LeBron Stans are in the Twilight Zone
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Let's get at this. Be tremendous. Relentless. I'm relentless. Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 110. This, as always, is the un-undisputed, everything I cannot share with you during the two and a half hour debate show that is undisputed. Today, we're going to be talking about the

I will tell you how LeBron James, LeBron bleeping James, has turned my life into a living nightmare from which I will never, ever escape. I will tell you what I consider LeBron's greatest achievement. I will tell you my favorite NFL draft picks of this year and why I badly want the Cowboys, my Cowboys, to draft one of them a running back.

I will tell you which professional athlete my quote-unquote daughter Hazel, our terror of the Maltese, reminds me of. And finally, I will answer my all-time favorite question that you have asked me, have I ever had the hiccups on air? It's a great one. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. I often feel like

I'm stuck in a Twilight Zone episode. Now, you very possibly don't know, don't remember the old TV show, The Twilight Zone, unless maybe you've seen the reruns. Maybe you've caught some of the recurring Twilight Zones that they've tried to recreate. But The Twilight Zone was a breakthrough television show from 1959 to 1964. It was the brainchild of

of a genius named Rod Serling, who put human beings into disturbingly inexplicable situations and circumstances that became inescapably terrifying for said humans. I am stuck in a world that's filled with seemingly sane humans who are incapable of seeing what I've seen from the start,

with LeBron James, that he isn't even remotely the Michael Jeffrey Jordan that he immediately declared himself to be. I remind you, at age 18, coming out of high school, St. Vincent, St. Mary's, Akron, Ohio, LeBron had chosen one tattooed across his shoulders and back.

I remind you, LeBron chose to wear Jordan's number, the number, the original 23, and also chose to adopt or steal or carry on Michael's pregame press row powder toss. He did that. I didn't do it. He did that. Chose to do that. LeBron Ramone James announced to the world coming out of high school that

I am your next Jordan. I didn't announce that. LeBron announced that. Yet he soon began to reveal himself to be anything but that. Michael Jordan, trust me on this, the Jordan I got to know during the last dance season, 1998 in Chicago, when I was the lead columnist for the Chicago Tribune, that Michael Jordan was the coldest blooded basketball killer ever.

I've ever been around, ever closely studied, ever even known from a distance. You can throw in football, baseball, hockey, throw it in, whatever it is. Never been anything like that Jordan. LeBron is so gifted, 6'9", 270 pounds. LeBron is such a nice guy, yet LeBron was born without a clutch gene.

LeBron was born without a closer gene. LeBron was flawed from the start. As great as he has been, he was clearly, utterly flawed from the start. LeBron James is simply too nice a guy to be Jordan, who was not the nicest guy. I liked him, but when it came to killing on the basketball court, never been anything like him. Force of nature. So we began to see

LeBron's meltdowns, his epic fails. We saw it in his final playoff run, his first go-around in Cleveland against the Boston Celtics in 2010 in games four, five, and six. His owner, Dan Gilbert, soon accused him of quitting in games four, five, and six. Quitting in his camp had to plant a story at ESPN, where I was working at the time, that LeBron had to be sedated.

Before each game, four, five, and six, because of an issue he was having off the court with a teammate. Sedated. Can you imagine Michael Jordan ever being accused by an owner of quitting? Ever needing to be sedated before huge playoff games? Obviously not. Then you remember that first NBA Finals with the Heetles against the Mavericks.

2011, remember games four, five, and six, the chosen one became the frozen one. I shrugged and said, well, I'm not surprised. I could have told you so. I actually did tell you so. That happened. Then remember the last five minutes of game six of 2013 when LeBron fell completely apart?

Three unforced error turnovers, missed the tying three near the buzzer, and Ray Allen saved LeBron's legacy. Remember that? It happened. Never happened to Jordan or Kobe or Magic, but it happened to LeBron. 2014, LeBron and the Heat got blown off the court by my San Antonio Spurs by a record finals margin in five games.

Because LeBron had weirdly disappeared in games three and four in Miami. Weirdly unplugged, disconnected. Nobody said a peep about it except me. I could go on and on. But all I hear from the billions of blind witnesses out there, as I call them, the LeBron zombies out there, billions and billions, all those smiling, have a nice day, seemingly sane humans,

just continued to smile at me and say, oh, come on, LeBron's much better than Jordan. No, no, he's not. No, no, he's not. No, no, he's not. Yet the LeBron zombies delusionally defend LeBron. They make excuses for LeBron. They deflect blame off LeBron. No matter how much truth I tell, no matter how many facts I hit them over their heads with,

They just shrug and smile and say, eh, you're a hater. No, no, I'm really not. No, I'm not. No, I am not a hater. I'm just stuck in one long, endless Twilight Zone episode in which only I can see and speak the truth that falls on deaf ears. Let's fast forward to last year's Western Conference Finals, shall we?

Four straight times, the Los Angeles Lakers were right there with the eventual champion Denver Nuggets in the fourth quarter. Right there. And four times they lost. In largest part because LeBron bleeping James in those four fourth quarters combined shot seven of 23. He missed 16 of 23 fourth quarter shots. In those four fourth quarters combined, he went one of 10 from three.

And by the way, quick side note, would you believe that in last year's playoffs, in the fourth quarters of last year's playoffs, LeBron went on a record playoff run, missing 19 straight three-point shots. Never been done before in the history of the NBA playoffs.

LeBron James missed 19 straight fourth quarter threes. He did that. I'm not making it up. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not tacking on a few just to make my case. It wasn't actually 15 and I made it. No, it was 19 straight three point shots that he missed, which brought us to the closeout game here in Los Angeles game four as the Lakers got swept.

Last two Laker possessions, LeBron bleeping James had the ball in his hands. The first time couldn't make anything happen. And he went to his old trick. I'll just fade away and make this shot look virtually impossible so that nobody will criticize me for it because they'll just say, oh, that was a really tough shot.

Well, you sort of backed into that tough shot by not forcing the action. He faded and he faded and he faded to his left until he finally shot a fall away nearly from the three-point line that hit nothing but backboard, as in side of backboard. And then he got a reprieve. He got one last chance down two points to tie it again. And to his credit, instead of pulling up and taking a nearly impossible degree of difficulty three,

Never his forte. He did put his head down for once. He put his head down and he drove it because LeBron James is the greatest driver of the basketball I've ever seen. LeBron James is ambidextrous, born left-handed, shoots right-handed, but can certainly use his left, maybe at the rim even better than his right. So he drove to his left and Jamal Murray, the clutch closer for the Denver Nuggets, cut him off at the pass, jumped the route,

Got two hands on the basketball, making it very difficult for LeBron to get the ball up through Jamal's hands into shooting position with Aaron Gordon hounding him on his right side. And when he did get it up, Aaron Gordon easily blocked it. And that's the way that playoff series ended in a sweep for the Denver Nuggets.

After the Los Angeles Lakers featuring LeBron bleep and James had four chances to win it in the fourth quarter and came up empty four straight times. All I heard from the apologists, the defenders, the blame deflectors, the LeBron zombies was obviously he ran out of gas. He ran out of gas. I mean, he's 38, not 68.

He spends, what, $2 million a year keeping himself in shape. He's the best conditioned athlete in the world, and he ran out of gas? That's impossible. Oh, but his LeBron zombies told me his foot was still bothering him. He had a tendon issue in his foot, you see. Hmm. His foot looked perfectly fine in the first round against Memphis. He was great in that series. It looked perfectly fine in the second round against the Golden State Warriors. He was very good in that series. Huh.

No, I said LeBron was just choking, choking his guts out in the four fourth quarters of the conference finals against the Nuggets, choking his guts out. The LeBron zombies looked at me like I should have been committed, like the ambulance should come right now and the attendants should strap a straitjacket on me.

and take me to the asylum and lock me away out of reach of sharp objects so I could not harm myself. I am stuck in the twilight zone. Now, fast forward to this year's game one at Denver. First round, Lakers had a 12-point lead in the second quarter. Lakers looked like the better team. Hmm, interesting. But they blew that lead, predictably, and they fell behind. But then they battled back. Austin Reeves.

Best closer candidate this team has. He made a couple of shots in the fourth quarter and all of a sudden you look up and you say, it's a game. Guess what the quote unquote king did? He often crowns himself. Should have punched himself right in the face to wake himself up. The king played the fourth quarter without actually playing. He was on the floor without participating. He checked out. So let me get this straight.

The greatest scorer in the history of the National Basketball Association, a man who scored over 40,000 points, refused to shoot in the fourth quarter of a tone-setting game one against the defending champions. Refused to shoot.

I've never seen anything like it before. Ever, ever. Never. I've been doing this a long time. Never seen anything like it. I've been covering the NBA since I covered the Lakers out here in Los Angeles back in the middle 1970s. I think I started in 76 for the Los Angeles Times. That's how far back I go. And yet, in all my days, I've never seen anything like what happened in the fourth quarter of game one, Lakers at Denver. What was he doing?

Well, my first theory was I actually let him off the hook here with this one, posted this one on Instagram and Twitter right after the game. He very possibly was pouting over all the criticism he had taken for his poor shooting in the combined four fourth quarters of the Denver sweep in the Western Conference finals of the previous year. Pouting probably because of my criticism, my relentless criticism, my valid criticism of

my authentic and genuine and correct criticism, LeBron appeared to be pouting, saying, oh, well, you don't think I can close this game? You don't think I can do this? You don't think I have a clutch gene? Okay, then I'll just let them do it. The non-LeBrons.

I'll just quickly pass the ball to Austin Reeves or to D'Lo, the coldest hand on the floor. Ended up going one for nine from three. LeBron kicked it right to him for the shot of the game with about five minutes remaining. Had a chance to cut it to four. Did D'Lo? Lipped out a three, predictably. Let them do it. Don't look at me. Look at them. Blame them this time. It's their fault.

He was either pouting or he was afraid to shoot one or the other. But I let him off the hook. I gave him a pass on the afraid to shoot. And I said he was pouting. I don't know anybody else who really criticized him except me. So maybe it was because of my criticism. Would you believe the first basket LeBron James made in that game came long after the game was decided in the final seconds of the game?

We drove to the bucket for an uncontested layup that cut the lead from 13 down to 11. And for me, the final irony was that morning on Undisputed, when my man Paul Pierce said the Denver Nuggets would win this game one by 12, I said, I'll take 12 points for a dinner right now. And he said, done.

I had 12 points and I was teetering because it was Denver by 13. And would you believe the king saved me? The king won me a dinner bet with his arch rival. Aha, his arch rival, his old nemesis from the Boston Celtics, Paul Pierce, who often guarded LeBron, who often made life difficult for LeBron.

by making it tough on him to score, and by scoring on and over LeBron. Paul did the best job on LeBron on both ends of the floor I've ever seen at 6 feet 7 inches tall. Is it possible that LeBron James, with the highest IQ in basketball, arguably the highest in the history of the sport, beyond Magic, Jason Kidd, or John Stockton, or we could go on and on, is it possibly the highest? It's very possible.

Is it possible that that IQ kicked in in the waning moments of game one to the point that LeBron said to himself, I can't let Paul Pierce win a dinner bet because of me after I quit on my team in the fourth quarter. I can't let him win. I got to do this. And he attacked and he scored and he cut the final margin to 11. Thank you very much. And LeBron,

If I can invoke Zeke, I eat again. Actually won two dinner bets from Paul Pierce this week, just as I've won, I think I'm up five dinners on Keyshawn Johnson, but I digress. Now, speaking of Paul Pierce, would you believe that the next morning on Undisputed that even Paul Pierce went LeBron zombie on me? Even Paul Pierce said, oh, well, in the fourth quarter, LeBron obviously said,

Ran out of gas. Paul Pierce said that on Undisputed. LeBron ran out of gas in the fourth quarter because of the altitude, the mile-high altitude in Denver, Colorado. Paul, it's game one of the playoffs.

Keyshawn Johnson's point again and again and again leading up to the playoffs was, as a lifelong Laker fan, he wanted Denver first, not last in the conference playoffs. He wanted them first so that LeBron would be the healthiest and the freshest he could be. And Paul Pierce, LeBron's arch rival and nemesis, is giving him the out-of-gas excuse right out of the gate? Are you kidding me? I...

I could only laugh stuck in the twilight zone. LeBron said going into these playoffs that he was much healthier than he was a year ago. LeBron got the break of the year when Zion Williamson had the Lakers on the ropes in the first play-in game in New Orleans and somehow pulled his hamstring with three minutes to go. Somehow pulled his hamstring. No pull,

No hope for the Lakers. Lakers get sent back to L.A. to have to deal with the Kings, who had beaten them eight of the last nine times. What a break. No, I made it clear going in, no more out-of-gas excuse for LeBron. This year, he's healthy, he's rested, he's ready. Think about this. LeBron James refused to shoot in the fourth quarter of a tone-setting Game 1 against the defending champ.

Can you imagine Michael Jordan doing that? No, obviously you can't. Magic Johnson? No, obviously not. Kobe Bean Bryant? Please don't get me started. LeBron James has always been, will always be a thin-skinned diva. LeBron James is mentally fragile, has been from the start. That fourth quarter alone,

Should have disqualified LeBron James from ever sharing the same sentence with Michael Jordan ever again. Should have disqualified him forever. Never again can you share the same sentence with Michael Jordan after that display in that fourth quarter. I mean, hashtag strive for greatness. How about hashtag strive for weakness, which led us to game two the other night.

Lakers predictably had a 20-point lead in the third quarter because they can play with Denver. Anthony Davis can hold his own with Joker. In fact, he can outplay Joker as he did in the first half when AD went 11 out of 12 and scored 24 points. By the way, I'll quickly answer one of your questions at this point in the narrative. This is David from New York, New York.

who asks, who makes your all NBA starting five this season? That's pretty easy. I'll start with Joker. I'll go to my MVP, maybe because I'm from Oklahoma City, but my MVP, Shea Gilgis Alexander. Luka is definitely on my starting five and is my most improved player.

He's gotten so much better on defense, so much better from three, so much better from the free throw line. Luka got in the lab through that last offseason. And finally, I have to reward somebody from the best team through the regular season. That would be Jason Tatum. Not sold on him in the postseason, but regular, yes. And my final spot goes to a Laker named Anthony Davis. Anthony Davis, Laker.

is definitely a top five player and proved it all season very long. My point being, you can't tell me that LeBron doesn't have enough help. How many times have I heard that from the LeBron zombies? You can't tell me he doesn't have a co-star of the highest order who too often has become a partner in fourth quarter crime. Lakers in game two had a 10-point lead going to the fourth. And guess what?

LeBron James played a stretch of all-time great playoff basketball. He made back-to-back threes mid-fourth quarter. He attacked the basket, made a couple driving layups. He stole the ball from Jamal Murray and dunked on Jamal Murray. That dunk gave the Lakers an eight-point lead with six minutes to go. And LeBron James could not get that game home. Would Jordan? I'm sure he would have.

Magic, Kobe, Larry Bird. You better believe they would have gotten that game home. Anthony Davis managed one shot in the entire fourth quarter of game two. One shot, which he missed. That's LeBron's fault. He's the point guard. He's the orchestrator. He's the player coach. He's still the best passer in all of basketball, but he has no closer gene. Never has, never will.

He has no real sense of how to get that game home. One way or the other, LeBron is unable to impose his will on a game of this magnitude of a team of this caliber. Is he better than Jamal Murray? Sure he is. Even now at 39, he's better than Jamal. I would take him over Jamal Murray for the duration of the season for most playoff moments, but not this moment.

Magic Johnson, would he have gotten that game? I'm sure he would have. He just would figure out where the ball needed to go, who needed to shoot it, what needed to happen when it needed to happen, not LeBron. So predictably, the game came down to LeBron with a late, subtle push off of his former teammate, KCP, creating, voila, LeBron's own Michael Jordan Memorial moment. Remember game six?

Utah, 1998. I was there, front row, press row. Michael stole the ball from Carl Malone, dribbled the ball up the floor, ignored Scottie Pippen, calling for the ball on the wing. Nah, I got this. Little push off of Brian Russell. He rose just beyond the free throw line and stroked home the prettiest jumper I've ever seen. Nothing but net held up pose.

I still have the picture shot from the far end of the floor of the faces of the Utah Jazz fans behind the basket on that end of the floor, the horrified looks. That was their Twilight Zone moment. He had done it to them again as the Bulls closed out the Utah Jazz, Carl Malone and John Stockton in six games. LeBron James wound up.

with a wide open, unguarded, uncontested three-point shot. A veritable free throw from the three-point line, and he missed it. Just a little short, a little left.

Would MJ have made that shot? You know he would have. Would Kobe? You better believe you would have. You just know it, and I just know it. LeBron has no clutch gene. That was a legacy shot, and he missed it because that's what he always does. He's made a few walk-offs here and there because he's played 21 bleeping NBA seasons.

He's on pace, on course to play more minutes than anybody in the history of basketball ever has. And of course, Jamal Murray, who's everything LeBron could fantasize about being as a closer, he went down and clutch-jeaned LeBron and the Lakers with a fall away over the outstretched long arm of the law of Anthony Davis, a top five player, nothing but net.

Nothing but a heartache for LeBron and the Lakers falling down 0-2 when they very easily could be up 2-0 in this series. By the way, I tried to ask on Undisputed, why didn't LeBron fight through the pick, the Joker pick, and just go hell-bent on blanketing Jamal Murray, who's 6'4", LeBron's 6'9"? LeBron's highly capable of doing that.

If he picks his spot and that was the spot that LeBron didn't even try. He faded back quickly. Let a D take him. And that was that. When I brought that up on undisputed, those across the table from me looked at me like I had three eyes. That's six straight fourth quarters in which LeBron bleep and James has failed epically against the Nuggets.

Six straight times, not two or three, six straight times, he has validated everything I have criticized him for and been condemned for. I am virtually certain that every word I am speaking right now, every word I have just recorded will never, ever see the light of play. The LeBron zombies are everywhere. They're all around me here at Fox. They will make sure that

This tape is destroyed before it ever gets posted. Right now, I am virtually certain I'm just speaking to myself, trying to assure myself it's going to be all right when obviously it will never be all right. The rest of my born days, I will continue to criticize LeBron, Bleep, and James, and no one will listen.

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This is Barry from Portland, Oregon, who asks, Okay, fair enough. Let's look at the bright side for just a moment.

I said this before, and I will reiterate that LeBron's greatest opportunity to pull off his greatest achievement came in June of 2015. The first finals against the Golden State Warriors, who had gone 67-15 that season. They weren't quite yet the Warriors. Obviously, no KD. They weren't sure of themselves just yet.

Kevin Love had been lost to LeBron and the Cavs ahead of that finals. And in game one, in overtime, Kyrie was lost for the rest of the finals. The cracked kneecap. And in games one, two, and three, LeBron James played the best three games I have ever seen him play. It was extraordinary. It was tour de force. It was all-time, all-time.

It was three games averaging 41 points, 12 rebounds, and eight assists. It was special. And there we were. I was there in Cleveland for game four in LeBron's house, and I went to the arena thinking, this is it. Now he can start making his Jordan case because if he beats this Golden State team that was the best team during the regular season,

Without Kevin Love and without Kyrie, that's an achievement. And that night in Game 4, after Steve Kerr made the switch of Andre Iguodala to the starting lineup to guard LeBron and make LeBron work on defense, LeBron that night went 7-for-22, 1-of-4 from 3, 5-of-10 from the free throw line. As Golden State won the game and seized momentum in the series, 1-of-3 to 82-22.

That was it for those Cavs. That was it for LeBron. Iguodala, believe it or not, was the MVP of those finals. So now I got to go bigger picture to go greatest achievement. This is just me. The greatest achievement for LeBron James is, for me, the sport's ninth wonder of the world. Somehow, LeBron James...

Broke the NBA's all-time scoring record, previously held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. While being a poor shooter, he broke the all-time record while being a poor shooter, at least by star standards. LeBron James has now scored more than 40,000 points while being a pretty sorry three-point and free-throw shooter. Career.

From the three-point line, LeBron is 34.8%. Of all active players, that ranks 232nd. 232nd of active players at 34.8%. That's pretty awful. From the free throw line, LeBron career has averaged 73.6%. Of all active players right now in the NBA, that ranks 189th. That's pretty pathetic.

Yet that same guy is such a great basket attacker, such a great score of the basketball that he broke Kareem's record while shooting poorly. That's that's impossibly hard to do. But he pulled it off just doing a little quick math. If he had just shot, let's go up to 38 percent from three instead of thirty four point eight. Let's go up to thirty eight, make him sort of average.

Then he would have scored from three 216 more points. And then let's do free throws. Let's go up to what Jordan did career-wise, 84% from 74. Let's give him 84%. That would have been an extra 839 free throws. So LeBron at this point would have about 1,000 more points if he had been even an average shooter from three in the free throw line. To me, that is a mind-bogglingly

Great achievement. This is Jackson from Massachusetts. How did you come up with your caption that you use on your Friday photo with your Jordans? Appreciate that question, Jackson. So on the fly, the very first Friday morning, I was on Instagram about probably 12 minutes before the start of Undisputed, clock ticking. I pretty frantically said,

typed off the top of my head into my phone, I can't lose in these shoes. And then all caps, MJ forever. And against deadline, on the fly, I posted a picture of the Jordans I had chosen to wear on the show that day, posted it on Instagram and then subsequently on Twitter. I guess it was a couple, three years later, one of our show fans posted

had referred to me somewhere, somebody saw it on the internet somewhere, had referred to me as Drip Bayless, D-R-I-P, Drip, Drip Bayless instead of Skip, of course. And so when I began wearing my Wayne chain that my brother Lil Wayne had bestowed upon me, when I started wearing it on Fridays, I then added the line, hashtag Drip Bayless.

But the I can't lose in these shoes just spilled out of me that first morning on deadline. I was inspired, staring down at my Jordans. The truth is I have never lost in those shoes.

Thank you.

way to run your household, customized to your family's needs, and the easy way to raise financially smart kids. Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash Spotify. All right, quickly, in honor of this NFL draft, I'm going to give you my one, two, three, four, five favorite draft picks that I will be listening for, watching for, to see where they land.

I'll start with my favorite quarterback. It's Caleb Williams. He did start at the school that I grew up loving living for, University of Oklahoma, with stinking Lincoln Riley, who then left and dragged Caleb out to Hollywood, where he did win the Heisman for USC. But I'm still sold. I've watched every snap he's taken in three years of college football. He just has it. It. Rare playmaker and leader.

Caleb Williams is just a little better than Jaden Daniels. I'm not saying Caleb's Hall of Fame bound. I won't even go to Pro Bowl. I'm just saying, given this crop of quarterbacks, I just watch television, but I watch a lot of television. I'll take Caleb over Jaden and over Drake May, who I occasionally call Drake Maybe, and over J.J. McCarthy, who I will actually take over Drake Maybe. But I'll take Caleb first.

and I'll beat you. At receiver, there are so many great wideout possibilities, starting with, obviously, Marvin Harrison Jr. But my favorite, if I really want to beat you, if I want to go win a championship, I'm going Brock Bowers. What an explosive run-after-catch athlete. He runs furiously with the ball after he catches it, and he catches everything he gets his hands on.

Georgia had so much talent, and Georgia featured Brock Bowers. I'll beat you with Brock Bowers. I would take him over any of the top wideouts. I'll throw the ball to him, and I'll win. Let's go to defensive end. I'm just watching television, but I watched maybe the best game of the year, Colorado State at Colorado.

Wound up 43-35 Colorado Buffaloes. Deion's team, two overtimes. And a pass rusher jumped off my screen. Mohamed Kamara. He just jumped off my screen. And subsequently, as I watch Colorado State here and there, he jumped off my screen. He plays with such force and physicality and drive. I want that guy rushing the passer for my team. My wild card...

You could play him at nickel corner, weak side linebacker. Played for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. Every time I turned on a Michigan game, Mike St. Rastil jumped off my screen. He measures all of 5'9", 182 pounds, and I want him on my team. He ran 4'4", 7 in the 40. Not great, but not bad.

All I know is every time I looked up in big games, he was around the football making plays. He is the next Honey Badger. By the way, Honey Badger was 5'9", 190 right there in the same ballpark, ran the same sort of time. Biggest games, national semifinal, national final. Two best games Mike Saner still played were against Alabama and Washington State.

National Championship game, he had an 81-yard interception return. During the year, he had two pick sixes. He just gets his hand on the football. He catches the football. He dislodges the football. He tackles the guy with the football. I want him on my team. And finally, my favorite running back, also played for Michigan,

This is the running back I want my Dallas Cowboys to draft in the second round, Blake Corum. He's got some Emmitt in him. I'm not saying he's going to be the next Emmitt Smith, but he's got some Emmitt in him. Emmitt measured 5'9", about during the dynastic years. He played at 2.05. Blake is 5'8", 2.05. Blake ran 4.5 in the 40. Emmitt is pro-date, Florida 5.

Ran 4-5-3. Same guy, same body type, same elusivity, same hard to see, hard to tackle that I saw from Emmett running behind those elephantine offensive linemen of the dynastic 90s Cowboys. You couldn't find him until he was seven yards into your secondary. That's Blake Corum. He was hard to get on the ground.

Against Alabama, his biggest runs came in overtime. He wound up 19 for 83 yards with a big touchdown, caught two balls for 35. Against Washington, National Championship game, he went 21 for 134 and two more touchdowns. Remember the Penn State game in which J.J. McCarthy threw zero passes in the second half? The game at Penn State, first one without Harbaugh as he was suspended.

Blake Corham went 26 times for 145 yards against Penn State at Penn State and two touchdowns. I want him in my backfield for my Dallas Cowboys. I wouldn't mind him wearing 22 for my Dallas Cowboys. This is Nick from San Diego. What football or basketball player does Hazel remind you of? Okay, for the uninitiated.

Hazel is our quote unquote daughter. She's our now seven year old Maltese. She runs our household. She runs our lives. She dominates and she is the light of my life. But she is a terror. And it didn't take me long to decide that.

The player who has most reminded me of Hazel was young Chris Paul, CP3, back in the day, back when he played in New Orleans as a Hornet, when he was a Hornet. This was back in 2008. I remember him against my San Antonio Spurs in the playoffs. Took them all the way to seven games, which they had to win a game seven at New Orleans.

Back in the day that Lil Wayne and CP3 became brothers, living in the same apartment building, condo building, my Spurs barely survived that game seven in New Orleans. It was, so to speak, a dogfight to the wire because CP3, the young one, the early one, was a pit bull. He was psycho. He was a force of nature monster.

I don't believe he was even six feet tall, maybe 5'11 1⁄2", but he played so much bigger than he was and is. Off the court, Chris Paul could be such a nice guy. Ended up being leader of the Players Association, the president. So mild-mannered, so likable, so cameragenic in all those State Farm commercials as both Chris and Cliff Paul. But on the court,

That Chris, screw loose. That Chris would cheap shot you below the belt. That Chris, dating back to his days at Wake Forest, would smash you in the testicles to get an edge on you. He wanted to win so badly, he would go to just about any length with that screw loose. It seems so shockingly out of character

But the more I watch Chris Paul play in big playoff games, the more I realize that is in character. That's who he is. And that is my Hazel. She plays so much bigger than she is. She weighs all of 10 pounds. But she plays with 100-pound force, trust me. When she stretches out at night, she's long, much longer than you would think. She can ball up into a little 10-pound ball.

Man, when she stretches, when she goes, when she attacks, she goes from sweet to fierce. She is afraid of nobody and no dog. Doesn't matter the size. As we walk her in our gated community, German Shepherds, Siberians, doesn't matter. She wants a piece of them. Like Chris, extremely intelligent, but one big screw loose.

Even now, just last night, I'm busy watching the NBA playoff games, getting ready for Undisputed. Ernstine tries to take her for her sort of early evening walk. She just goes crazy. She gets so excited, she can't restrain herself. She won't do it to me. She knows I won't accept it, but Ernstine loves her to a fault. Ernstine grew up with a father who was tough on his children.

I say, well, just even take a newspaper, smack her on the kisser. You have to do something to say, no, that's not acceptable. But Ernstine won't. So she bites her. She's biting out of joy. She wants to go outside. If Ernstine does decide, though, to leave without Hazel, Ernstine will bite her to restrain her. She will bite. She is something that Hazel. She is my little CP3. She is very beautiful.

Very rare, as is he. Troy from Iowa asks, what do you consider to be your worst habit? Okay, I do have a couple of sort of personal life habits I'm not proud of. Maybe I have fewer than most. I'm a raging perfectionist. Tried to give myself a little bit of a break with my quote-unquote bad habits. But in my eyes, my worst habit times 1,000 is

one that tortures me, haunts me, costs me sleep at night more than I can explain to you, is the fatal flaw in my golf swing. You can laugh if you want, but it's the fatal flaw in my golf swing. It's my maddening inability to shift my weight at the top of my backswing from my right foot onto my left foot. That little move is essential

for anyone out there who knows golf they know i'm right it's essential for hitting solid iron shots compressing the golf ball with your irons instead i sway because somehow in my brain i'm thinking if i go backward i can hit it harder as i go forward i sway to a fault

And I wound up getting stuck on my right foot, hanging back, falling back, losing my balance and my power, resulting in a weak pull hook every single time. I'm talking about dive bombers that go nowhere quickly. If I pause at the top of my swing...

If you know Matsuyama, former Masters winner, if I can pause the way he does, even though the pause in my head is five minutes and it's actually like half a second. But if I can pause like that, like he does, remotely like he does, then I can get everything back in motion and I can get most of my weight over onto my left foot. But I'm always in too big a hurry. I can do it

on the practice range. But when I go to the golf course, I panic under any kind of pressure, playing for any kind of money, I panic. I'm too quick from the top. And when I'm quick, I'm lost. The only way I can defeat this horrible habit of mine is to start with all of my weight on my left foot. And it's awkward for me.

but I can sort of wheel it away if I start with every bit of my weight in my head on my left foot. I can be a little better with my driver because if you know golf, you're hitting up on the ball that's teed up. So it actually benefits me to a degree to hang back a little bit and to hit up on the ball. But even with my driver, if I fall back, I'm dead. It's going nowhere quickly.

It's going left rough, left water, left disaster. Remember, I'm self-taught from the start. I was a baseball player, a basketball player. We didn't have much money. I didn't have the proper equipment. I didn't have lessons. I taught myself. I have pretty good hand-eye coordination.

But slowly but surely, this demon has gotten a hold of my psyche, a demon I just can't defeat. I've ingrained it in my head so badly. I took a lesson about three weeks ago.

from Tanya at Brentwood Country Club. She's one of the top instructors in the country. Just took one lesson just to see if she would confirm my deepest, darkest fears. And she did immediately. You can't, you can't, you can't. I said, I know, I know, I know. She said, you just got to work on it. You just got to pause at the top and you have to move your head forward to get all your weight going in the proper direction. I'm a pretty good chipper. I can get really hot with my putter.

I can always shoot around 85 where I play at Brentwood. It doesn't fit my eye very well. It's a hard golf course for me. But even though I have 5% body fat, I have a weight problem, as in a W-A-I-T problem. I just can't wait at the top of my backswing. It bit me again just the other day.

After Undisputed, I ran out. The course was open. I had just enough time to play nine holes, played the front nine at Brentwood. Number nine is the only hole on the golf course with water on it, and it's a big pond to the left of the green and just short of the green. It's a hard hole for me because it doesn't fit my eye, and I hook the ball.

It's hard off the tee. It's a short hole, but very tight. Big stand of trees down the right side. Huge, gaping, yawning bunker down the left side. So usually I have no choice but to just hit it in the sand off the tee because that's about the best I can do. But the other day I'm playing my nine, playing pretty well. Managed to hold off just long enough with my driver that I just missed the fairway bunker to the left.

So I'm about a yard onto the fairway, just enough that I got a pretty good stance, but I'm looking right down the mouth of the water. It's a short hole. I had 126 yards to the flag, which is straight over the water.

I'm fighting my demon. I'm fighting my demon. I'm saying, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to open way up at the top of my swing, open the club up so I can sort of cut across it and try to fade the ball. I want to do everything but hook it. I try. I say, do this, do this, do this, do this. And you know and I know exactly what I did. I snap hooked it right in the water and I lost sleep over it because my demon, my worst habit in the history of my life was

has a hold of my psyche and will not let go. Final question is from Brant from Eugene, Oregon. Have you ever had the hiccups on the air? What a bizarrely great question, Brant from Eugene. No one's ever asked me that in all my career. Never even thought about having hiccups on the air. I occasionally do get hiccups when I eat too quickly, but I'm usually able to defeat my hiccups fairly quickly by just holding my breath.

Ernestine's father, second mention of him in this show, would get hiccups so badly he had to be hospitalized a couple of times to defeat them. I guess if you did get hiccups on the air, it would be funny for a little while, first couple of hiccups, but I'm pretty sure the audience would quickly get turn the station annoyed. So if I did get hiccups, which I haven't, but if I did,

I just have to sit out until they subsided. I mean, it would be incredibly embarrassing, but it does remind me of one show I did on cold pizza back in the day, 2005 maybe, in which I lost my voice the night before. First and last time in my life, knocking on some wood here, that I lost my voice. I tried everything to get it back, but I could only croak. So Pete McConville, our coordinating producer at the time, said, well,

why don't you go ahead and do what we call first and 10, our debate segments with Woody Page and Jay Crawford. He said, why don't we just make you some signs and you can just hold up your answers? Yes, no, maybe, duh, I don't know. We had four or five different signs and we muddled through our four debate segments that day in our two-hour show with me just holding up the signs. And it was funny and it actually worked. Now, the punchline to the story is the great John Walsh

who had run ESPN for years and years. Mark Shapiro was in charge at that point, but he came to cold pizza a couple of weeks later to critique one of our shows. We sat down with them and he calls up the show on the monitor that we're watching. And it was my sign language show. And I said, John, how can you critique this show? I don't even speak. And he said, oh, well, I thought it'd be interesting to see if we could critique whether this worked. And John did think it worked, but.

I didn't have the hiccups. I just didn't have a voice. So, Brant, please tell me you haven't now officially jinxed me into getting the hiccups tomorrow. I'm trying to stay away. I'm trying to swear off jinxes. But please tell me you didn't send me this question just to jinx me into getting hiccups tomorrow.

That is it for episode 110. Thank you for listening and or watching. Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. Please remember, Undisputed, every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern, The Skip Bayless Show, every week.