Russell Westbrook
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Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 14. This is everything I cannot share with you in two and a half hours of Undisputed, a go-for-the-throat debate show.

In episode 14, I will tell you dot, dot, dot, why Russell Westbrook has been hiding in plain sight right before our very eyes back to his days at UCLA. And I will tell you...

"Why Tiger Woods ruined Masters Sunday for me." And as you know from last week's podcast, I told you Masters Sunday is always consistently the greatest day in sports when it comes to drama. And finally, I will tell you in episode 14, the story of how I learned my lesson that I cannot be friends with any professional athlete

or any coach or any manager that I cover or talk about now that I do live television on an obviously everyday basis. I learned my lesson the hard way. I will tell you that story. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. Russell Westbrook. After I carefully watched number zero, as in zero rings, Russell Westbrook,

this entire basketball season. I watched every dribble, I watched every turnover, I watched every wildly missed shot, and I came to this conclusion. Russell Westbrook, quote unquote, slam dunk, first ballot, Hall of Famer, does not belong in the Hall of Fame. I came to the conclusion that for sure, Russell Westbrook

does not belong in the NBA's all-time top 75 in honor of this 75th year of the NBA. And to demonstrate this, allow me briefly to walk you back through the most bizarre rise of any player in the history of this league, it's 75 years, along with the parts that I played in said rise. Russell Westbrook stayed two years at UCLA and as you know,

Most future surefire slam dunk first ballot Hall of Famers are one and dones. But his freshman year at UCLA, Westbrook could not beat out Darren Collison. No crime. But still, could not beat him out, did start one game, averaged nine minutes per and 3.4 points per game. This is Russell Westbrook.

State a second year, did start 34 games, averaged a grand total of 12.7 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 4.3 assists, far from averaging a triple-double. Ah, but he did win Conference Defensive Player of the Year. And when I read this the other night, I thought, that's odd, because Russell Westbrook in the NBA, defensively, has been considered more of a

Weakness than a strength. Hmm, okay. Yet, Sam Presti, the GM in Oklahoma City, took Russell Westbrook fourth overall. And a shock to me and to many other people, I did not see that coming when I watched UCLA, and I watched UCLA quite a bit that year, his second year. Hmm. Remember just a couple of weeks back, LeBron James said Sam Presti is the real MVP in OKC.

Okay, so his biggest claim to fame was Westbrook fourth overall and I have many good sources in Oklahoma City because I'm from there born and raised and I can tell you that Sam Presti spoiled Russell Westbrook rotten this was his diamond in the rough his discovery and He favored his discovery even over Kevin bleepin Durant my background with Kevin

I was on a show called Cold Pizza on ESPN2. And in Kevin's one year in college at Texas, I began to rave about him and I said, "This guy is going to win multiple NBA scoring titles." My debate partners on Cold Pizza often laughed at me for that opinion until we had the great Bill Self on one day, obviously the coach of now National Championship Kansas.

And Bill Self interrupted his interviewer on cold pizza to say, hey, tell Skip he's right about Kevin Durant. He's gonna win multiple scoring titles. Yet, what started to happen for the Oklahoma City Thunder and what did I start to draw attention to? Russell Westbrook began to take more shots than Kevin Durant. And it offended me because it was just flat out wrong. Russell Westbrook wasn't much of a shooter.

In those days, he could at least make his free throws at an 80% clip, but from three? Nightmare. What's he doing taking more shots than Kevin? And yet Kevin defended his little buddy, little brother Westbrook, by calling me out for that criticism and saying to the Oklahoman reporter, Skip Bayless doesn't know SH about basketball. Oh, really?

Okay, so then why was I the first to report that the reason Kevin Durant ultimately left Oklahoma City to join forces with the Golden State Warriors was because he finally decided he could not win a championship in OKC with Russell Westbrook as his primary decision maker and point guard. Remember, Westbrook got to dribble the ball up every time for those Thunder players.

and decide your turn or my turn. I think it's my turn. Those were the days I nicknamed him West Brick. And I guess it stuck. And I'm pretty sure I was original with that nickname. And the backlash got so great that when I went back to my hometown, as I've told you on a previous podcast, 2012 for the NBA Finals, Thunder versus Heat,

I needed a 24-hour bodyguard because I was getting so many death threats from Thunder fans in my hometown of Oklahoma City over Russell West Brick. Just bizarre. But Kevin left and appeared to have left Russ in a lurch until Russ made a staggering discovery. He realized, did Russell West Brick, that if he

went after every rebound, every loose ball rebound, like his life depended on it. And if he continued to attack the basket with the athleticism and explosion that he possessed, that if he played with the energy he played with every dribble every night, that he could start, as he brought two defenders to him at the rim, he could start leaving the ball on the floor for a Steven Adams or an Ennis Cantor

in those days the big men in Oklahoma City, and they could dunk it. And it's called an assist. You got rebounds, you got assists, you're naturally gonna get double digit points just because you're that athletic. And all of a sudden, Russell Westbrook reinvented this thing called the triple double. And he found it wasn't just every couple of weeks that he could pull one off, he found out he could pull it off every single night.

God bless the man. I fell right into the trap. I'll be the first to admit, not since the great Oscar Robertson back in '62-'63, that any human averaged a triple-double. But Russ was doing it, and it was inhuman. It was otherworldly. It was, good Lord, have mercy on all our souls. It was runaway MVP in 2017. Whew! The numbers. 2017.

Russ averaged 31.6 points a game, 10.7 rebounds, 10.8 assists, runaway MVP. Hmm, that team actually, you might say overachieved at 47 and 35, no KD. The sixth seed in the West, lost to Houston predictably in five games over and out. 2018, here he came again. 25.4, 10.1, 10.3, that led the league in assists.

that was with paul george and mellow they finished 48 and 34. fourth seed not bad lost to the jazz in the first round in six 2019 big numbers 22 9 11.1 10.7 49 and 37 not bad lost to portland in the first round in five as the sixth seed 2020 with james harden in houston

Not a triple-double, but the team went 44-28, and Russ missed the first four games of their first-round series against OKC, and they managed to pull it off and out in seven, but went on second round with Russ in the lineup and lost to the Lakers in five in the bubble. Then 2021, that one year in Washington, big numbers, triple-double average, 34-38, the eighth seed in the East,

lost to the Sixers in five in the first round. Huh, all right. What have I called him? He wears number zero as in zero rings. And all of a sudden, as I look back on these numbers, I say, the triple-double is the most overrated stat in the history of stats. It matters next to nothing on the scoreboard. Russell Westbrook had turned in right before your very eyes into a solo act of a stat machine.

And he waltzed right into, in most people's eyes, the Hall of Fame. Surefire slam dunk first ballot Hall of Famer. Wow. Without Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook is 8-21 in playoff games, 1-5 in playoff series. And for the record, KD left him. James Harden left him. Paul George couldn't take him anymore. Kawhi Leonard wouldn't even return his phone calls when he wanted to come to the Clippers, Russell Westbrook. But guess what, ladies and gentlemen?

another impossibly crazy twist of fate occurred. Somehow, Russ's childhood dream became his worst nightmare thanks to LeBron James. Thanks to LeBron James. LeBron James pulled what I consider a genius move. He said, "Give me Russ over DeMar DeRozan because if it works, I enhance my quote-unquote goat resume because I could say,

I made Russ work in ways KD couldn't and James couldn't and PG couldn't and Kawhi obviously wouldn't. And if it didn't, and we know it really didn't, LeBron, the quote-unquote goat, says my partner Shannon Sharp, always needs a scapegoat. What better scapegoat than Russell Westbrook? Would you believe this year started with a big premiere here in L.A.?

Thanks to Gautam Chopra, a documentary on Russell Westbrook called Passion Play. All the Lakers attended the big night. Russ became a made man. He became epically famous, historically famous. I love Gautam, his work, and it was great. But was it deserved yet? I think not.

I watched the Lakers on here in Southern California, what's called Sports Spectrum. Every other commercial that were all made obviously before the year about Russell Westbrook. He's featured, he's the star of every commercial. Whew! Russ had to come in here thinking, "I'm going to be bigger than Magic Johnson ever was in Laker Nation." And within about a month, I believe Laker Nation was horrified by what it witnessed. Who is this imposter?

masquerading as Russell Westbrook starting Laker point guard. Huh? The truth was he was exactly who he was back to UCLA days. I have a source I've been very close to for a long time in this league who's very smart. I might even go so far as to say knows more hoops than I do. He texted me about a month ago and he said, come on, this is the same skill set that

or lack thereof, that we've seen in Russ from the start back to UCLA. And that's exactly true. He's the same guy. Why on Undisputed did we have an almost daily Russell Westbrook turnover blooper reel or bad shot blooper reel? It's because he is who we didn't think he was, didn't realize he was. He was Westbrook from the start.

So, what did we see? I've been saying on Undisputed, he has the worst hands of any point guard I've ever seen. Ever, ever, ever in pro or college basketball. He just has a terrible pair of hands. He cannot hold on to the basketball. At least I first guessed part of that because I kept telling Shannon or warning Shannon, hey,

before this year started, I said Russ has led this league in turnovers four times and finished second four times and he led the league in turnovers this year all the way until the last three games he did not play and Trey Young eclipsed him barely by turning it over 15 times, Trey Young did in his last three games to just barely pass Russ for the turnover lead. So Russ has now finished second five times.

Russ was the single worst three-point shooter in all the NBA this year. Russ was the third worst free throw shooter in all the NBA this year. Russ was the worst dunker in all the NBA this whole year. He missed 35% of his dunks. That means he made 65. It's called a dunk. It's a sure shot. You slam the ball through the hoop. We see him missed occasionally, back ironed.

but not the way Russ missed him, going up, losing control of the basketball, losing the handle, dunking with an empty hand. That happened much of the time. And then even down to shots missed in the paint as you drive it. Worst shooting percentage in the paint this year for qualified players, Russell Westbrook. Wow. On football.

LeBron stage, by far the biggest stage Russ has ever played on after OKC Houston and Washington, Russ finally got exposed. And then he also led the league in surly post-game comments to the media because every question he was asked, his answer would be, in effect, do you know who I am? How dare you ask me that question? I'm Russell Westbrook. Well, you

You used to be, or at least we thought you were, but you're not now. His exit interview the other day, Russ blamed Frank Vogel, who defended Russ beyond anybody else in the Laker organization, who fought for him, tried to keep him in the fourth quarter lineups as long as he could because he was getting pressure from upstairs, from Palenka and Kurt Rambis, get him out of there in the fourth quarter. He's a liability, and he was. It wasn't Vogel's fault. Then Russ blamed

made-up media stories that he had to keep responding to that distracted him. He's asked, give us a specific. Well, you know what they were. No, we don't. I don't know one made-up story. I just spit facts at you. And in the end, he said even LeBron and Anthony Davis didn't really allow Russ to be Russ the way they said they would. What does that mean? You're even taking shots at the big dogs? LeBron wanted you, I think, for all the wrong reasons, but he blessed you. And then

A month or so ago, Russ played the sympathy card and said, "Hey, I can't even take my kids to games anymore because they're chanting Westbrook or as he goes up to shoot a three, you can hear the entire arena, the crypt as I call it, groan. Oh no, no, please don't. He's the worst three-point shooter in basketball. What would you do if you were a Laker fan?"

Russ's wife got after me on Twitter. It's fine. I get it. I love her for that. I honor her for that, for defending her man. But she said, how dare you change our last name that we're so proud of to Wes Brick. Okay, I got it. Forgive me, but that's who he is and frankly who he always was. He makes $44 million and he's guaranteed next year $47 million to make shots.

and to protect the basketball and help the Lakers win games. And he's Westbrook. I'm sorry. It's his fault. It's not mine. Don't kill the messenger. And yet, the first messenger was LeBron. And I'm convinced that Russ will be back next year with the Lakers because I'm also convinced it's virtually impossible to get rid of that contract.

You can say, oh, trade it as an expiring contract. For what? How? Who? Who wants this? Who wants to wish this nightmare on themselves? I mean, people are dumb out there, but they're not stupid. And in this case, $47 million? LeBron has to try again because this has stained his resume. He even failed as the Lakers de facto GM, the unofficial GM of the Lakers. He failed. He won at Westbrook.

So I believe LeBron will again attempt to make it work next year because they're stuck with each other. And I believe the results will be exactly the same. And I believe that the following year, as Russ is 35 years of age, that it's highly possible that Russell Westbrook, surefire, slam dunk, first ballot Hall of Famer, will not be able to find another home in this league. That he'll be out of basketball at age 35.

The bottom line, maybe it's the punchline, because we always played clown music underneath our Westbrook turnover blooper reels. So maybe the punchline is, the shock is, that Russ didn't get exposed a lot earlier.

School is back, and Dick's Sporting Goods has what you need to win your year. We've got everything from cleats to sambas, dunks, and more. Plus, the hottest looks from Nike, Jordan, and Adidas. Find your first day fits in-store or online at dicks.com.

This episode is brought to you by Honda. When you test drive the all-new Prologue EV, there's a lot that can impress you about it. There's the class-leading passenger space, the clean, thoughtful design, and the intuitive technology. But out of everything, what you'll really love most is that it's a Honda. Visit Honda.com slash EV to see offers. Let's take a question from you, from the audience. And this is a good one. A little bit of a shot at me from Shane.

from Calabasas out here in the LA area. Shane asked, "Did this year's Masters Sunday hold up as the greatest sports day of the year?" Last week's show, I made the case. Masters Sunday is my favorite day of the year because it consistently provides the most shocking and electrifying drama in all of sports. And this Masters Sunday did provide exactly that

until the last four hours. What? Until the last four hours? What's that all about? I'll tell you what it was all about. You know what happened. Tiger Woods stole the Masters. Tiger Woods turned the Masters completely upside down. Tiger Woods turned Sunday's leaderboard into the biggest anti-climax in Masters history. Tiger Woods won the Masters by finishing 47th

out of 52 that made the cut 47th out of 52 but he won it going away you know it and i know it masters sunday was actually masters thursday the first round when tiger woods simply pulled off the greatest feat of his career and very possibly the most amazing sports achievement i have ever witnessed not much more than a year

after, as you well know, he nearly lost his life and nearly lost his leg in a car wreck that was completely his fault. Tiger Woods showed up at Augusta National at age 46 with absolutely zero competitive preparation, zero tournaments played before to compete against the best field in the world, the best players in the world who had been for the last three months competing

competing at other tournaments to prepare for the tournament in golf, the Masters. And as you well know, on opening day, Thursday, Tiger Woods limped his way to a one under par 71 and tied for 10th after the first day. Just a year earlier, the odds against that

And this, by the way, is one of two men in sports I do not bet against, Tiger Woods and Tom Brady. But the odds against him finishing 10th with no preparation a year before, enduring what he endured, had to be about a billion to one. Tiger Woods made the cut. Understand, Brooks Koepka did not make the cut. And DeChambeau did not make the cut. And Jordan Spieth did not make the cut.

And Justin Rose did not make the cut, and Xander Schoefle did not make the cut, and I could go on and on. Tiger Woods made the cut. He limped home after two days making the cut. It's just impossibly great. And obviously, by Saturday and Sunday, he hit the wall. Maybe it was predictable. He ran out of sort of mental and physical juice or gas.

And his putter went mysteriously, inexplicably, shockingly cold. And he shot the two worst rounds he's ever shot at the Masters, 78-78. But nobody cared. By then, nobody cared. The moment of Masters Sunday came four hours before the leaders even teed off. As Tiger limped his way up the 18th fairway to the most loving ovation he has ever received.

We were as thankful as he was thankful. He was back, and that's all that mattered on that Master's Sunday because it was almost as if Augusta's golf gods, and trust me, I believe in them. It's almost like they just cleared the stage for Tiger because that leaderboard that Sunday was as starless as I can ever remember. It's usually just jam-packed with top teners.

And on Saturday night, you look at it and say, my God, what's going to happen tomorrow? What a shootout this is going to be, especially on the back nine. Masters doesn't start the back nine on Sunday. Well, it felt like it basically ended on the first tee on Sunday to me. And I'm a golf addict. I'm a golf nut. This Masters Sunday after Tiger finished had all the drama of the Quad Cities open on a good day.

And look, Scottie Scheffler, number one ranked player in the world. I watched him just about every step. It felt like winning the match play in Austin two weeks before. But compared to Tiger, he's just boring. I'm sorry, he's just boring. And I love golf. Cameron Smith got the wildest hair we've ever seen at Augusta National. But compared to Tiger, he just doesn't flip my switch, move my needle. I'm sorry. So...

Scheffler chipped in at three. It was pretty electrifying because it was pretty lucky. Up the hill, bounced it into the slope. Going way too fast, hit the flagstick dead on and dropped. Should have been 20 feet by, but it dropped for a really scrambling birdie. Changed the momentum. Then Cameron Smith got some back. Birdied 11. Impossibly great. And then...

He buried his tee shot on 12 at the bottom of Rays Creek. And that was basically that. Scottie Scheffler wound up four putting 18 to win by three. That's not exactly the Masters Sunday I had in mind. But in the end, it just didn't matter because Masters Sunday had already been Masters Sunday because Tiger Woods won the Masters. And by the way, the Masters ratings are

were the best they've been in three years since Tiger Woods broke back through in 2019 and won the Masters. It is now time for a flashback. We don't do much baseball on Undisputed because our younger viewers just aren't into it the way they live and die for the NFL and the NBA, which now, as you know, are 365-day sports.

I did grow up a baseball fan, a St. Louis Cardinals diehard. I was a pretty good high school baseball player. Actually made the all-area team as a catcher after my senior year only because a guy named Darryl Porter had been drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers fourth overall. He was the other catcher in my league who was always way better than me, and Darryl Porter went on

to make four all-star teams he started an all-star game for the kansas city royals at catcher and all he did was win the nlcs most valuable player and the world series most valuable player in 1982. god bless you daryl may you rest in peace so even though baseball was the best game that i played basketball in truth was my first love

and football ironically became my primary expertise. But in honor of the Los Angeles Dodgers, as we speak, being a strong favorite to win it all this year in MLB, as in win the World Series, I'm going to tell you a wild, clash-packed story about the Glamour Boy Dodgers of the late 1970s and how they impacted my life

as you see it on Undisputed. It's a story that will tell you everything about why I choose to do my job the way I choose to do it. This is not a baseball story. This is a story very behind the scenes about how I have tried and sometimes failed to do my job as a reporter/commentator.

In the late 1970s, the Los Angeles Dodgers owned the city of Los Angeles. And Steve Garvey was by far the biggest star on the Dodgers and in Los Angeles. Much bigger than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was at that point because Kareem would need magic to come in 1979 and turn those Lakers into winning time, showtime Lakers. The Dodgers were way bigger than

than the Lakers or the Rams at that point. And LA's power couple, actually the nation's power couple, were Steve and Cindy Garvey, who were viewed as the Ken and Barbie, as in dolls, the Ken and Barbie of sports. The royal couple, Ken and Barbie Garvey. I've never experienced anything quite like those two. Steve was a stoutly built, five foot, 10 inch power hitter with Popeye forearms.

black hair, dark beard, face that belonged on the covers of magazines and it was everywhere on every newsstand. Played first base and he was first in that clubhouse in humility and PR and Cindy Garvey was all over television. She went on to do her own talk show and she was megawatt on camera. And the Steve Garvey I got to know was simply the nicest guy in the history of the world.

the most willing interview I have ever encountered in all my career. He answered every question with a hint of a smile on his face and a very kindly voice, didn't matter, didn't mind negative tough questions. He was the spokesman for that team and he handled it beautifully. He would fill your notebook answering any and every question and to this day,

The only time this has ever happened to me was the time I introduced myself in the Dodgers clubhouse for the first time to Steve Garvey. Steve immediately proceeded to interview me.

before I could interview him. He wanted to know everything about me. Nobody's ever done that before. No player, no coach, no baseball manager, no executive, nobody. It's always about them and that's fine with me, but Steve wanted to know all about me. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to college? Are you married? Are you divorced? Where do you live? What neighborhood in LA do you live in? How do you like your job at the LA Times?

Man, I thought I was hot stuff. I was that young gun at the LA Times and I was living large. Twenty-what? Five years of age. It was something. And those Dodgers were something because they had just lost the World Series to the Yankees because they got regied. You may remember this, you longer time baseball fans, but game six became the closeout game at Yankee Stadium.

And on three successive swings, Reggie Jackson hit three straight home runs that doomed the Dodgers. But now before I proceed, I must introduce the other combatant to my story, this unfolding drama, the great Tommy Lasorda, who bled Dodger blue, who worshipped the big Dodger in the sky. Tommy was also all-time great with the media. In fact, he rivaled Steve Garvey in that department.

And he rivaled Steve as the face of the franchise in those glory days in LA. The Tommy I first got to know was the third base coach under the great Walter Alston, who was then the Dodger manager in my first couple of years here in LA working for the Times. And I wrote a lot about the Dodgers. I covered some Sunday games in place of our everyday beat writer.

And guess who came to the press box every single day or night after the game? Tommy Lasorda, the third base coach. He knew how to play the game. He would come in the press box and I would look around as I'm frantically typing my story against deadline and Tommy would say, "You got everything you need? Me?"

Well, actually, that controversial play at the plate, Tommy, what actually, let me tell you, don't quote me on this, but let me tell you exactly what happened. Oh, so that's it. Well, did I love that? Sure, I loved that. And Tommy, as he became manager, ingratiated himself at the highest level.

Numerous times he came down to the LA Times to have lunch with the executives, including my sports editor, who loved me like a son, so he would invite me to those lunches with Tommy. Loved him, hearing the stories. My sports editor then invited Tommy to speak at a Sunday morning church service at his Baptist church, and I'm thinking, gee, you sure about this? Because the Tommy I knew off camera, whoo,

You get F-bombed with the best of them. And by the way, if you want to get a taste of this, maybe it would drive home what I'm about to tell you even a little better. If you just go on the internet and Google for a 1982 clip, an audio clip of Tommy Lasorda responding after a game to a shot taken at him by Kurt Bavacqua of the Padres. Called Tommy a fat little Italian.

Trust me, listen to it, it's not too long. You will laugh at the creative use of the F-bomb and the MF bomb by Tommy Lasorda, who had a temper on him. Trust me, I'm about to show you and tell you why. So I fell into the Tommy trap just the way I fell into the Garvey trap. I love Steve. I started to think he's my friend. He even asked me and my wife at the time out

for like a snack one Saturday afternoon. We couldn't go. But I'm thinking, I'm living large with Steve Garvey, biggest name in baseball at that time, unless it was Reggie. And I fell into the Tommy trap because anytime I was doing a bigger piece, a magazine-length piece on baseball,

an opposing baseball player. I just went straight to Tommy's office early before a game. "Tommy, I'm writing about so-and-so. What can you tell me?" "Don't quote me on this, but let me tell you what's really going on here." And he would give me the dirt. All the gory little details that made my piece sing and dance came from Tommy Lasorda. "Don't quote me on this, but you know and I know what was happening. He was buying insurance from me."

I owed him. He knew I would protect him. And man, did I learn a lesson. Just before spring training in 1978, believe it or not, a school up in central California in the little town of Lindsay decided to rename itself Steve Garvey Junior High School.

And I was invited to go along with Steve and Cindy in a car driven by the Dodgers PR director named Steve Brenner, who was a friend of mine, quote unquote. The ride up, it was about a, I don't know, three hour drive. I have no idea why we didn't fly, but we just did. We drove. It's hard to get to Lindsay. And I thought this would be a great time to get to know Steve and Cindy better. And I'll just go along for a great ride.

Steve Brenner drove the car, Steve Garvey sat in the front passenger seat, and Cindy and I in the back seat. We'd been rolling along the highway up into central California out of LA about an hour when Cindy turned to me and said, and I quote, "What is all this bullshit you guys write about the Dodger family?" What? Barbie said that to me? I'm like, "Barbie? Where did that come from?"

mumbled something about, "I'm sorry, I'm not aware of any problems in the Dodger family." Steve turns and looks at me and puts his hand over his eyes. Steve Brenner, the PR director, looks at me in the rearview mirror and rolls his eyes. And of course, being the reporter that I was, I'm all ears. And for the next hour, or it might have been two hours, Cindy unloaded

on what was going on inside the Dodger family. In her view, her eyes, she and Steve had been ostracized because she said that other players believed he was nothing but a publicity seeker. I believe she used the phrase media whore and that Cindy promoted herself way too much doing TV interviews.

and that they had been shut out because of all of the above. Nothing but resentment resounded inside the Dodger family for Ken and Barbie. I mean, I was just flat out stunned. Nobody knew anything about this. I listened. I obviously didn't take any notes. It wasn't an interview, but I took a bunch of mental notes. And Steve left the next morning for spring training way down in Vero Beach, Florida. And on Monday, I called him.

And I said, hey, you know, and I know what Cindy unloaded on me. Would you talk on the record about it? And he thought for a moment and he said, OK, I knew you were going to call and ask me this. And I've thought about it a lot and I'll do it if everybody else will do it.

If everybody else on the team, all the team leaders, all the other stars, and there were a bunch of them, if they all agreed to do the same interview that Steve is going to do, he's thinking maybe it would help clear the air and that he would submit to it. Remember, this team was picked once again to win the National League going into the 78 season. So I flew to Vero.

I went to Steve's condo after the first game of spring training and we sat for, I don't know, might have been like eight straight hours it felt like. We went into the wee hours and he filled several notebooks with all kinds of stories about how ostracized he and Cindy felt. It was great stuff. And the next morning, got up early back at the park to interview all the other stars.

Some gave into it, some wouldn't. The one other player I knew the best because I'd done a 3,000 word profile on him and spent a virtual week with him was Ron Say, the third baseman nicknamed the Penguin. You might or might not remember Ron, great player. I considered Ron a friend. But as soon as I told Ron that morning what I was doing, in fact, I think he was the first one I talked to. It was him and Don Sutton, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell,

Steve Yeager, all the stars, but pretty sure Ron was the first. And he slipped away after we finished talking and he went straight to Lasorda's office. And before I knew it, here came Lasorda storming out of his office. And Tommy Lasorda yelled at me, Skip Bayless, I want to see you in my office now. And I went and he says, what the hell are you doing? My job?

He said, "You cannot write this. It'll wreck our season. You can't. You can't do this to me." I said, "Tommy, Steve and Cindy want this out there. It's my job." And now came the fateful line. Tommy says to me, "I thought you were my friend." And I made the mistake of saying, "Well, it's not like we go to dinner, right?" That set him off. Around the desk, he came to me.

And he began to sputter in my face the way he would an umpire at home plate in a rhubarb, sputtering, where I'm getting spittle on my face and down my shirt. He was so angry. He had played the friendship card and saw it wasn't going to work, so he went with the intimidation card. And it was real. And he began to MF me and F me and every other word you can think of. And it got crazy.

heated because I got a little heated and responded in kind, not with F-bombs, but with some anger. And Tommy will sort of had a reputation as a minor league pitcher of being a brawler. And he often had guys in his office who appeared to have some mafia ties. And Tommy was not to be trifled with, but I trifled. And it was the closest I've ever come to exchanging blows with

with a subject that I was supposed to be interviewing. And we were saved only because Ron Say was trying to listen at the office door of the manager and just shoved the door open and saved us from ourselves by jumping between us. I got pushed and shoved back toward the wall, but he didn't strike me, and obviously I wasn't forced to strike back. I went straight back to my hotel room,

As I recall, the Howard Johnson's in Vero Beach, not much there at that point. And I began to write. Hour in, knock on my door, it was Ron Say. Once again, he didn't use the line, but he came across as, I thought we were friends. He didn't say that, but that was his premise and his point. How could you do this to me after all I did for you? We spent so much time together. You wrote a great story about me. You can't do this to this team.

And once again, I said, Ron, I can't not write this because Steve and Cindy feel like they've been very wronged by you and all the others. And I'm going to go with it. And by God, I went with it. Never heard from Ron Say again. Never heard from Tommy Lasorda again. Talked to Steve Garvey only one more time after the story ran, and he was barely okay with it. But it hit the fan in L.A. It was a bombshell. This is pre-internet. It would have hit the...

international internet, if there had been one, and the upshot of it was sometime in the middle of that season, because of my story and the seeds that got planted, would you believe that Steve Garvey and the best Dodger pitcher Don Sutton got into a fist fight in the clubhouse that spilled into Lasorda's office over all this ostracizing?

Maybe that was a flashpoint for that team because they did get back to the World Series and they did get beaten by the Yankees again. But my big learns, the morals to this story, the way I do my job, I cannot be friends with any athlete, with any coach, with any manager. I can't ask any of them to be regular guests on a show, not as contributors, but as guests.

doing me favors because then I have to do them favors of protecting them when they deserve to be criticized. I'm not going to pull those punches. I'm not going to sell out. I'm going to be true to myself and as cliched as it may come across right now, I'm going to be true to you. I do have a job to do and I want you to trust that I'm arm's length from everybody I comment on. I protect nobody and it's hard because I'm human.

But after those near fiascos, I never became "friends" with anybody because you know what I learned? They're really not your friend. It's always an ulterior motive. They don't want to be your friend for any other reason than you make their image for them. You portray them and they want you to portray them as a friend would portray them when they're really not your friend. Tommy Lasorda went on to win two World Series.

Steven Sinde went on to divorce in 1983. Steve Garvey went on to prove that he wasn't exactly the greatest guy in the world. I'll spare you the details unless you're interested. Just call up his wiki. And in the end, I believe the big dodger in the sky was looking down, rolling his eyes at all of the above. Back to your questions. Back to two of your questions, which

are linked to related questions and they're good ones, at least from my point of view, because they're pretty personal. Rio from Chula Vista, California asks, "What is the best birthday present you've ever gotten?" Wow, that came out of left field. It's actually an easy question for me to answer. On my 14th birthday, a Saturday, my father, to whom I was not close,

took me down and bought me a brand new motorcycle he did not want to buy me. It was a little red Honda 90 that maybe top speed would hit 50 downhill with the wind. My mom pushed my dad to buy me said motorcycle. We were not wealthy people. We were strictly middle class. My father ran a little hole in the wall barbecue restaurant on the south side of Oklahoma City, far from where we lived.

The money came and it went. Sometimes we had a little, sometimes we had none. Pickle business, the restaurant business. Both my parents suffered from alcohol abuse and my mom was sick and tired of having to have responsibilities of taking me places and picking me up from places. So she said, "Get him the motorcycle." Obviously I wondered what kid wouldn't want a motorcycle. None of my friends got motorcycles because no way any of their parents would let them have motorcycles.

But I got one and how did I get it? I got it on my 14th birthday when my father, sad man that he was, was forced to drive this battered old catering truck that he had at the restaurant. A walk-in catering truck with me aboard down to the Honda dealership and he picked one out. They weren't expensive.

he said you want yeah i'll take the red one okay let's take that one and we rolled it up into the the old catering truck and he drove me down to the license bureau on my birthday that saturday and i took the written test for which i had studied like a madman and i made a 100 on the written test because i was not going to flunk and i took the driving test and passed with flying colors

and in an era that there was no helmet law in Oklahoma City, I hopped on my red Honda 90 and I drove across town to First Christian Church to play in a church league basketball game. It was freezing cold. My birthday's on December the 4th. I had my basketball stuff strapped to the back of it, and I was the happiest kid in the world. A couple of weeks passed. My father called me one noontime.

from the restaurant, it's called the Hickory House, or was called the Hickory House. And he says, "I'm looking out the window right now at the intersection outside the restaurant." He said, "There's a kid who was riding a motorcycle who got hit by a car. He's now trapped underneath the car." And he said, "I'm pretty sure he's dead. I just wanted you to know this is what's going to happen to you." My dad was a bad guy, had no use for me. And I listened and I said,

I don't care, and I hung up. And I didn't care because for those two years, 14 and 15, until I got my driver's license, obviously, on my 16th birthday, I had the most fun I've ever had in my life. And by the grace of God, I had no accidents. By the grace of God, I lived to tell about the greatest birthday present I ever got because truth be told, we weren't a birthday present family. I rarely got more than socks on my birthday.

But I miss my little red Honda 90 because we went all over the city together. Second question, slightly related from Ethan in Patterson, New Jersey. What kind of car does Whip Bayless currently drive? Motorcycle to car. Good question. I got an answer. Ethan, I have always liked fast cars. I would like to think I've always driven them safely and wisely.

but I've had my share of Porsches. I make decent money. I could pretty much buy any Euro supercar I would want to buy and my wife Ernstine would be very happy with that. But in 2019, I fell in love with the Corvette ZR1. Understand, I'm not a Corvette guy, never loved them, never even liked them. But the more I read about the ZR1, the more I said, "I got to have that car."

I was told they didn't make very many in what became the final year of that C7 version of the Corvette. And the deeper we got into the 2019 season or year, the harder it was to find one. Specs I wanted, the colors I wanted. I tried and tried to find one and I couldn't, which finally led me to getting in touch with the people at the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky. And would you believe?

They made me the last ever ZR1 in that C7 line just for me. Exactly the way I wanted it. 755 horsepower, 7-speed stick shift. Trust me, it is one badass automobile. I read the other day, ZR1 was graded the fastest American car on the road. That 2019 was. I don't know if it's true or not, but

I buy it. I live it. I just prefer the feel of that car to the Euro cars I've owned. Trust me, the highlight of my day every weekday is driving my ZR1 the short distance from our house to this Fox studio where I do Undisputed. Four o'clock in the morning, just me and my ZR1. I've thought about buying another car, but this is a collector's item. I got a knock on wood here.

My ZR1 has given me absolutely no trouble. It gets better by the day to me. And all I can say is thank you, Bowling Green. That is it for episode 14. I want to thank you for listening and or watching. Big thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go.

Thanks very much to Tyler Corn for producing this show. Remember, please, undisputed, 9.30 to noon Eastern every weekday. Remember, please, the Skip Bayless Show every week.