Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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is the Skip Bayless Show. This is episode 16, and this is everything I cannot share with you during two and a half hours of live go-for-the-throat debate show called Undisputed. Today's topics will include the rise and the fall of Kevin Durant. Today's topics will also include
me pulling back the curtain on how exactly Undisputed comes together, is put together every night and every very early morning. Next topic I will get to is why I am a much bigger Dallas Cowboy fan than LeBron James ever thought about being. I'll also tell you exactly who dares to gloat text me when the Cowboys lose.
And I will tell you why I would much rather watch replays of Des Caught It than Ray Allen Made It. But first up, as always, it's not to be skipped. I'm about to explain to you, confession, why I ultimately was wrong about Kevin Durant. Kevin bleepin' Durant. I'm about to explain, unfortunately, why...
I ultimately overestimated and in the long term overprotected Kevin Bleepin Durant. I gotta tell you, Kevin Durant is the weirdest dude I have ever tried to figure out. He's a shrink stream and maybe my worst nightmare. He's so gifted, he's so tall and so long, yet he is so confoundingly complex.
So predictably unpredictable. So what just happened to Kevin Durant, what we all just witnessed, I thought would happen a long time ago. Kevin Durant crumbled psychologically and his thin skin became his fatal playoff flaw. And he is the thinnest skin superstar I have ever closely observed. I've said that many times on Undisputed.
So let me walk you back through my background with Kevin Durant. I started watching him his one and only year, University of Texas and understand I hate the University of Texas. I'm an Oklahoma Sooner born and raised down to my soul. I don't like anything orange when it concerns the University of Texas, but I watched Kevin because I started to love Kevin even at the school I hated.
never seen anything quite like him. So tall, but so skilled, such a mid-range jump shot. I'd never seen anything quite like it. I began to wonder why would a kid from just outside Washington, D.C. decide to go play one year of basketball at Texas? It's not exactly a basketball powerhouse. Football maybe, not basketball. It's had its moments, but not basketball. And I thought,
"This kid is so gifted, why not, I don't know, North Carolina or Kansas or Kentucky or wherever? I don't know, why not?" Well, what I eventually learned about Kevin Durant is he's just going to be different. He's gonna go against the grain. He's going to Austin, Texas to play for Texas. Maybe there was something else going on I don't know about, but it just seemed weird to me because Kevin can be a weird dude. So my first year on Cold Pizza, 2004,
I began to say that Kevin Bleepin Durant is going to win multiple NBA scoring titles. He was still at Texas. I just about got laughed off the set on cold pizza. My debate partner, Woody Page, moderator Jay Crawford, they just thought I was nuts until one fateful day we had on the University of Kansas coach, you know all too well, named Bill Self, now a national championship again this year. This was 2004.
And in an interview that Jay Crawford was doing, Bill Self volunteered on live TV on cold pizza, ESPN2, that, hey, Skip's right about Kevin Durant. You guys, you're just not getting it. This guy is something. This guy's going to dominate the NBA. And of course, you know that Kevin wound up playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Oklahoma City is my hometown.
And of course, when Russell Westbrook started taking more shots per game than my guy, Kevin Durant. And of course, I started to call Russell Westbrook out for it on national TV because I just couldn't take it. It just looked wrong to me. Now for the first huge plot twist that I encountered when I did not see coming was
Before a home game in Oklahoma City, Kevin Durant called over the beat reporter for the Oklahoman, the paper I grew up reading, and Kevin gave the beat reporter this quote, and I quote, Skip Bayless doesn't know shit about basketball. Pardon my language. I was blindsided. I was dumbfounded. And
The next morning on what had then become First Take, we relocated obviously cold pizza from New York City up to Bristol, Connecticut to ESPN's Mothership on First Take the next morning. I was just sputtering, Kevin, you realize I'm your biggest fan. I'm your biggest supporter, your biggest defender. And you're disqualifying me by saying, I don't know what I'm talking about.
"Kevin, you're biting the hand that has been feeding you." So I thought. Now, I understood that Kevin was defending his little brother, Russ. I got that. But Kevin also dared to tell the Oak Loman in the same article, "We're actually better when Russ takes more shots." And I'm like, "No, you're not. Sorry, Kevin, not buying it and nobody else is buying it either."
And of course, Kevin went on to win the MVP in 2014. And then the next year, it was time for the All-Star Weekend. And on that Friday, which is interview day for all the superstars, Kevin Durant was speaking to dozens of reporters who had voted for him for runaway MVP. And he told this big group of reporters completely seriously, you guys don't know shit about basketball.
What? Kevin, they just voted you the MVP and they don't know what they're talking about? They're a bunch of basketball idiots? You're kidding. You're biting the hand that just fed you the MVP. It's just so wrongheaded. Okay, but that's Kevin Bleepin Durant. So I'll throw in a quick nugget, personal note.
When I did choose to leave ESPN to come here to Los Angeles to do Undisputed on FS1, Kevin told a mutual acquaintance of ours to tell me, congratulations. And I was like, okay, thank you. Tell him thank you.
But that wasn't going to change how I thought about Kevin one way or the other. I still loved him and I appreciated that. But I'm thinking, well, maybe he's back on my bandwagon again. Maybe he likes me now. Whatever. I continued to call him, as you probably know to a fault, the best player on the planet. It became almost a ritual.
on Undisputed during NBA season and playoffs, Kevin Durant is the best player on the planet. Not LeBron James, Kevin Durant. Obviously, Kevin is a much better shooter than LeBron ever dreamed of being. And obviously, Kevin has gone on to prove that on the biggest of stages. But let me just hark back quickly to one night this past basketball season, the regular season, was the night of December 16th.
Kevin Durant, without Kyrie, without James Harden, against the Philadelphia 76ers of Joel Embiid. Kevin outplayed Embiid, and the Nets beat the Sixers. This was in Brooklyn, and I went tweet crazy after that game. Best player on the planet. And Kevin Durant, believe it or not, went straight to his locker room and pulled out his phone. I soon saw my tweets.
And he responded to me on Twitter, and I quote, "I really don't like you." What? You really don't like me for what? For calling you the best player on the planet repeatedly? That's when it dawned on me. The supposedly supremely confident Kevin Durant did not like me heaping praise and pressure on him.
I was actually complimenting him too much in his eyes. And I was threatening what now started to appear to me to be very thin-skinned and fragile confidence inside the supremely confident Kevin Bleepin Durant. I know that's deep, but I believe that was starting to operate. And when I hark back on "You Don't Know Shit About Basketball,"
I think he was trying to undercut me to take some pressure off him. Yeah, we're better when Russ takes more. No, you're not. Does that mean you don't want to be the man in Oklahoma City? I don't know. Help me out here, Kevin. So this, of course, is the same Kevin Durant who has created burner accounts on Twitter, fake handles, so he can hide behind them to go back at people to defend himself.
Why wouldn't you just defend yourself as you? Just own it. I have never ever seen any superstar in any sport need a burner account to defend himself or herself. Can you imagine any other superstar from Michael Jordan on down needing to hide behind a burner account?
Again, we're talking about Kevin Durant, the thinnest skinned superstar I have ever encountered or tried to figure out. And it began to dawn on me that he was actually extremely oversensitive and underconfident. So why did Kevin Durant, going into year 10 in the NBA, suddenly decide to leave Oklahoma City and leave Russ behind? Well, obviously, it's because he decided he couldn't win a championship
with Russell Westbrook as his primary decision maker at point guard. Well, Kevin, I tried to tell you so several years earlier, but no, you undercut me and you dismissed me because I guess you didn't want that pressure on you at that moment. Yet, what did I do on that fateful July 4th when Kevin decided to leave an Oklahoma City and a Russ with whom
He had achieved a 3-1 lead in the playoffs over Golden State in the conference finals the year before. Why would he leave Oklahoma City to join forces with Steph and Clay and Draymond in Golden State? Huh, interesting. I defended it. I just said, well, he wants to maximize his chances in year 10 of finally breaking through and winning a ring. And he was going to be the man in Golden State. And I still believe they viewed him as...
the missing piece to their puzzle because obviously they had just blown a three, one lead to LeBron and Kyrie and company. And they all, but crawled all the way across the country on July the third to recruit Kevin Durant, to beg him to come save them in golden state. So I think he liked that position, but what he liked even better was I basketball IQ, uh,
I get to surround myself with Steph and Clay and Draymond. So the pressure can't be too great because they're going to have to bear some of the burden, some of the responsibility if this does not work. Obviously, much of the blame would be spread evenly around the Golden State franchise so successful before Kevin even got there.
Obviously, he was the best player on a much better team, and I let him off the hook for that, and I'll be the first to admit it. I've said this again and again. What I love the most about Kevin is that he is a deadly late-game clutch free-throw shooter. I've never seen anyone better from the late-game free-throw line than Kevin Durant. See last summer's Olympics. See the gold medal game.
See Damian Lillard stepping up, clanking two free throws late in the game to clinch. See Kevin Durant run to the other end when they got the basketball back and just wave for the basketball. He wanted it. He wanted to get fouled. He wanted to stride to the other end and stand at that line by himself from 15 feet away and go swish, swish, gold, gold. Thank you very much. Fly home safely. That's what he does best, but...
as I get bombarded with on a daily basis on Undisputed from Shannon Sharp and his research team, he's actually a towering contradiction because as a late game clutch shooter from the field, from the floor, according to all of Shannon's stats, he's way overrated. And I have way over defended him in that category. So again, what a weird contradiction. You can make 15 footers that LeBron's
Can't even imagine in his worst nightmares of making. You can make that shot. But even LeBron, as unclutch as LeBron is, is a better late game jump shooter, three point shooter, two point shooter than you have proven to be. So great clutch free throw shooter, way overrated as a clutch shooter. That was my mistake and my fault.
He did make that one great shot last year's playoffs, harped on it on Undisputed, game seven against the eventual champion, Milwaukee Bucks. It was at Brooklyn, last second shot in regulation, little toenail on the line, boom, clutch three. No, it's a two. I thought it was a three. I fell out of my chair and rolled on the floor. He did it again.
Well, he really hasn't done it much at all. And he didn't do that because he didn't get his toenail behind the line. And I guess that's part of being clutch. So it went down as a two and it went down to overtime. And you know and I know he hit the wall in overtime because he played the whole game for four straight games because there was no Kyrie and there was only a shell of what was left of James Harden. The same shell I'm seeing now in Philadelphia. Who knew?
from the floor eggshell confidence in the clutch so here we go into what happened in this year's playoffs but i will set you up for this by telling you as a quick aside that remember draymond green has called two players a he's called two players during games a one was lebron james
During that finals, in which LeBron then, as Draymond got suspended for game five, LeBron and company roared back to historically defeat Golden State and Draymond. He got suspended because he called LeBron a bitch and then tried to kick him in the lower region. Tried to kick several people in the lower region. But my point to you is, Draymond also got mad at Kevin Durant sitting on the bench in a game at Clippers.
and reportedly, widely reportedly, called him a bitch. And it's the ultimate insult, male to male, as a sign of weakness. You're a bitch. Again, excuse my language, but that's the language that is spoken. That's the language Draymond spoke to Kevin. It was the beginning of the end of Kevin wanting to remain with the Warriors. But I ask you, do you think anybody's ever called Chris Paul a bitch?
or I'll just throw out another name, Marcus Smart. You think ever a bitch? No. Trust me, no. Nobody would even think that. You go back to the greats. Anybody ever call Michael Jordan a bitch or Larry Bird a bitch or Magic Johnson? No, no, no, and no. But Kevin got lumped in with LeBron with the B word. So speaking of Marcus Smart, here came he and his Celtics. Coached by a man, Ime Udoka.
who sat on Kevin's bench with the Nets last year, who has helped coach Kevin in Olympics with Greg Popovich, who has sat next to Greg Popovich in many games in which they tried to figure out how to contend with Kevin Durant. Ime knows the score. Ime, once upon a time, played in this league as mostly a rugged defender.
Emay very close with Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili in the dynastic spurs that I knew and loved. Emay knows toughness and he knows weakness. And he knew KD would not like it if he sent his pack of Celtic dogs at him in waves and played football, basketball, football, basketball defense. As you know, the Celtics roughed up Kevin Durant.
and he crumbled and he folded. He was overwhelmed, ultimately overmatched. Mr. Burner accounts just got burned. His thin skin gave away and it showed a very little heart and little to no guts when push came to shove literally against that onslaught. The Celtics exposed Kevin Durant as, dare I say, soft, as intimidate a bull.
as Kevin DuCant. Two weeks ago thereof, Kevin made a remark to reporters that he no longer prioritizes winning, that his goal is just to improve every day his craft of playing basketball. It was a nice statement, a nice thought, but it really rubbed me the wrong way because if you're that guy, all you care about is winning. All you would voice is, I prioritize winning.
And it struck me that Kevin no longer wanted the pressure of having to win basketball games in the postseason, especially without Steph, without Clay, without Draymond. Even with Kyrie and some of James, he never wanted to be the man in Brooklyn. His very choice of going to Brooklyn was a follower choice, not a leader's choice. Kyrie led Kevin to Brooklyn.
From what I read, what I was told, Kevin initially was more interested in going to the mecca of basketball, going to Madison Square Garden, being a Knick. But Kyrie said, no, we got two Maxes over here. I grew up a Nets fan, Jersey. Let's go to Brooklyn. Kevin's like, okay, whatever you say. Kevin did not want the responsibility, the ownership of saying it was my choice for us to play for the Knicks.
He willingly went along with Kyrie to the nets and you saw what ultimately happened or did not happen. Even the last game, the closeout game four, Kevin finally went into all out attack mode and he missed 18 shots. That's a lot of shots to miss. Game four was actually an indictment of games one, two, and three when he was just completely overwhelmed by the onslaught. No great player
No alpha dog would be overwhelmed. The Jordans, the birds, the magic, just give me the damn ball and get out of the way. I don't care if two come after me. Two come after every great player, almost every possession. You just beat the double team. You go before they get there. You rise. You shoot. Your shot's unblockable. You were getting it blocked by Jason Tatum because you were so tentative. You were so unsure of yourself. So in the end,
Forgive me for this, but I just overrated Kevin Durant. I overestimated him. That throne sits empty right now, that best player on the planet, because I can't go there anymore. I've said on Undisputed, I'm out. Sorry. He abdicated. I can no longer defend or protect. I think Giannis has a chance to rise up and sit atop that throne, best player on the planet,
But first, let's see how Giannis fares against these same Celtics. Not sure about that. Will they build the same wall that Toronto was able to build a couple of years back? Yeah, they'll try. And if I know Ime and that pack of dogs he has, they will succeed. I think it's going to be very difficult for Giannis. So let's see how he fares and how
Let's see how I fare as I go forward without a best player on the planet at this moment. And I'll leave you with this thought. I've preached this on this show before. A lot of times, the commentator-player relationship, unfortunately, is about buying insurance, where if the player is nice to the media, if he's accessible, even accommodating in answering questions or interacting,
he buys some insurance or she buys some insurance with the media. It's just how the game is played. We're all human. He's human, but so am I. And so in the bitter end, as right before your very eyes, Kevin crumbled and folded. It wasn't that hard for me to give up on protecting him because he said, I don't know shit about basketball. And then he said, I don't like you. Well,
At least I remain completely objective here. And it wasn't hard to abandon best player on the planet, Kevin Durant, because there's no love lost either way. I don't think many in the media care for Kevin because he's just a weird dude. And he seems to have no friendships in the media at all. No, no, I should say relationships in the media. It doesn't have to go over the edge, cross the line into friendship. And in the end,
I will happily go about my business without keeping praise or pressure on Kevin Durant.
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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. 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. I want to take some questions from you.
And I want to start with this one from Drew from Champaign, Illinois. It's a good one. It's a deep one. Buckle up. How does planning show topics for Undisputed work each morning? Well, we got to go back in time because it starts every afternoon at 4 p.m. Pacific time out here in Los Angeles.
That's when I can start to explain to you how our sausage gets made. We do have a unique system that actually began with me on cold pizza, as I referenced before back in 2004. Just understand this. It's unique because I just have a, I don't know how to explain it. I have a knack for coming up with the most debatable as well as the hottest sausage
topics of the night and then the morning. It's just something I was kind of born with because you got to understand, I live for this. It is my life. So on other shows that I did, pre-cold pizza, I've been on a lot of different TV shows. It was always the producers on the show coming up with the topics and handing them to the quote unquote talent, the on-air personalities or commentators of the show.
so that the talent just reacted to whatever the questions at hand were, the questions presented to them. And when that happened, I would always think, yeah, but this would be a better question. That'd be a better debate. That would be hotter. These are bigger names. And when I first started on my first daily show, Cold Pizza, ESPN2, I demonstrated to the producers,
I can do this. I can come up with it every single day. Well then great, do it. You're better at this than we are. We got other things to do. So that's when it started and it now continues this unique system. 4:00 PM LA time. I open up a list of the top stories of the day in sports that's assembled by our excellent staff on Undisputed. And
Off all those stories, I read each one, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, many down the list. I don't know, it could be 50 stories from that day. And I start making my list of maybe 15 or so possible topics for tomorrow's show. Now, big point of order. I definitely do not try to rig the show in my favor, as in choose topics that I know I can win in tomorrow's debate. The truth is,
I am only looking for topics that Shannon Sharp, my debate partner obviously on Undisputed, will be the strongest on. Heck, I love golf, I love baseball, but our audience, according to our ratings, our audience does not love golf or baseball. I talk about golf and baseball every day, every topic, but no, won't work. In the end, all that matters is the rating.
So, as you would probably know, we stay mostly NFL and NBA. Biggest names, hottest topics. Fortunately for me, Shannon and I are naturally, authentically opposed on so many of our pet topics. Completely authentically. LeBron, Cowboys, Brady,
So those are the obvious thank you God topics as they arise from day to day that make it onto my list. Then I call our producer, Tyler Korn, and I run down the 15 or so topics that I have selected as they relate mostly to Shannon. And I give him...
a quick opinion on each one just so he knows where I'm headed. It's just like a quick yes or a no type opinion, a nutshell opinion, a capsule opinion. Then he turns around and calls Shannon to get his nutshell sort of capsule opinions, his yeses or nos, without telling him any of my stances on any of the topics.
Shannon just blindly is given the topics to respond to and off the top of his head, shoot from the lip, he just goes bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And Tyler Corn then types up his one or two sentence opinions and sends them to me just so I can see that, oh, okay, I got that, I got that. A lot of times I can pretty much guess what they'll be, but I want to drive home this point
In my 18 years of doing daily live debate shows, 18 years, not one time, not one single time have I ever participated in tricking up or contriving a topic, a debate topic. There has never one time been me reacting with, well, if Shannon thinks that, I could go the other way. I cannot go the other way.
I believe what I believe. Trust me, Shannon Sharpe believes with all his heart and soul what he believes. So there's no contriving. It either is or it is not. So when I see his answers to the 15 possible topics, five or six maybe a day, I'll say, great, great, great, great, great, great debate topics. Completely, naturally, authentically opposed.
And then maybe three or four we agree on, but maybe for slightly different reasons. If they're hot topics, got to do them, still work because we can at least have a compelling discussion, if not a disagreement about three or four more topics. And then maybe, I don't know, two or three a night, Shannon will just say, not into it. And I am completely fine with that. Gone, done, over.
Shannon is also encouraged when Tyler Corn calls him, if he's hot to do some other topic that is not on this list, if he has a hot button, he should volunteer that topic to Tyler, who will then relay to me, and it will go straight in the show. You can verify that with Shannon Sharp.
It's a wide open process, but Shannon usually trusts the directions I'm going because he gets that I'm only trying to play to him. And I think he really loves doing undisputed because he loves our rundowns. And I know from Tyler Korn, from the reactions Tyler will type in, really hot for this one or fired up for this one or that kind of language will be in the night note that I get back. So
Obviously, there are games at night, so everything is going to be contingent on what happens in the games. And there's obviously breaking news overnight. And yet, Shannon and his researcher will shoot us a late note, shoot it to Tyler Korn, about any late games. These NBA nights are just endless. I barely sleep. But...
I at least know by 4 o'clock the next morning what he thought of the games, just in capsule, just a line or two, just so I know his drift, his gist, which way he's going for what's about to happen in the morning. So as I've said many times, I'm up every morning out here in L.A. at 2 a.m. sharp.
I read the overnight stories as I stretch. I continue to watch the highlight shows and read my phone as I run on the treadmill from 2:30 to 3:30. I dive into the shower. I am in my dressing room here on the Fox lot by four-ish and right at 4:15 every morning, we have a conference call
me, Tyler Korn, and a couple of other producers, and we bang through the list. But they trust me to start off by saying, gut feeling, I think we should start with that. Fine. If Tyler knows something that he heard from Shannon that maybe didn't get conveyed completely in the note,
He'll say, "Boy, he was really hot for this one, and maybe it'll change my thinking a little bit." But usually it's just, "Let's start with this, then I think we should go here, here, here, here." We start to build the show.
We will sometimes repeat the hottest topics because obviously our time spent viewing in our audience is extremely high, but it's still, I don't know, it's 22, four or five minutes somewhere in that ballpark. It's a long time for people to watch TV, but we're on for two and a half hours. And so the audience,
you know, from the show open, which is 6.30 a.m. here Pacific time, 9.30 Eastern, the audience is going to turn completely over, very possibly, by the last half hour of the show. So we will sometimes repeat a very hot topic and try to go at it, attack it from a different entry point. And we need 10. We need 10 topics. If there is breaking news during the show,
Our crew is so sharp, so quick that we will definitely swap out topics on the fly. We've been doing it here lately. They'll come to me. What's the best question? Where do you think it would best play in the show? Well, let's take out number eight and put in this one in place of. Happens fairly regularly and we're pretty good at that. And Shannon is great at reacting on the fly with little to no preparation.
Remember, we are live at 630. This is not taped. This is not prerecorded. You hear that theme song play from Lil Wayne, No Mercy. It is simply the greatest theme song in the history of sports television. When you hear it, we are about to throw down live.
We are going to let it fly. We do not rehearse. Shannon and I do not discuss one word of what's about to be in the show. Not one word. I don't even seem to say good morning in the morning. It's live. And here we go. Big names, hottest topics, best authentic debates. And that is how Undisputed comes to be every night and every morning.
I'm going to stick with questions from the audience from here on because I like them. I like these. I like this one. This is from Sia from Brookfield, Wisconsin. Do you think LeBron is as big a Cowboy fan as you are, Sia? Seriously? I mean, are we talking about LeBron the Rams fan now that he lives out here in L.A.? Or are we talking about LeBron...
who sometimes loved the Cleveland Browns when he played for the Cavaliers, especially after the Browns won an occasional game. Then he's a big Browns fan, grew up obviously in Akron. We talking about that LeBron or LeBron who sometimes professes to be a lifelong Cowboy fan? I don't know which one we're talking about, but LeBron drives more different bandwagons than my man LaShannon Sharp drives on Undisputed.
LeBron front runs, sometimes with my Cowboys. He front runs while I back walk, as in I repeatedly have to walk back my Cowboy predictions when they let me down, as they often have of late, or at least since 1995. Not that long, but you know what I'm talking about. I am lifelong. I am diehard. I am true metallic blue.
to the core. And I'm going to assume that LeBron, like so many Cowboy fans I've met around the country when we've done our show remotely from New York to out here in LA, I'm going to assume, and by the way, the Cowboys are America's team. I don't care what you say. They're actually the world's team because they are the most valuable franchise in the world. But when I ask somebody in LA or New York, how did you become a Cowboy fan? I almost always get this answer of,
It's usually during the dynasty years, which would be obviously '92, '03, '04, and '05. I always hear, well, when I was a kid growing up, I started watching them on TV, sometimes because my dad was watching on TV, but I started watching them on TV and I loved the uniforms. I always hear that. I just loved the uniforms. I loved the color. I loved the stars on the helmet. The uniforms got me. It's really not the team as much as the uniform. Sometimes it's the personalities.
It's Aikman, Emmett, Michael. But if you think about LeBron, those dynastic years, 92, 3, 4, 5, he was age 7 to age 11. So I'm assuming, and I've never asked him about this, but I'm assuming he got stars in his eyes from those stars on the side of the helmets. Heck, I go so far back, I remember when the stars were on the shoulder pads. But my experience was completely, utterly different from
My uncle named Jim Bell was a high school coach in Dallas, Texas during my childhood years. And he invited me to a cowboy game as I was growing up in Oklahoma City as a huge fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams. Remember, once upon a time, St. Louis had a football team called the Cardinals that are now the Arizona Cardinals still run and operated by the Bidwell family.
So all I knew were the St. Louis football Cardinals because that was the only game back in the early days of television. That was the only game that we got every Sunday on TV was St. Louis Cardinals football. So I wanted to go see a game at the old cotton bowl in Dallas featuring my St. Louis Cardinals football team against the upstart fledgling expansion, Dallas Cowboys. And finally,
I was in fourth grade, age 10. I finally talked to my parents one weekend in the fall, driving me down to see my uncle Jim Bell, who took me by himself to a game out at the Cotton Bowl. These were the bad old days, expansion Cowboys. And my Cardinals won that game easily. I think it was 34 to 24. And yet there was just something about the Dallas Cowboys because there was something to me about Dallas.
Oklahoma City wanted to be Dallas. Dallas was just a bigger Oklahoma City. I think it's the same to this day. And all of a sudden, I wanted to be part of Dallas because it's much closer than St. Louis and it's much closer in culture to Oklahoma City than St. Louis. And so all of a sudden, I started to think, I kind of like these underdog cowboys. I guess I like the uniform, stars on the shoulder pads.
They had a little sawed-off quarterback. I think he was about 5'7", named Eddie LeBaron. And I just liked his style. I liked his chutzpah. I liked his guts and his gumption and the way he fought. And all of a sudden, I found myself starting to love the Dallas Cowboys. And then through the 60s, they became year after year next year's champion. And I fell hard. And I got hooked. And when I went off to school at Vanderbilt, I actually took with me
A Dallas Cowboy trash can that I had in my dorm room all four years at Vanderbilt. A trash can. I wonder what Sigmund Freud would do with that. A Dallas Cowboy trash can. What was I thinking subliminally? That's a deep thought, but you can see where my head was already going. So no, see it. There is no way that LeBron James is anywhere near as big a Cowboy fan as I am. And all you need to know is that I live in LA.
and I do not like the Los Angeles Rams. Thank you. End of story. Since we're rolling with your questions, let's take another one. This is from Terrence from San Antonio, one of my favorite cities in the world. Another cowboy question. When the Cowboys lose, who is the first person who actually texts you to gloat? That is a great question with a response that might surprise you. Want to know the truth?
Nobody texts me to gloat. I will say this, my friend Stephen A. Smith, back in the days we worked together, he used to do it on occasion in our first year or two together, which would be 2011 and 2012, long time ago. But I think he realized I did not respond well to gloat texts, especially concerning my cowboys. I think he figured out after two or three attempts
I take my Cowboys way too seriously. For me, this is no laughing matter. There's no good natured ribbing going on when it comes to my Dallas Cowboys. I don't play that game. I'm sorry. Everybody who knows me knows I just don't play it. Dallas Cowboys to me are life and death. I'm not exaggerating. You gloat text me after a loss.
Them is fighting words. And you're going to hear back from me, not good-naturedly. I assume over the years, several people have tried, but trust me, Shannon Sharp knows not to gloat text me. Eric Dickerson, we have on Undisputed. He hates the Cowboys. I think he secretly loves them. He's from Sealy, Texas, but whatever. He's Mr. Ram. I call him the Rambaster. Eric Dickerson knows not to gloat text me.
my brother, my friend Lil Wayne, hacker fanatic, he knows not to gloat text me and I know not to gloat text him if Aaron Rodgers stinks it up in another playoff game. You just don't go there. Wayne would know this. We never talked about this. It's just an unwritten rule. We don't play that game. Serious business. In fact,
When Aaron Rodgers lays another egg, I leave him be. I leave Wayne be for like 72 hours before I even dare to venture back in there. And then it's not about the Packers. My friend Nelly, he just knows. No, you can rib me about other things. You can gloat text me about this or that, but not about my Dallas Cowboys.
They know that I am suffering enough without them adding insult to injury. And it's an injury to me, literally an injury. It's my punctured pride. It's even my broken heart. So no, Terrence, nobody does. Quick aside, if I could, before I go back to one more of your questions, just let me get this off my chest, please, just once. And then I'll leave it be. Night after night after night,
I'm all over every NBA game played. We just went through March Madness, obviously. And I have to live with players and coaches and broadcasters, commentators, referring to knocking down shots. And it just hurts my ear. It's always, we've got to knock down more shots. Or we got open shots, we just got to knock them down. You what?
You got to knock down shots. I mean, you knock down bowling pins, but you don't knock down shots. Maybe again, I'm taking it way too seriously like I do my Cowboys. But for me, making a jump shot, especially a three-point shot, it's an art form. It's just beautiful to watch. It's so athletic. It's hand-eye coordination. It's touch. It's feel. It's rhythm. It's timing.
I mean, when Steph Curry swishes one from 30 feet out, it's just a thing of beauty to me, to my eyes. It's so textbook. It's reverse spin off the fingertips, the perfect arc, the splash down through the nylon. It reminds me of like the Olympic divers who plunge into the water and don't even make a ripple. It's just beautiful because it's so beautiful.
Pure it's so perfect and who started knock it down. I knocked down shots No, you didn't you you knocked him down you were you're defiling a thing of beauty I'll give you just say you you got to make shots tonight or we made shots, but don't knock them down because You're ruining one of the most beautiful motions
in all of sports, the jump shot. I don't know who started it, but I know I'd like to finish it. So thank you for letting me get that off my chest because it will do no good. Knock it down. Okay, one more question from you. This is from Harry from Colorado Springs. Have you watched more replays of the shot made by Ray Allen against the Spurs or Dez's quote-unquote catch against the Packers? And I'm offended that you put quotes around catch.
Harry. Okay, this question suggests that I have a choice in the matter. As if I go home and say, you know, tonight, I think I'll watch Ray's shot. No, no, tonight I'll watch Dez's catch. I don't have a choice in the matter because I'm on this daily TV show called Undisputed. And yeah, I like to call for the Dez catch because
That's a positive to me. It's a positive negative, but still in the end, it's a positive because we all know Dez caught it. He caught it. He didn't make one football move. He made two. He ran with the football two strides. Then he shifted the ball into his left hand because he's a left-hander and he slammed the ball on the goal line the way a running back would.
and the referee standing right above the play put his arms up in the air, touchdown. It was a touchdown. I'm sorry, my Cowboys would have won that game. They had already beaten Seattle at Seattle. They would have done it again. They would have gone to the Super Bowl. Okay, so they probably would have lost to Tom Brady the way the Legion of Boom did, but they were going to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1995 season. So for me,
I don't mind that. In fact, I actually choose to call for it on occasion on Undisputed because I like to watch it because it's the closest thing to a Super Bowl I've had since 1995. And the irony is the guy who blew it up is now the guy I'm stuck with as my head coach. Mike McCarthy challenged it. It's the one good thing he ever did in Green Bay. The boob Mike McCarthy challenged and won. I don't know how. Mike McCarthy blew my season up.
But he caught it. You know he caught it, and I know he caught it, so I can live with that. The other one, I can't live with. The Ray Allen shot that beat my Spurs in Game 6, which should have been the closeout game in the 2013 Finals, is simply the worst moment of my sports life, by far. Maybe times 100, the worst moment of my sports life.
I don't choose to watch it, but unfortunately it gets shown to me again and again and again on Undisputed on live TV, and I can't stop it. I have to watch it over and over and over and over again because they know it really tears me apart. So I can never get over it because the producers and Shannon won't let me get over it. And just quick backstory, it...
It was my first introduction to the Jinx. It was born that night, at least in my life, because my then girlfriend, Ernestine, now my wife, was not with me. I was at the game in Miami, and she called me on my cell during a timeout. We, as in Spurs, because she had become a big Spurs fan, as was I.
We had a five-point lead with 18 seconds left. And she called, and I made the mistake of answering, and she screamed into the phone, "We won!" As soon as I heard those words, as she knows, I've told her this, I told her this the next day, I told her this later that night. As soon as I heard those words, I knew I was doomed. You cannot say that. You cannot let those words go out into the universe because they will come right back around
like karma and bite you in the ass. And that's what was about to happen to me. So I knew it. I just watched it unfold right before my very eyes. LeBron labricked what would have been a tying three. He labricked it so badly. It was a long rebound out to Chris Bosh. Why Tim Duncan wasn't in the game, don't get me started. Greg Popovich, but he was not.
Chris Bosh easily tracked down the long rebound and deftly kicked it into the corner to one Ray Allen, who somehow managed to get both feet, as opposed to Kevin Durant, both feet behind the three-point line from the deep corner, also called the short corner because he made it look like a free throw. And he simply made the greatest clutch shot I have ever witnessed. He ripped it as cleanly as you can rip it. He didn't knock it down. He just swished it.
It was a thing of beauty. It was an art form shot that shot me and my Spurs right in the heart. As you know, it only tied the game, sent it to overtime. My Spurs never got back up off the canvas, not for that game or the game seven that followed. They were done. I was done. And LeBron's legacy got saved. He should be three and seven in the finals. And he's four and six in
thanks to Ray Allen. I despise watching it, but trust me, just because I'm doing it right now, somebody will pull the tape tomorrow, the next day, and they'll drop it on me out of nowhere, un-undisputed, and tear my heart out again. And I lied because I'm going to take one last quick question. This one's from Alex from LA. Quick question with a quick answer.
Alex asks, what's the first thing you do after Undisputed finishes at 9 a.m., obviously out here in L.A.? Truth. I do the same thing that I'm about to do when I wind up this podcast. The very same thing. My first thought.
as I walk over to where my bag is resting on a table around the corner from our set. I walk over to my bag and I look down at it and I immediately think, "Why didn't I think to say that? Why did I forget that? What is wrong with you?" And that's what I'm about to do as I finish this. Trust me, it will happen in the next two minutes because that is it for episode 16.
I want to thank you for listening and or watching. I definitely want to thank Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team making this show go. Thanks to the aforementioned Tyler Korn for producing this and Undisputed. Remember, Undisputed is 9.30 to noon Eastern every weekday. The Skip Bayless Show every week.