Skip vs. Draymond Green and the "New Media"
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Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show. This is episode 24.

This is, as always, The Un-Undisputed. I'm about to share with you everything I cannot share during a two and a half hour debate show going for the throat, me versus Shannon Sharp. That's called Undisputed. This is the Skip Bayless Show. I will end today's show with my final words

on my conflict with my brother Stephen A. Smith, the conflict I detailed in episode 23. Stay tuned for that. But before and until then, I will fire back at Mr. New Media, Draymond Green, and I will flashback to that fateful month before the 2009 NBA draft

in which, believe it or not, I was the only one out there defending Steph Curry, saying he should go number one in that draft over Blake Griffin. I will also then detail my relationship, or lack thereof, with my actual brother, Rick Bayless, as opposed to my brother from another mother, Stephen A. Smith. And I will get back to answering some of your questions.

about the difference between my relationship with Nelly and my relationship with Lil Wayne. I will also address a question about will I ever elevate LeBron James above number nine in my all-time NBA top ten. I'll get to that in a moment. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped.

So Draymond Green did fire back at me on Twitter the other day after I, on Undisputed, had interpreted, had dared to interpret what he had said about how the Celtics don't have a LeBron James. So let's sort back through this, sift back through this, if you will, to Draymond's first quote when he was asked by the media, what's it like?

playing against the Celtics versus LeBron's Cavaliers, he said, well, it doesn't compare to mentally playing against LeBron James, who I think is arguably the smartest guy ever to play this game. Not one of, he is arguably the smartest guy to set foot on a basketball court. I do agree with that. Now more Draymond. To say that it compares to that, it's disrespectful to LeBron and it's a lie to you, the media. Okay? So...

our show tweeted what I actually said in summary on Undisputed. So it went up on my Twitter. Draymond is basically saying the Celtics are not as good as LeBron's Cavaliers were. LeBron in his prime in 2015 with a healthy Kyrie and Kevin Love would have swept these Celtics. I stand by that. Which provoked Draymond on Twitter to respond to my tweet and probably what he saw on the show.

"No, Draymond was not basically saying that. "I was basically saying what I said. "If they wanna know what else I said, "they can listen to the Draymond Green Show, "but I don't need you to speak for me." Signed, yours truly, The New Media. Okay, here's the irony to this whole situation. Mr. Green, as in Draymond, do you realize that for the last six years,

I sit across every day on Undisputed on live national TV from a fellow debater who happens to be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His name is Shannon Sharpe. Was he the new media before you ever thought about being the new media? I debate with him every day, often about the National Football League, and I'm pretty sure I've been able to hold my own against Shannon Sharpe.

Now let's sift back through some other quotes that came from Richard Jefferson via Michelle Beatles podcast, who said, "As far as the new media goes, I just think we are the first generation. We're the guys that like in the middle part of our careers, social media blew up and then we were able to see the skips in the Stephen A's. We watched all these guys. Guys have been keeping receipts.

it's not to come in and say you're wrong. We're just getting into the media space to set the record straight, to give a more honest retired player's viewpoint and I think that's where it's going to have a positive effect. So back to you Richard, back to you Draymond. What exactly have Shannon and I been doing for Lowe these six years?

I have been debating a pro football Hall of Famer who I believe was better at his game than you Draymond are at your game, or certainly you Richard were at your game of basketball. I don't think Shannon's ever made me look stupid or foolish when we debate the National Football League. I'm pretty sure he's never run over me.

when we debate NFL, because I do know something about the NFL. In fact, I think I know a lot about it. I also think I know a pretty good bit about the NBA, and I would love for members of the new media, Draymond and Richard, to please come in to Undisputed, heck Skype in, Zoom in, whatever you wanna do to come in. And I need you to please call

upon those receipts and pleased to set the record straight live on national TV on Undisputed up against me. New media my ass. I'm sorry, I'm not buying any of this. Draymond said at the Victory Parade the other day, he's gonna keep destroying people on Twitter. Well, I'm a sitting duck on Twitter day after day after day, Draymond, and I invite you to come and destroy me.

Richard Jefferson did come in once upon a time, I don't know, four years ago, too undisputed to the Fox lot here in LA, sat right up there at the debate desk with me and Shannon, but I don't recall him trying to call in any receipts. I just fight fire with fire. I respond in kind to the guest debaters. And I don't remember Richard wanting to fight or set the record straight.

It was a pretty ho-hum back and forth exchange, as I recall. But listen, Richard, if you want to come in and call upon those receipts and set me straight, I would love to have you on. To me, Draymond's definition of the new media is basically sitting up in his bully pulpit of a podcast, unopposed, unchallenged, telling the world only what he wants the world to hear about him.

And I ask you, listeners and viewers of this show, do you remember what Draymond did near the end of game one at Memphis in these playoffs this year? He melted down the way Antonio Brown melted down and walked it off at Jets. We all remember that. I thought he made a fool of himself after he got kicked out of the game and took this weird crazed victory lap around the Memphis arena. Definitely put his team in jeopardy.

Against a very dangerous opponent. I did pick Memphis to upset Golden State in that round. I stand by my prediction. You know what happened. There was a suspension of a key Memphis player, Dylan Brooks, and then Desmond Bain had a back injury and was lost for a couple of games effectively. And then of all people, John Morant,

knee flared up and he was lost for the last three games. Or I don't think we'd be talking right now about a Golden State victory parade, but that's just me. But how lucky was Draymond in game one that without him, Klay Thompson saved the day. Ja had the ball in his hands at the end of the game with the chance to win the game. And it was Klay

who came off Brandon Clark and pushed Ja out wide, pushed him much deeper than he wanted to be pushed a little outside the lane, decreasing his angle as he swooped to the hoop and forcing what became an extreme miss at the end of that game to win that game. So did Draymond take questions from the audience, the gathered media? No. He wanted to control his narrative.

He didn't want to hear probing questions, fair questions, objective questions, warranted questions from the real media. No. He retreated to the safety of his Memphis hotel room and he did a podcast. And obviously it was just him and the camera filtered, filtered, not unfiltered. No questions asked. You know, I always wanted to ask Draymond about getting thrown out in 2016 of

Game four of the finals, suspended for game five of the finals because he very audibly during game four called LeBron James a bitch. And then he went to the other end and tangled with LeBron and managed to kick him in the man region just as he had kicked Steven Adams in the man region in a previous game in those playoffs. And he got suspended and his team death spiraled.

down, down, down, and blew a three to one lead. I thought Draymond was actually great in game seven at home, but Steph was not great. So as Shannon Sharp always reminds me on Undisputed, Draymond was the one who fled into the parking loss, excuse me, parking lot after that game seven loss and called one Kevin Durant by a cell phone. Can you please come save us? That's the way Shannon characterized it. And then

of all things to happen, I look up a month later and somehow Draymond has become business partners with LeBron on Uninterrupted. I'm pretty sure that happened. So wait a second. One man called the other man a bitch? That's a bridge burner, at least in my world. And suddenly they're business partners because LeBron likes to keep his friends close and his enemies closer.

And I don't know if you'd say that Draymond sold out, but suddenly he was business partners with the guy who had come historically down from three to one to vanquish him and his team. By the way, Draymond, I would also like to ask about the final straw in Kevin Durant's tenure with Golden State when in a game versus the Clippers at Staples, the old Staples Center, the previously named Staples Center,

they got into it about who was going to bring the ball up child stuff but draymond did it again he called kevin durant the b word as in and that was the beginning of the end of kevin as a golden state warrior i'd like to ask about that and then the next thing i know they're at the olympics together and they're besties i don't know how this happens but it's today's nba i guess

So Draymond, please come in and sit down with me and Shannon on Undisputed. You can have all the time you want. You can have two and a half hours. You can set the record straight. You can destroy me. You can destroy us. Please, Draymond, please. I would love to ask Mr. New Media about what Steven Jackson, our analyst, said about Draymond on our show Undisputed after game three of these finals that we just witnessed.

Game three at Boston, Draymond played 35 minutes, had more fouls, six, than he had points, two, or assists, three. Six fouls, two points, three assists. Steven Jackson actually played in the NBA. He played at a high level, 14 years worth. He won a ring with my San Antonio Spurs. And you know what he said? He said that Steve Kerr, after game three, should bench Draymond Green.

Is Steven Jackson part of the new media? I don't know. That's what he said, period, end of quote, on Undisputed. Bench Draymond.

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and indeed.com slash Bayless. Just go to indeed.com slash Bayless right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Bayless. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Said Draymond had become an offensive liability who was no longer carrying his weight on the defensive end. Steven Jackson pretty much destroyed you, Draymond, on Undisputed.

So if you'd like to come in and try to destroy him, you would be welcome to try. Now back to Draymond destroying me on Twitter. He did stoop before game six to be interviewed by the assembled finals media. And as I pointed out, I thought he did take a shot at the Celtics inadvertently by just telling the unvarnished, unfiltered truth. They don't have LeBron.

They didn't. I couldn't believe Draymond said that. I loved it because I agreed with it, but I don't think it was the smartest thing to say ahead of a closeout, potential closeout game, six at Boston. But Draymond said it, and to his credit, he backed it up. He played his best game of these finals in game six at Boston. Snapping out of it after, as you recall, game three and four, the Boston fans tweeted,

and tweeted, chanted, "FU Draymond, FU Draymond." And Draymond seemed to be deeply affected by it and ultimately discombobulated. But that's just my view from the real media as opposed to the new media. I thought before game six that Draymond was being dangerously honest about the Celtics. I thought they were flawed. I thought they were a fraudulent finals team.

I thought that actually this championship, thanks to what Draymond said, deserved an asterisk. Fraudulent foe. It was won against a team that didn't really belong there. Should have been swept. But Draymond fired back at me. I don't need you to speak for me. Well, it's part of my job to try to interpret what stars say. And Draymond, I think you know and I know I was right about what I said.

I'd like to think I'm part of the real media, Draymond. And some viewers, listeners, fans actually need somebody to call you on some of the outrageous things that you say or do on the basketball court, actually critique the way you played in a game three with six fouls and two points, actually need to critique all of your cheap shot, dirty pool tactics,

all of your insufferable wrestling villain antics on the court. Somebody needs to call you on that. And I think it requires real media as opposed to new media. And the final amusingly ironic plot twist to this is that sooner than later, Draymond, you're gonna be working full-time, I think, at TNT. You're already sort of part-time there, official member of their family.

And yet your very job will be to critique and call out players the way Shaq does and Charles does. And if you try to go new media sitting up there alongside Shaq and Charles, if you start going out of your way to defend today's players when they don't deserve it, I promise you Shaq and Charles will call you out. New media, my ass.

Yours truly, Real Media. Let's take a few questions from you, the audience. Didn't get to any last week. Here's a good one. Monty from LA. How does your relationship with Nelly compare to yours with Lil Wayne? That is a good, deep question. I will attempt to answer it. I've obviously known Nelly a little longer than I've known Wayne just because

Nelly was the very first rapper I ever had with me for a full show on television. Actually, Bow Wow came in first, but it was only for a segment. But Nelly agreed to come to Bristol, Connecticut to ESPN's Mothership and to sit out there at the debate desk with me on first take for the full show. People upstairs were highly skeptical on pins and needles. We were on thin ice. I told Nelly, "Hey,

"You can't curse, we're live. Live national TV can't curse." I got you. And he didn't because he is a pro's pro. And obviously I was already a fan of Nelly's before I could become a fan of Wayne's because Nelly's just, what is he, maybe eight years older than Wayne? And I gotta tell you, in 2000, country grammar struck me like lightning, as did the follow-up album, Nellyville.

"Hot in Here or Her." I could listen to it five times in a row right now and be highly entertained. And Air Force One's one of my all-time favorite parody songs, scathingly sarcastic, ultimately aimed at me and my sneaker obsession. Nelly, a little different than Wayne. Nelly will hit me here and there out of the blue with outraged texts during sports events.

just angry texts. "Can you believe that so-and-so did so-and-so?" And he'll call me to talk about deep sports issues, race-related issues, social issues, what somebody said or failed to say. And I love that about my relationship with him. But we don't really go as deep as Wayne and I do about life stuff, life issues.

male, female, whatever kinds of relationship issues. I don't go there yet with Nellie. I guess we could, but I could sum it up by saying Nellie is a really good friend of mine. I'd call him a great friend. Wayne is my brother, is my brother. All I know for sure is that

I had a Valentine's night back in 2019, it seems like eons ago, pre-pandemic, just before the pandemic struck that February. I texted Nelly. I saw he was playing downtown LA. I said, "Ernstine and I want to come to your concert on Saturday." I think it was a Saturday night.

And he said, "You better believe you are, but you're coming backstage to the dressing room before." And I said, "You're busy." "No, you got to." And for one night, my wife and I were the king and the queen of Nelly's pre-show dressing room. Introduced us to everybody, made us feel like we were the stars of the night. It was one of the great nights we've ever had together.

Instead of sitting in our seats out in the crowd, we were just stage left, just out of the audience's sight line, where we got to watch Nelly up close and personal from right there. It was a night. And in the end, I cannot tell you how blessed I am to have Cornel Haynes Jr. and Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. in my life. These are two extremely gifted men

with deep, brilliant minds, trust me. Another of your questions comes from, let's try Steven and Tim P. Have you ever hit the snooze on your 2 a.m. alarm clock? I do get up at 2 a.m. every single weekday and I do not love it and I do not think about it until you ask me about it, but never, ever,

I don't even know where the snooze button is. I don't even know if it has a snooze button. It probably does, but I'm not aware because I leap out of bed at 2:00 AM sharp as if my life depends on it because it pretty much does. I'm barely gonna make it to the show leaping out of bed out here in California at 2:00 AM, which is already five in New York. I just envision all those folks on first take, starting with Stephen A,

already getting ready and I gotta go. I'm barely gonna make it. And the fact that I do get up at 2:00 a.m. should drive home the point to you, just how much I love doing this show. I don't even care that it's 2:00 a.m. I just love "Undisputed." Let's try another one, shall we? From Matt from also Arizona. "What did Hazel get you for Father's Day this year?" Hazel is our Maltese.

She's the little biggest dog in the history of dogs. She's almost, well, let's call her five and a half years of age. And she got me what she gets me every Father's Day. She got me a big lick of a kiss. That was it. Ernestine always says, don't let her lick you in the face. Ernestine lets her lick her in the face, but you didn't hear that from me.

Don't let her lick you in the face. Do you know she cleans her private parts with that tongue? I don't care. Hazel is a force in my life because no matter how bad it gets, Hazel's already, always, already ready, always to play chase, to play fight on the bed back and forth. She'll fight me like you wouldn't believe. Like she's PJ Tucker fighting back on defense.

For every single night, she sits right at my feet, lies at my feet, sometimes sleeps at my feet as I'm watching games and going out of my mind crazy. And sometimes she just looks up at me and it looks like she's rolling her eyes because she's just like, that's my dad. I love you, girl. Now it's time for a flashback in honor of the NBA draft. This one concerning Steph Curry.

As you probably know, I've been pretty hard on Steph of late through these NBA finals that recently concluded. I even went so far as to call him F'n Stephan because I picked the Warriors and he let me down a couple of times and it really, really bothered me. Ask Hazel. I'm just not sure either Steph or LeBron were born with what I call a clutch gene. There is no doubt that Steph Curry is the greatest shooter ever.

That's the biggest duh ever. He's just been so shockingly bad in the clutch. His first three finals games ever in 2015, 1-2-3, go look at them. Just not very good. Golden State fell into a two games to one down hole that Iggy had to dig them out of.

Games 5, 6, and 7 in 2016 as they gave up the 3-1 lead. Go look at the numbers. Just pathetic for the greatest shooter ever in the clutch in the fourth quarters. Go look at games 3, 4, 5, and 6 in 2019. No KD. See what Steph didn't do in those games. And then game one this year. Remember, Golden State's at home up 12 going to the fourth quarter. And in that fourth quarter,

Steph goes 0 for 2 from 3, scores a grand total of 4 points, doesn't score a single point in the last 6:05 of that game at home as Boston went on a 20 to 5 run to run away with the game. What? F'n Stephen. Game 3 at Boston. I mean, if you're that guy, as people are saying, all-time top 5 or 10,

I mean, it's a four point game going to the fourth quarter and Steph goes 0 for 1 from three and just pretty much disappears and scores two total points in the fourth. I'm sorry, not good enough. Fourth quarters for these finals, six games, two for 10 from three with Steph. Clutch gene? I'm not so sure. But now for the great irony. Back in 2009, I cannot tell you how I fought and fought and fought some more

for Steph Curry to be drafted number one overall. I was, of course, at ESPN. Day after day after day, I fought with so many analysts, including my friend Chris Broussard, now on First Things First here on FS1, back and forth because they had gone gaga over Blake Griffin. Blake was it. Blake's on the cover of Time Magazine and the New York Times, and he's got next.

It was a liftoff that was akin to LeBron's when he came out of high school. Only Blake was coming out of two years of college. And the great irony here is he played at the school I was born to love. I grew up, I was born and raised a University of Oklahoma fan. Blake's from my town, Oklahoma City. Heck, I went to high school with Blake's mother, Gail Simmons, two years ahead of me. But

I certainly knew of her, certainly as Blake rose to fame. And yet, I watched every game Blake played. And I kept arguing back and forth. I said, he had to go back for a second year. What future superstar in the NBA is a two and done? I mean, it just doesn't happen. So they would fire back at me. Well, that skinny little guy at Davidson, he's three years there. Yeah, but you understand he can really shoot it.

like nobody I've ever seen shoot it. And Blake can't really shoot a lick because at Oklahoma, he really couldn't shoot a lick. So Chris Broussard and others kept firing back at me that six foot two skinny little shooting guards don't last long in the NBA unless maybe he's Allen Iverson. And I didn't say that, but I said, you're completely underestimating. He has point guard handles.

He could really handle. He could distribute. But more important, he could create his own shot. There's no catch and shoot to Steph Curry. He could create his own shot in college. I said, you got to take him number one over Blake. And they laughed at me. They said, Blake is going to revolutionize basketball with his size of 6'10", his strength, his explosive leaping.

and his overpowering athleticism. He's going to revolutionize the NBA. And I said, no, no, this little guy's got a shot at that. I never said he was going to be all-time top 10, but I said, Steph Curry will be a star at the next level. I'm not completely sold on Blake Griffin. I think Steph has revolutionized by...

shooting logo threes like they're virtual free throws. Never seen anything like them. But I actually got to watch on my television Steph at Blake in a game November 18th back in 2008, their final years in college, they played each other at Norman, Oklahoma.

And Blake was really good that night. He had 25 and 21 rebounds for the 12th ranked Sooners, who did win the game by four over the 21st ranked Davidson. But Steph had 44 in that game. He made 12 of 19 shots. He made all 14 of his free throws. He had two steals on top of that. I'd never seen anything quite like him. Then in the NCAA tournament, that skinny little kid from Davidson,

He took Kansas to the wire. This was Mario Chalmers Kansas that eventually would edge Memphis, Derrick Rose's Memphis, for the national championship. That guy, and that day, Davidson against Kansas, it went to the wire and Steph scored 25 of Davidson's 57 points. But on the final play of the game with a chance to win the game, Steph did not take the last shot, the last three.

That was his backcourt running mate. That was Jason Richards taking that last shot. At that point, Jason was 0 for 3 from 3 in the game and wound up 0 for 4 because he missed it. And I blasted that strategy on Monday on ESPN. And I think it was Tuesday that Davidson's coach, Bob McKillop, showed up at ESPN to do what they call the car wash to sit in on every show.

be interviewed about the great run that Davidson had had. And he saw what I'd said about strategy or lack of, and he was steamed. And in a commercial break of first take, he came and pulled me aside. He starts diagramming on scratch paper how the play was drawn up. And I said, I don't care. You just have to figure out how to get the ball to Steph Curry in that situation. Yeah, but no, there are no buts.

And now I look back on that clash that we had and I think, did he know something about Steph's lack of a clutch gene that maybe I didn't? I don't know. So it was on the night of June 25th, 2009, that Blake Griffin went number one overall. Machine the Beat went number two to Memphis. James Harden went number three to OKC. Tyreek Evans went four to SAC.

Ricky Rubio went five to Minnesota and then impossibly Minnesota turned right around back to back and took another point guard, Johnny Flynn out of Syracuse. What? Johnny Flynn out of Syracuse? Leaving my guy, Steph Curry at number seven to Golden State and history changed forever.

Next day, all those analysts came at me, "See? We told you you'd go number one." And I said, "Just wait." I hung right in there the way I am right now on Undisputed with Baker Mayfield. "Just wait and see." I'm not saying Baker's ever going to be Steph, but he's going to be something. So Blake Griffin did miss his first NBA season because he fractured his kneecap. He did bounce back. He was Rookie of the Year.

And then he became a national sensation because he leaped over the hood of a car and won the slam dunk contest. That was 2011. He did make the All-Star team that year. And then again in '12, '13, '14, '15, and one more time in '19. But too often, Blake has been beat up and hurt. Last season, he was only 32. He wound up falling completely out of Brooklyn's rotation as Steph was on his way to winning his first ever finals MVP.

Weirdly, these days I see Blake Griffin at the golf club I belong to here in Los Angeles, over on the west side of Los Angeles, Brentwood, a couple of blocks from LeBron's mansion in Brentwood, Brentwood Country Club. I see Blake because he's become obsessed with golf. Maybe he thinks his career is winding down. Steph, as we know, has always been obsessed with golf and will always, I'm pretty sure, be a better golfer than Blake, golfer and basketball player.

Yet sometimes when I look across the fairway and see Blake Griffin playing at my club, I think, "How did two guys from Oklahoma City wind up becoming members, privileged members of Brentwood Country Club? Are you kidding me? Life is strange." And once upon a time was the only one fighting for Steph Curry to go number one in the 2009 draft. Really strange.

Let's take another question from you. Let's go to Trace from Louisiana. Trace, maybe if LeBron wins another championship, what are the odds of that? Look, seriously.

LeBron James is not better than Michael Jeffrey Jordan, whom I have number one. I'm sorry, he's not better than Magic at two, or Shaq at three, or Kareem at four, or Tim Duncan at five. Remember, Tim Duncan would be 6-0 in the finals, just like Jordan, if not for Ray Allen, saving LeBron's legacy. I'm sorry, LeBron's just not better than Bill Russell, or Kobe,

or Larry Bird. I have Larry Bird at eight, one ring above, one rung above LeBron James. So I ask you, was Larry Bird ever accused by his owner of quitting in a playoff series? Because LeBron was in 2010. He just faded and disappeared in games four, five, and six against the Celtics. And his owner, Dan Gilbert, accused him of quitting. Quitting?

You're kidding. That never happened to Larry Bird. Did Larry Bird ever suffer a single finals meltdown the way LeBron did in 2011 against the Dallas Mavericks when in games four, five, and six, he flat out crumbled and shrank and disappeared? The chosen one became the frozen one. I'd never seen anything like it before. No, Larry Bird never did that.

Did Larry Bird need Ray Allen to save his legacy? Because Ray saved LeBron's game six, 2013, down the stretch. LeBron missed three of his last four shots, turned it over three uncharacteristic times, two in the last minute.

missed the late shot that could have tied it, long rebound out to Bosh, kicked it in the corner to Ray, got his feet behind the line and made the greatest clutch shot ever. Did Larry ever need that? No, Larry was the guy making those clutch shots. Did a Larry Bird team ever get blown off the court by a record finals margin? Because LeBron's did in 2014, that next year,

in five games by my San Antonio Spurs. Did that ever happen to Larry Bird? No, not even close. So, LeBron should be three and seven in the finals. He is four and six, but he has lost six finals. Should have lost seven. And my point is this. Seriously, he's had so many epic fails that his billions of blind witnesses just don't want to acknowledge. But they happened. You can't scrub them.

You can't cleanse his resume. They happened. I'm sorry. If I talk any longer about this, I just might drop LeBron out of my top 10. I feel like I'm being overly optimistic and overly nice to LeBron to keep him at number nine. Next topic is a deep one for me. So buckle up and hang on. I opened last week's podcast by saying Stephen A. Smith was more of a brother to me

than my actual brother ever was. That's the truth. So allow me to share a little about that actual brother named Rick Bayless. Born two years after me, I was the oldest. We had a sister named Luann. She died a couple of years ago of breast cancer. May she rest in peace. Seven years younger than me.

So my relationship with my little brother, Ricky, as he was called in those days, was simply the strangest development that ever happened in my life. Because from the start, we never really had any relationship. I doubt you can find two brothers as dramatically different as we were. And our parents both had their problems.

They weren't what you would call loving parents. My mother really didn't want to have children, just had them because her mother pressured her to. So neither of our parents ever put any pressure on us to love each other because we were brothers. So from the start, I just loved sports. I don't know why, I don't know how, my whole life was sports. Watching, playing sports.

I was always pretty good at playing sports. And my little brother had absolutely zero interest in anything sports. So we couldn't play catch in the backyard because it's the last thing he wanted to do. And I accepted that. But the irony here was that he wasn't the weirdo. I was. I was the family weirdo because...

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much?

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $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. I was the only one in my extended family who didn't care about cooking. Everybody cooked. Everybody cooked. My father...

got up at 4:00 a.m., which actually seems pretty late to me, but he got up at 4:00 a.m. every single morning to go cook the ribs, the meat, whatever he cooked, mostly ribs, at this little hole-in-the-wall barbecue place, a 35 or 40 minute drive all the way across Oklahoma City to the south side called the Hickory House. He forced me to work at the Hickory House

every summer day, every holiday until I was 17 years of age and I despised it. I did not want to cook. I did not want to prepare food. So I got reduced to sweeping what was called the bullpen, the trash can area. It was just disgusting. I had to wipe down tables during the lunch rush and sometimes the dinner rush. I hated it. Nearly cut my finger off trying to cut a green pepper with a butcher knife.

because I hated it. If there was anything good about it, it did teach me the value of hard work because my dad was a grinder. I grind now. I know what an honest day's work feels like and it benefits me to this day. My dad never ever took a sick day and I'm going to knock on some wood here. I haven't and don't plan to. Thank you, God.

Yet my father gravitated to my little brother Ricky because right from the start he gravitated to cooking at the Hickory House. Not only did he grow to be on fire with it, but he showed immediately at four, five, six years of age, talent for cooking. My father had next to no interest in my sports. In fact, repeatedly telling me that I was just wasting my time. So

The point is, my brother and I never really had anything to talk about. We had nothing in common. My brother was, from the start, artistic. Remember, our parents, I'm not even sure they got through high school. And here's my little brother, artistic. He liked to paint. He liked to make ceramics. He liked to act in school plays. I was more inward, more introverted, and weirdly,

I became a voracious reader. I sort of escaped from my home life by reading. I read everything, every sports biography, but I read all the classics, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island. Then I fell into falling in love with all the old movies, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Christmas Carol, all the classics, analyzing them, figuring someday I'm going to write, I'm going to write movies, I'm going to write books,

But my brother was more avant-garde, more off-Broadway, and we couldn't even connect on any sort of literary level. We just had zero common ground. So it got so bad for my little brother that when my jock friends would come over, they did think he was a little bit of a weirdo. And he felt that, and it's never anything blatant, never any open verbal abuse. But my brother didn't love that, hated them.

Hated my life and then of course all the way up through grade school into high school I was often the best athlete especially in grade school and I was often the best student in my class because I was just an overachiever I just outwork everyone and ended up finishing second in my graduating class of 681 in high school. What do you call it salutatorian?

Thanks to my B, I got in driver's ed because they wouldn't give A's. That cost me. The woman who won it, just a girl at that point, she didn't take driver's ed. So my little brother Ricky had to come after me at every level, sometimes would have the same teachers I'd had, and of course they would immediately say, "Oh, you're Skip's brother."

which put more pressure on him to live up. Same for my little sister, seven years younger, and the resentment built among both of them, my brother and my sister. And meanwhile, my father was falling deeper and deeper into the bottle as he felt greater and greater pressure to provide because that restaurant came and mostly went. Many nights I thought they were going to have to close it, so our finances came and often went.

My father tried rehab two or three different times and failed miserably each time. He left us when I was 17 and ran off with one of my mom's best friends named Judy who lived down the block, which sent my mother deeper and deeper into the bottle. So we had double alcoholic issues.

and all the way up through high school, I rarely spent a Friday or a Saturday night at home just to stay away from my father and these problems. I just stayed at friends' houses constantly. I had a steady girlfriend, became my first wife named Liz starting in ninth grade and

Her parents loved me and I loved them as sort of my substitute parents. So I went to her house as soon as I could drive. I went to her house almost every single weeknight to study and just hang out. My brother and I never discussed any of this. We just drifted further and further apart because I frankly, I rarely saw him. And the irony of that is that we shared a bedroom all the way up until I was

14. I was top bunk, he was bottom. Rarely talked, rarely saw each other except when we were going to sleep, if in fact I was there. So as fate would have it, into my senior year, I won a full scholarship to Vanderbilt University and I was finally free. I had my way out. I'll be the first to admit, I left my brother and my sister in an all-time mess.

I don't think they ever forgave me for that and I do not blame either one of them. They bonded through all the crises with my mother, they became very close and I get that. The truth was, I never really knew either one of my brother or my sister because our household was so completely, sadly dysfunctional. So I left and I was driven to survive and succeed as the oldest.

And I fought my way up that ladder. I became a star writer at the Miami Herald right out of Vanderbilt and then moved out here, became a star writer at the LA Times. And I became the lead columnist at the Dallas Morning News at age 25. Then came radio, then came television. And meanwhile, guess what my little brother Ricky was up to? He became Rick Bayless, one of America's most famous and successful chefs.

Who knew? Hickory House. He wound up, when my mother failed to be able to operate the Hickory House in the wake of my father, he took her old, ancient, old, decrepit equipment and U-hauled it up to Chicago and somehow opened a little restaurant called Frontera Grill that took off. He's had his own national TV shows. Every time I look up, he's on Good Morning America.

He's written countless bestsellers, cookbooks, specialty Mexican cuisine. He has won the most prestigious awards for a chef and a restaurant, the James Beard Awards, for both of those. This is impossibly great. Now his most famous restaurant is called Topolobompo. It is Obama's favorite restaurant. So when Obama was first elected,

he asked my brother, little Ricky, to be the White House chef. By then, my brother was running four or five different restaurants and as our father always told us, "If you're not there, they will fail. There's no absentee owning a restaurant." My father always said, "They'll steal from you. They'll steal you blind." And they did when my father wasn't there. According to my mother, because I didn't speak to my brother at that point, my brother was very honored but had to

decline to be able to keep his restaurants going. So he declined Obama's invitation to be the White House chef. I cannot express to you, I can't express to you strongly enough how proud I am of my brother. I don't know. I'm so proud of him because I know what he had to overcome to get where he got. I know that because I also lived it.

I know how he had to even more than I had to lift himself up out of the you know what that he lived in with my mother. That mess that I left him in to rise out of that, the mess I left him in all the way to the top of his profession. It's impossibly great. I did see my brother at my mother's funeral a few years back. We spoke. I can't remember a single word we said, but we spoke.

We were fine, it was civil. There's no animosity that I'm aware of. But we haven't spoken since. And honestly, I don't lose any sleep over that. This is simply the way it was from the very, very start. As soon as he was three or four and I was five or six, there was no relationship at all. But occasionally I sit back and I think about how billion to one incredible it is

that my brother and I came out of that little two bedroom, one bathroom house on 43rd Street in Oklahoma City. We shared a bedroom for 14 years. I'll take the top, you take the bottom. And somehow we both rose out of all that to some national prominence. I love my little brother, Ricky, even if I don't really know him. Let's take one more question. Marcus from New York.

- How do you feel after sleeping on last week's episode? A day later, on Thursday, because we tape on Wednesday, I felt just, excuse me, I felt justified in what I said about Stephen A. Smith and our conflict over what he had said about me on JJ Reddick's podcast. But remember, I preface my remarks by saying Stephen A. is my brother.

and will always be my brother. I also said, brothers, fight. We have fought before, and I'm assuming we'll fight again. But in this case, we did manage to get together this past Sunday. He was in LA. He came over. We sat by the pool. It wasn't the easiest conversation for a while, but we slowly but surely sorted it all out. We got through it,

and we have been through so much together. We're still standing. We're okay now. In fact, I'm gonna go so far, if I can be a little presumptuous to say, we're good now. You know why? Because I love this man no matter what. That's my conclusion, unconditionally. And I believe he loves me. And I am proud of that. I cherish that. I don't trust easily because of the way I was raised.

But I do trust Stephen Anthony Smith. Trust him with my life. Always have and always will. I trust he'll always be there for me. And you had better believe I will always be there for him. And that is all that needs to be said about that. That's it for episode 24. Thank you for listening and or watching.

Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All-Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Corn for producing this show. Remember, Undisputed, every weekday, 9:30 to noon Eastern, The Skip Bayless Show, every week.