hard life for you. I've also realized, Look, if they're
Speaker 1: attacking you, they're not attacking what I was saying. If
Speaker 1: they're attacking you, you're winning. You're winning. If they're attacking
Speaker 1: you as a person, your person, then that's okay, and
Speaker 1: you just gotta let that go. I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: corral those people in any kind of way because I
Speaker 1: know who they are. I hear you. And as far
Speaker 1: as you know, you play in the NBA, you played
Speaker 1: in the era of the eighties and the nineties. You
Speaker 1: know your comrades, your brothers with you mentioned, you know
Speaker 1: you're talking and passing about Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge, you know,
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan's every single person that played in that era.
Speaker 1: As far as this Twitter verse, Twitter success, who has
Speaker 1: been You're like, oh, ship, this person follows me, or
Speaker 1: this person retweets me, because your Twitter is a dope engagement.
Speaker 1: Who have been a few of the retweets or like
Speaker 1: responses you've gotten from people that you were like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck? Bro? It's been a slow build, but over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, I've just been amazed. I
Speaker 1: mean everybody from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Nancy Pelosi, Chris Pratt,
Speaker 1: Ben Stiller, John Legend, Chrissy Teagan, all the major I
Speaker 1: remember I freaked out sort of one day about two
Speaker 1: years ago. I looked up and TMZ was following me.
Speaker 1: I was like, fuck, what have I done? I write
Speaker 1: the Yeah, I was like exactly, So, yeah, man, it's
Speaker 1: been crazy, you know. And to be honest, a lot
Speaker 1: of the people you know that I grew up watching,
Speaker 1: you know, some of your peers, you know Jane lynch,
Speaker 1: Andy Richter, you know, just people who I really look
Speaker 1: Sasha Baron Cohen out of nowhere, Mike, this is I
Speaker 1: haven't told you this. About a month ago, two months ago.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm sitting around here watching basketball one night and
Speaker 1: I get a direct message from Sasha Baron Cohen Borat
Speaker 1: and immediately I look and I go, how do I
Speaker 1: have more fucking followers than Sasha Baron Cohen And he says, Rex, listen, man.
Speaker 1: He writes a really nice thing saying, we got to
Speaker 1: really try to get Trump off for Twitter and off
Speaker 1: of social media. You know, would you mind amplifying this
Speaker 1: message a little bit? And I was like, bro, anytime,
Speaker 1: come on, let's go. Uh. Two days later, he's off.
Speaker 1: Trump has been kicked off. Sasha sends a message saying
Speaker 1: we did it two days two days. Man, that's dope, right,
Speaker 1: that's dope. That's dope. That's crazy. Yeah, I was living
Speaker 1: in my car, man, I was living in my car
Speaker 1: for a minute. And now Barrat's colleague. What do you
Speaker 1: want to do with the rest of your life in
Speaker 1: regarding because you know you're the Twitter thing is one thing?
Speaker 1: You have a podcast in regards to basketball because I
Speaker 1: know you love basketball. You're always gonna love basketball. What
Speaker 1: what are your goals and hopes and dreams for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life? How old are you now, Mike Ship,
Speaker 1: You're a young guy. Can you dunk anymore? I tried
Speaker 1: it at fifty, I did it at fifty. We don't
Speaker 1: want to get it past you. Know I haven't try
Speaker 1: I haven't tried it in three years because I hurt
Speaker 1: myself when I landed at fifty and I did it
Speaker 1: at fifty, hurt my back and was like, this is stupid.
Speaker 1: I can't do it anymore, this is dumb. So uh No,
Speaker 1: I would say I probably can if I had to
Speaker 1: maybe one handed or two handed dunk. It's a one
Speaker 1: handed dunk. It's a one and in fact, how about this,
Speaker 1: it's a one step, two ft, one handed dunk. I
Speaker 1: can't even know. I can't even I wouldn't even think
Speaker 1: about jumping off a one leg I wouldn't even think
Speaker 1: about it. Pull hammy, I I would look like you man,
Speaker 1: I wish I could fucking dunk. Okay, So fifty three,
Speaker 1: you've got this new notoriety in regards to this Twitter world.
Speaker 1: You're starting this podcast, charges you're starting another podcast. What
Speaker 1: do you want out of life professionally outside of being
Speaker 1: you know, a good person, a consistent person, a person
Speaker 1: who's not in trouble, a good father your kids or older?
Speaker 1: What do you want out of life professionally going forward?
Speaker 1: Because you're a young guy. Uh, basketball will always be
Speaker 1: a part of it. I enjoy like crazy, finding and
Speaker 1: getting to know guys like Bam out of Bio and
Speaker 1: Tyler Hero and hand delivering them to my friends in
Speaker 1: the NBA. Who I go, dude, I'm telling you, not
Speaker 1: that one, this one. This is the guy I enjoy that.
Speaker 1: I enjoy watching good young basketball players who are conscientious,
Speaker 1: who never take plays off, who always know what defense
Speaker 1: you're in. I just like that as much as anything,
Speaker 1: so I'll always continue to do that. I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: these podcasts, Mike. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: things that I should have said and could have said
Speaker 1: when I was younger, when I was a teenager, about race,
Speaker 1: about you know, injustice, bigotry, whatnot. And I think I
Speaker 1: want to tackle a lot of that stuff, uh in
Speaker 1: the right way, uh, with people from different walks of life. Uh,
Speaker 1: just to you know, there's a lot of hatred and
Speaker 1: division right now. We're all people, and I know, like you,
Speaker 1: you and I have we have people who really like us,
Speaker 1: and we do We're polarizing. We have people who just
Speaker 1: can't stand what we do or they can't stand the
Speaker 1: things they hear us say publicly. I've yet to really
Speaker 1: sit down with anybody who dislikes me, you know, based
Speaker 1: on what they think of me, sat down to have
Speaker 1: a beer where we can't have some find some common ground.
Speaker 1: And I think with these pods, i'd like to, you know,
Speaker 1: show hey, yeah, we all may be different, but we're
Speaker 1: not that different. And I want to have some good discussion,
Speaker 1: learn about people that I don't know, and maybe make
Speaker 1: a little bit of a difference. And you said it,
Speaker 1: I feel so bad for what I did to my
Speaker 1: children that I'm I've got to spend every day trying
Speaker 1: to make up for it. And uh, you know, I've
Speaker 1: spent the last few years just trying to build back
Speaker 1: where I can take care of them financially, and so
Speaker 1: I'm still working on the relationship part of it. And
Speaker 1: I love all my kids, they love me, but I
Speaker 1: owe it to them to continue to keep doing the
Speaker 1: next right thing and trying to make them proud. That's dope. Well,
Speaker 1: I wish you nothing but luck in real life. Personally,
Speaker 1: I wish you nothing but luck with the Charges podcast.
Speaker 1: Charges with Rex Chapman. I am so appreciative and honored
Speaker 1: that you let me interview you, uh in a broad
Speaker 1: sense for this first episode of Charges, and uh, what
Speaker 1: can I say I'll let you sign off. This is
Speaker 1: your podcast. You do that. I can't do all the
Speaker 1: fucking heavy lifting. I'll let you sign off right now. Jesus,
Speaker 1: thank you buddy. First of all, I'm honored that you
Speaker 1: would do this. I really you're my boy. I love
Speaker 1: you to death. Um, and I you know, look, this
Speaker 1: is not happening without some nerves. Uh Um. I've been
Speaker 1: interviewed since I'm fifteen years old. I can sit here
Speaker 1: and be interviewed all damn day. But I'm taking pointers
Speaker 1: from you today. I gotta learn how to interview and
Speaker 1: how to listen. So there's gonna be a little bit
Speaker 1: of a learning curve that I'm excited about, anxious, nervous,
Speaker 1: all of that. But the guests we're gonna have are
Speaker 1: gonna be dope, dope dope, and uh people need to subscribe.
Speaker 1: Charges Rex Chapman, let's go charges seven no run Nians
Speaker 1: with the law charges sut Lee, send the tennis and
Speaker 1: balls and charges the celebrity gank thorms charge we came
Speaker 1: along with from Living Law. That's charges seven no run
Speaker 1: Nians with the law charges set Lee, send the tennis
Speaker 1: and balls and charges the celebrity Gank Forlorums. Charge we
Speaker 1: came along with from Living Lawless Judge. Charges is created
Speaker 1: by Portlay and Control Media is produced by DV Podcasts
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