"Air" the movie, Kawhi Leonard, Cowboys in the Draft
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is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 62. This is the un-undisputed, everything I cannot share with you during the two and a half hour debate show that is undisputed. Today, I will tell you why the movie air is rare. I'll tell you the player I want my Dallas Cowboys to draft. I'll tell you why I know

I know for sure that Colts owner Jim Irsay isn't lying when he says that Ryan Leaf is lying about how Irsay's Colts were set to take Leaf number one overall over Peyton Manning. Today, I'll tell you why Kawhi Leonard might not be a Clipper that much longer. I'll tell you why Emmitt Smith is wrong about me.

And I'll tell you why Michael Jordan was so wrong about Phil Jackson. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. I'm going to start with a question from you. This one's from Lonnie from Georgia who asks, how do you still watch Jeopardy or movies while the playoffs are going on every day? Lonnie, every day, every night, every day, every night.

It's going to put me in an early grave. This is by far the most difficult time of year for me. And given that, this is the most difficult it's ever been because we now have four California teams in the NBA playoffs. We have a Phoenix team in the NBA playoffs. And those five seem to be alternating in the late, late slot, at least for me out here in L.A.,

I do get up for Undisputed at 2 a.m. Pacific time. And if I have a game tip off at 7.30 out here Pacific time, do the math. Help me out. These games are going later and later than there's always. The Lakers seem to play overtime every other night. And I look up and I'm going to get three hours of sleep. But it doesn't stop on Friday night, which is always date night for me. Or at least it used to be because now it's game night.

And it's this game, and then it's this game. They start at 4.30 out here, and Ernestine, my wife, is saying, I thought, I thought, no, no, not tonight. I'm sorry. No, no, we can't tonight. No, I can't watch Jeopardy tonight. I got to watch LeBron tonight. I got to watch KD tonight. I got to watch Steph tonight. I got to watch the Kings tonight. The Kings? You got to watch the Sacramento? I got to watch them.

Have you been watching De'Aaron Fox? She likes pro basketball. She doesn't like college, but she likes pro. And she's getting into it, but not like I'm into it. And it is wrecking my life in a good way because first round of the playoffs have been all-time, all-time great. I love it. I hate it. And I live with it. Just for the record.

Ernestine and I have fallen so far behind on Jeopardy's. We usually watch five every Friday night. We used to be right on course, right on rhythm. We're still on the high school reunion tournament. If you follow Jeopardy, you know what I'm talking about. But we're so far behind that the episode whose taping we actually attended back in the fall

that aired in March. We haven't gotten up to yet to see our episode. That's how far behind we have gotten thanks to LeBron James. Thank you, LeBron. You ruined my life. You could suggest that I've ruined yours, but you got me back. There's so many Friday night LeBron games, this is even before the playoffs started, that my Friday nights and my Saturday nights are usually basketball nights. But I will tell you this.

Ernestine and I did sneak off last Friday afternoon, well before the game started, to our nearby theaters within walking distance of where we live out here in West Los Angeles because we wanted to see the movie air. We were even late to see it. What, two, three weeks late? But we saw it. And Ernestine and I were blown away. I cried at the end. Ernestine wants to see it again.

as I tweeted that night, scale of one to 10, I give Air a 23. Air works because it's all-time great storytelling with great dialogue and great acting. Air should be a serious contender for Academy Awards. I'm not exaggerating, serious contender. The movie itself has a shot, Matt Damon has a shot, and Viola Davis steals the movie.

in a crucial supporting role as Michael Jordan's mother, Dolores. Michael's one stipulation to Ben Affleck before Michael blessed this project was that Affleck, who did direct it, produced it, starred in it as Phil Knight, the majordomo, of course, at Nike, that Ben Affleck go get Viola Davis to play Michael's mother. You know, it just seems like everything Michael touches turns to gold.

This time it could be Oscar gold. But understand, I rarely, as I've told you before, I rarely like sports movies because especially the biopics, sports movies about real life sports heroes, they never live up to the real thing that I have often experienced in real time, such as HBO's Winning Time.

about, of course, Magic Johnson's Showtime Lakers. It just quickly lost me because I experienced and lived through the real thing. I got to know Magic from the time he was a rookie with the Lakers. I knew Pat Riley. I was around Jerry West and Jerry Buss a whole lot. The retelling just doesn't ring true to me. It's always a little to a lot of

off, just off. The characters start to border on caricatures, way over the top caricatures of Magic and Pat Riley, and especially of Jerry West and Jerry Buss, and I said, no, thank you. But Air isn't really a sports movie. Yeah, it's the classic underdog story bordering on a fairy tale, which is usually not my cup of, let me say, Gatorade, but

It's a completely off-the-court story. And it proved to me once again, if you have the right screenplay in the right hands with the right director and the right actors, cinematic magic can happen. And it did with a script that has languished in script hell for, I don't know, I think I read five or six years. But here's the genius of air.

They did not try to write Michael Jordan himself into the script. Now, he is in there in the end at the shoe deal meetings that they took with Converse, Adidas, and finally with Nike ahead of his rookie year, of course, in the NBA. But you see this Michael Jordan only from behind or vaguely from the side. And this Michael Jordan has no lines in this movie. He does not speak.

Now, we all know who and what Michael Jordan, the real Michael Jordan, became. Obviously, the greatest player ever in any sport. The most iconic sports performer ever, Air Jordan, whose sneaker sales rival his basketball achievements. We all get that. We know that when we sit down in the theater or if you're going to stream it eventually. So, just to show...

The actor playing Jordan from behind or in silhouette, actually, if possible, it increases his mystique. I mean, all you needed was a six-foot, six-inch actor who literally looms over these proceedings in the movie. And you sit back and you look and you feel and you say, ooh, that's Jordan. And you know what he's about to become. But in 1984...

his rookie year, he hadn't yet become that Jordan, the Jordan even watching air that I came to know. Unfortunately, for the actor chosen for this role, he could have been just about anybody in the world who's tall and black and in his early 20s. This actor's name is Damian Delano Young.

and I hope he makes it big someday. But landing this role had to be all-time good news, bad news, because the good news is, young man, you're playing Michael Jordan. The bad news is, you have no lines, no real interaction with any other character in the movie, and no facial close-ups. Congratulations, Damien Delano Young. You played Michael Jordan in a movie, yet you can still walk in any 7-Eleven in this country, unrecognized, I'm assuming.

as Ben Affleck said in interviews I've read, if you try to convince the audience that some actor is Michael Jordan and you show his face and you let him speak, the audience is just going to quickly conclude that isn't Michael Jordan. And then everything else in the movie might seem a little fake. Which brings me to Ayer's central figure, played by Matt Damon, Sonny Vaccaro. In reality, in 1984,

Sonny Vaccaro was this slightly paunchy, 45-ish, basketball junkie, gambler, hustler, who looked a little bit like UNLV's Jerry Tarkanian, if you remember Tark the Shark. And I certainly do because I got to know Tark. But I never crossed Sonny Vaccaro's path. And yet I will say this, back in my newspaper days, Sonny Vaccaro did not have a good reputation.

Not among the many college coaches that I knew, administrators that I knew, because Sonny was seen as gray area, a threat to college basketball, an early driving force in the high school AAU and camp circuit known for trying to get these kids paid before the rules back in the day, certainly in the 80s, allowed for them to be paid.

Sonny Vaccaro eventually would play a key role, God bless him, in the O'Bannon versus NCAA lawsuit that would legally help get college players paid. But in the early 80s, Jimmy Vaccaro was, at least the one I was aware of, was seen as a little bit shady, a little bit slippery, a little bit sleazy. You get none of that from Matt Damon's portrayal of Sonny in this movie.

Somehow, Matt Damon manages to make Sonny so likable, so relatable, such an everyman on the cusp of discovering the greatest sneaker seller ever that he just grabs you by the heart and pulls you right into the screen. It's like the nice man across the street is about to discover Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

before anybody really gets just what Jordan is going to become. So in the early 80s, Sonny Vaccaro was hired by Phil Knight and Nike to advise them, to advise their failing basketball operation, their shoe division for basketball sneakers, because at that point, Nike was all running shoes all the time, running shoes and track suits, basketball sneakers everywhere.

belong to Adidas, if you're old enough to remember, and certainly Converse, if you're old enough to remember that, and I am. So Sonny was supposed to advise his co-workers on which draftable college stars were worth a shoe deal, and Nike had a $250,000 budget that was supposed to be split three or four ways between three or four college stars. So late one night,

in his what felt like a part-time office at Nike. It's in the tape room. Sonny is shown, Matt Damon is shown, running a video back and forth of Michael Jordan's game-winning shot when he was a true freshman at North Carolina in the national championship game, 1982 in New Orleans. I was there in press row. Back and forth, back and forth, Sonny runs that tape, and he's like, Eureka, I got it.

Sonny Vaccaro realizes the last shot was a play called for a freshman then known as Mike Jordan. Sonny knew that the great Dean Smith, who coached for many, many years at Carolina and obviously coached Michael, that he didn't even like to play freshman period, let alone call a play for a freshman to take the last shot in an NCAA championship game. So the play wasn't called for James Worthy, who would

soon joined the Showtime Lakers in Magic, or for Sam Perkins, who was then a big star at Carolina, would go number four overall behind Michael to the team I was covering at that point, the Dallas Mavericks. Now, the play got called for this kid from Wilmington, North Carolina, who got cut from his high school basketball team when he was a sophomore, Michael Jordan, then just Mike. So it is clear, I'm going to give you this.

As you watch that last shot over and over, and it's the real thing that you're watching, the play was designed to swing the ball to this kid Jordan over on the weak side, and he did not hesitate. He did not flinch. He went right up into the shot like he'd made dozens of them, which he eventually would do in the NBA. But this was his first, and this shot, according to the movie, convinced Sonny Vaccaro

that Nike just had to go get Michael Jordan at any price. There's one problem there for me, as I'm sitting in the dark theater watching the movie. Michael did not go straight from that shot into the NBA. No, he stayed at North Carolina for two more years, not just one more year. He stayed two. He stayed through his junior year.

So he averaged 20 points his sophomore year. He averaged 19.6 points his junior year, while averaging between five and six rebounds. Not exactly the kind of stats that would project the GOAT, right? Not exactly projecting NBA superstardom. Two more years at North Carolina, no more Final Fours. That sophomore year, they went 28-3.

But they did lose to Georgia in the Elite Eight by five points. Didn't even go to the last shot. Next year, they went 28-3. They lost to Indiana in the Sweet 16. That was Steve Alford's Indiana team coached by Bob Knight, as you know. They lost by four, so it didn't even go to the last shot. So in the movie, in the theater, I'm elbowing Ernestine next to me at this point, and I'm saying, sack it.

Michael stayed at Carolina for two more years. Nobody saw this coming. Of course, Akeem Olajuwon went first in that 84 draft. Nobody questioned that at the time because Akeem did turn out to be an all-time great player, but obviously not Michael Jordan. Unfortunately for Portland, it took number two overall, seven foot one inch Sam Bowie, one pick ahead of Michael Jordan.

Sambui turned out to be an injured bust. But trust me on this, because I was all over it at the time. Nobody saw GOAT coming. Nobody. Not even the Chicago Bulls, who took Michael Third overall. Yet the essence of the story remains hugely true. A virtual nobody named Sonny Vaccaro pushed hard for Nike to spend its entire budget on signing Michael Jordan.

So was there some poetic license involved here? You better believe it or make believe it. Which brings me to how the story arc hinges on Jimmy Vaccaro, I'm sorry, Sonny Vaccaro, deciding to go around David Falk, legendary ruthless agent for Jordan, very accurately portrayed in this movie. And Sonny Vaccaro

decided to directly contact and ultimately tried to win over Jordan's mom. So in the movie, he flies to North Carolina, he rents a car, he pulls up unannounced at the Jordan residence. Viola Davis, as the mom, steals this scene by agreeing to take Matt Damon as Sonny to a table in the backyard and

and let him go ahead and make his initial pitch to her. He asked, is Mike here? Yeah, he's inside, but he doesn't come out. It's just Viola Davis and Matt. Sonny Vaccaro has said in interviews he did not fly to North Carolina, but that he did develop a relationship over the phone and a trust over the phone with Michael's mom. It's not as dramatic, but I can live with that.

Then the turning point of the movie came when Jordan and his parents visited the Nike headquarters up in Oregon. The Nike execs are frantically trying to show the Jordans a video, which is obviously boring the Jordans. And Sonny Baccaro steps in to stop the video.

And he makes, as Matt Damon, what could be an Oscar-winning speech, six or seven minutes long. It's the showstopper. It is vintage Matt Damon, and it gave me goosebumps sitting in the darkened theater. But now the real Sonny says he spoke for only about a minute in the meeting, and that Matt Damon's speech was far better than anything that he said that day. So, okay, there was some exaggeration. There was some embellishment.

And so eventually Sonny Vaccaro did get fired at Nike as the power struggle continued over who deserved the most credit for signing Michael Jordan. But the movie has such a dramatic conclusion with Michael's mom refusing over the phone to close the deal with Sonny until her son becomes the first ever athlete to get a financial piece of every pair of sneakers ever sold. That decision obviously ultimately failed.

made Michael Jordan a billionaire. But the movie ends with such an emotional crescendo. The creation of the originals, the ones, were far more red than the NBA allowed at that time. Nike opted to offer to pay the fines. And then the ending with real-life footage of Michael Jordan's real-life Hall of Fame speech as he pours his heart out thanking his mother, who shone in the crowd.

I'm getting goosebumps right now because I cried. Of course you will not find a bigger Michael Jordan fan than this guy. I own a growing number of Jordans, as in those sneakers. I'm up to around 70 pair, no longer have room for them. Ernestine's at a loss over what to do with all of them. They multiply like rabbits almost in my dressing room, my bedroom. Yet watching air

I'm being totally objective about this. You get hit with the magnitude of this man on the court and then obviously in popular culture, changing fashion life with Air Jordans. And you sit back, as I did when the lights went up in the theater, and you just chuckle at the notion of LeBron James being the GOAT? No. It's just laughable for me. I get chills talking about that.

Which brings me finally, speaking of all-time great, to what I've come to believe Matt Damon is, an all-time great actor. He has such range. I mean, this was Jason Bourne morphing into some schlubby, paunchy basketball junkie. And you buy it. You completely buy he's that guy. This was Good Will Hunting. This was the talented Mr. Ripley.

This was one of my favorite all-time characters. Ran off Juna, if you know Bagger Vance. There's a sports movie I did love, a golf movie that rang true for me. But in Sonny Vaccaro, Matt Damon creates this lovable underdog who discovers the ultimate sneaker gold. Yeah, it's a fairy tale built on a foundation of absolute truth. We all know Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan was as real as it gets. But I got to tell you, I was walking on air after I saw air. I highly recommend it. Another question from the audience. This is Isaac from Charlotte, North Carolina, speaking of Jordan's home state. Who do you want to see the Cowboys draft this week? Quick story for you, Isaac, my man.

I hark back to the Saturday night, speaking of all the blown date nights that I've blown. This was Saturday night, last fall, October 15th. I'm in my living room watching, much to my wife's chagrin, another college football game. This one was USC at Utah. I was watching USC in large part because of stinking Lincoln Riley, who stole Caleb Williams from my Oklahoma Sooners.

I love Caleb. I still love him. I just don't love the fact that he's now playing for USC out here in Los Angeles. But I do still love to watch him, even though I no longer root for him. I do root against him, and I was rooting for Utah that night. And as this shootout exploded all over my big screen TV in my living room, it went back and forth, back and forth.

A Utah player caught my eye, and I'm not talking about Cameron Rising. What a great name for a quarterback, Cam Rising. I love that name. No, it was his tight end who caught my eye again and again. His name is Dalton Kincaid. Now, there is a movie star's name, a leading man's name, Dalton Kincaid. I couldn't make it up. That's a star's name. That night against USC,

Big game, big Pac-12 game. These two would meet again for the conference championship. That night, Dalton Kincaid caught 16 balls for 234 yards, and I said to Ernestine, who was reading something on her phone at the time, this kid is going to be an NFL star. Check him out. And she says, you mean he's going to be a star in real football? She thinks college football is like some amateur thing that she won't watch. I said, yeah, he's going to be a star in real football.

I'm watching a 6'4", 250-pound athlete who can run and cut and separate and snatch out of the sky with anything I've ever seen in college football. I'm seeing some as I'm sitting on my couch. I'm seeing some Travis Kelsey right before my very eyes. I'm even seeing some of the Travis Kelsey swagger.

I'm seeing Dalton Kincaid making Pro Bowls for America's team. I figured we'd lose Dalton Schultz, which we did through free agency. So why not put Dalton Kincaid's name up in Jerry World lights? I'm thinking on October 15th, a Saturday night.

So on Undisputed, on live national TV, I start touting Dalton Kincaid sometime around that time, later in October, November, December. He's my guy. And to my pleasant surprise, some of the early mock drafts had Dalton Kincaid going to Dallas at 26. But now over the last couple of weeks, I should have known, I should have seen this coming.

I'm seeing in recent mocks Dalton Kincaid going much higher than 26. I saw one the other day, Dalton Kincaid going 15th to the, you ready for this, to the Jets, to Aaron Bleepin Rogers, as if he doesn't already have enough jet weapons. And now a lot of the mocks have another tight end, Michael Mayer.

whom I've watched quite a bit at Notre Dame, coming to Dallas, falling to Dallas at 26. I watched him a lot. Never really caught my eye. Much more of a plotter than Dalton Kincaid. More Gronk-like. He could be decent, but Dalton Kincaid will be special. So I'm recording this on Wednesday, March

to be available on Thursday morning. So by the time you hear this, by the time you might see this, you well might know just how euphoric or how depressed I was with which player my Cowboys wound up with.

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So I'm reading a story in Wednesday Mornings USA Today, and I'll hit the highlights for you now.

The headline upon which says, quote unquote, complete lie. Colts owner Jim Irsay slams notion he wanted Ryan Leaf over Peyton Manning. This is all started by Ryan Leaf, a young man I do know, in an appearance on the Dan Patrick show saying, and I quote Ryan Leaf on Dan Patrick, I think Jim Irsay really wanted me.

him and I had a conversation about it. And this was a fairly recent conversation. Ryan goes on to say on the Patrick show, I asked Jim a question. I was like, how close was I to being a cult? And he said, I talked to a guy that I trust immensely in the NFL. He had been in the NFL for a long time. He flat out told me,

you can't pass on this Leaf kid. And I said, this is Ryan saying to Jim, and I said, good thing you didn't listen to him because obviously Ryan proceeded to have a really hard time as the second overall pick going to the San Diego Chargers. Ryan was not ready for even the bright lights of a big city like San Diego. Couldn't handle the media, couldn't handle the pressure, and he fairly quickly busted the

So now I'm reading the USA Today story containing response quotes from Jim Irsay, and I quote, that is a complete untruth and a complete lie. I was behind Peyton for two or three months before that draft. He went on to say, I don't know who created that, but he wants to be unequivocal, excuse me, in responding that it was strictly and only about Peyton. I'm here to tell you that Jim Irsay is

is telling the truth. How do I know that? Because just before that 1997 draft, maybe two weeks before, Jim wrote me a note that he sent to the Chicago Tribune for which I was then a columnist. He told me in the note I was wrong about Ryan Leaf and that he believed Peyton would be better. He didn't say a lot better, he just said Peyton would be better.

So why had I already taken a stand for Ryan Leaf over Peyton? I'll tell you why. Number one, I'd watched Peyton three times, three straight years against an arch rival of Tennessee, the Florida Gators. Three times I'd watched Peyton lose to the Gators.

And for good measure, at the end of Peyton's senior year at Tennessee, I watched, once again, Peyton play my Vanderbilt Commodores. This was in Knoxville. They're our arch rivals. Maybe our arch rivals, they don't care about us. They look down their noses, their upturned noses at us. But we scratch and claw against Tennessee every year, and we hung in in this game. We lost 17-10 at Knoxville.

But Peyton in that game was 12 of 27 for a grand total of 159 yards, one touchdown and one interception. I was not impressed. When I watched Peyton in college, he had nothing but the happiest feet I'd ever seen. Like comic book feet. And I'm thinking that is going to make some NFL head coach very unhappy, which leads to my second reason for standing up ahead of that draft for Ryan Leaf.

I was close friends at that point with many members of the USC, speaking of, back to them, the USC Trojan coaching staff. Paul Hackett, close friend of mine, was the head coach. Dennis Thurman, close friend of mine, was the defensive backfield coach. I knew several more of the coaches, and I kept in touch with all of them. And guess what all of them told me, unequivocably? All of them told me

The Colts got to take Ryan Leaf. That's what they all told me because they had just watched that year. Ryan Leaf come to the Coliseum playing for Washington State and go 21 of 40 for 355, three touchdowns, did throw two picks, was sacked seven times.

But he won that game, or Washington State did, over the Trojans at the Coliseum 29-21. Paul Hackett would soon be fired, maybe because of losses like that. But everybody on that staff told me, Gunslinger, linebacker playing quarterback. And I bought it. Hook, line, and sinker. And I sank. And I learned a hard lesson that draft.

I learned when it comes to drafting quarterbacks, trust me, trust myself, trust my instincts. And from that moment on, I did. And I've been pretty to very good ahead of drafts about which quarterbacks can play, and more important, which quarterbacks can't play, which should not be taken in the first round. Happened the next year. Well, actually, it's two years. It'd be the 99 draft. This was actually the 98 draft for Ryan and...

But the 99 draft, I'm still in Chicago. Bears had the 12th overall pick. They wound up taking Cade McNown, and I was on record up front, can't play, bust potential, and he was. I said even on a radio show on draft morning ahead of the draft in Chicago, if the Bears take Cade McNown, it will set them back for 10 years, and it pretty much did. I was a big fan of Dante Culpepper, who did go just ahead of...

the Bears pick at number 11, he had a pretty good career. And then it started, I can give you 2001. I was a big Michael Vick fan, and I know he had some issues later in his career, but he was pretty great on the field. But in that draft, I said no to Joey Harrington, who went to Detroit, and I was correct about that. I said a big no to Kyle Bowler, who went 19th in that draft to Baltimore because I nicknamed him, Kyle, I should have been a bowler.

I'll scan down the list, hit a couple of the lowlights or highlights. 2006, I was a big Vince Young fan, and I think he would have been much better than he even was. He was the offensive rookie of the year, but...

He and Jeff Fisher never clicked. And I think Jeff Fisher did a lot to destroy the career of Vince Young in the National Football League. And a guy at my school, and everybody disqualified me because I'm a Commodore, but I said, this Jay Cutler guy can play. And Mike Shanahan traded up to take him at number 11. He did make a Pro Bowl. He was pretty good. And the point was, he did have a much better career than Matt Leinart did.

Next year, 07, I said a big no to Jamarcus Russell, who went number one overall to Al Davis. May he rest in peace. Great friend of mine. I'll scan down 2010, my Oklahoma Sooners, Sam Bradford. I said a big no, big bust potential to Sam Bradford going number one overall. And I told you the story last week of Tim Tebow, who went 25th. And I said he could at least win games if you let him run his college offense.

2011, Jake Locker, 8 overall. I said big no before the draft to him. Christian Ponder, big no at 12. I was right about that. I locked horns with everybody about Andrew Luck versus RG3. I said Andrew Luck will be a turnover machine in the NFL, and he did turn out to be that. I said RG3 will have instant success.

At wherever he goes, it was number two overall to Washington, and he was the offensive rookie of the year before he wrecked his knee and never could figure out how to slide and never got right again. E.J. Manuel in 2013, I said no. 16 to Buffalo. 2015, I said yes to Jameis. He's had his issues, but I said a big no to Marcus Mariota going second overall, and I was right about that. He's nothing but a pack-up.

2016 big no to Carson Wentz and an even bigger no at 26 to Paxton Lynch to Denver I just didn't like anything I saw about him big no to Trubisky the next year 2017 going second overall I didn't see Mahomes coming I'll be the first to admit it I watched him a lot I didn't see him turning into that but I love Deshaun as in Watson going 12th overall he's had his issues but not on the field

We've talked about Baker over Sam Darnold. I just think Baker has been better. We could go on and on about the rest of the draft. I said big yes to Kyler and a no to Daniel Jones. And he's been better than I thought, but I'm still a no on Daniel Jones. I said yes to Joe Burrow. I said no to Tua, who went fifth overall. And I think I'm going to be proven right about no. Just can't stay healthy. Arm not big enough.

Then we get to the 21 draft. I'm cool with Trevor Lawrence, had no issue there. And the jury's still out on a kid that I loved and still love in Trey Lance. He just has not been able to stay healthy. And if that's the case, that will be the case, and that will be the end of that. But lesson learned from the note sent to me by Jim Ursay at the Chicago Tribune saying, no, you're wrong about Ryan Leaf.

Jim was right. Jim is telling the truth now. And the truth I learned was trust yourself. Aaron from Simi Valley, California asks, how soon will, I'm sorry, how soon till you are back calling Kawhi Leonard number two with all these games he's missing? That's an interesting question. So quick flashback.

when Kawhi Leonard was a member of my San Antonio Spurs, who, by the way, have not been remotely the same since he left. He quit on my team. He got sideways with the conditioning, the training staff. He quit his way all the way out of town, all the way to Toronto, on his way to L.A., but in the stopover at Toronto, he was there long enough to win a ring for the Raptors, as you remember. So I couldn't call him by his name anymore.

because he'd quit on my team. So I started calling him his number, number two, but I was stooping to a little bit of bathroom humor, if you will, to dismiss Kawhi Leonard as nothing more than number two. So now history is repeating. Kawhi's knees are still a mess and getting worse by the dribble. He tried to play in the first three games of this first round series against the Suns. He pushed hard. He played great.

He looked like the Kawhi of San Antonio for spurts, fits, flashes. But he did it again. He tore some more cartilage in one of his bad knees. And those knees don't have a lot of cartilage left. And that's the cushion, obviously, between the bones. I am now told by several people out here in Southern California...

That's similar to what happened to my team in San Antonio, that Kawhi is not happy with the way the Clippers organization handled all this, that they continued to pressure him to play when he just couldn't go. They did not defend him in Kawhi's view to the media, and Kawhi felt like he took some very unfair shots from several prominent media members. It was Kawhi's camp

who then leaked the story that he did have torn cartilage that's going to require a surgical procedure to clean and fix. And here we go again. Mud is being slung. It's mind-blowing to me. We're having history repeat. I went through all this with the Spurs, but now I'm told Kawhi might be ready to consider moving on to another organization. Next year, he's under contract to the Clippers.

at age 32 for 46 million. It's pretty great. Next year though, at age 33, he will have a player option. So is it possible he will demand a trade ahead of next season or even ahead of next season's trade deadline? Or might he wait until after next season when he can just flat out hit the open market?

This is just ironically painful for me to watch carefully because I know so many people in and around Kawhi. But once an organization has quote-unquote done him wrong, he will not get over it. There's no forgive and forget in Kawhi Leonard. I'm trying to at least forgive the fact that he quit on my spurs, though I can't forget it. But now...

Clippers fans might take to calling him number two if he exits the Clippers the way I have a sneaking suspicion he just might. So I saw something the other day on the internet that I'm sorry, I must respond to. This was Emmitt Smith, NFL's all-time leading rusher and touchdown scorer, a guy I covered for seven years in Dallas, blasting me.

And I'm sorry, but I am not going to sit back and take it anymore. Here we go again with this myth perpetrated by ex-players that you don't know if you didn't play. Bologna, you don't. Want to know the truth? Emmitt Smith really didn't know, and he did play. Want to know the truth? I believe Emmitt Smith

is just jealous that I fought my way up the ladder and I did make it on TV in large part because I could talk about the game that Emmett played, that I could talk about it with even more entertaining insight and flair than he was able to in his short stint on television. I don't know if you remember it, but Emmett tried for a couple of years to analyze football on ESPN and

two years that were, for me, painful to watch. Poor Emmett just didn't have much to say. He was obviously an all-time great running back. We could argue the rest of the day and night about who was the best, but many people think he was, and he certainly has the numbers to back it up. But Emmett didn't have the capability of actually telling you why he was great or why other running backs are or are not great. I believe I can.

I did not play Emmett's game, but I have learned Emmett's game from so many players, so many stars, so many ex-players, from my friend Bill Walsh, the greatest coach ever in my estimation, from Don Shula, from Tom Landry, from Jimmy Johnson. I could go on and on. So here is some of what Emmett recently said about me, and I quote Emmett Smith. It drove me nuts to

that someone that wasn't qualified to play my game is talking about my sport and talking about me as an individual when they don't know nothing about my sport, never played my sport, don't have the courage to get out there and play my sport. Ticks me off when somebody is given so much credibility, given a microphone to talk about something they're not qualified to talk about.

Somebody that don't know nothing about what I did on the football field. Something that he read about, something he heard from somebody else about, not something he experienced, said Emmett Smith about me. Wrong, wrong, so wrong. Would somebody please ask the great Emmett Smith, who built the cowboy dynasty that came just before him?

Who built the Tom Landry dynasty? I'm going to guess Emmett probably doesn't even know about this, but the draft master who picked all the players for Tom Landry in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, I've spoken about here on this show, was Gil Brandt, who didn't even play high school football. You might also ask Emmett,

Who built the Eagles Super Bowl team this past year, the team that dethroned the Dallas Cowboys and the NFC East? I don't know exactly how closely Emmitt follows it right now, but the Eagles architect is Howie Roseman, who has demonstrated that he has some football genius about him, some draft-controlling wizardry about him.

Emmett, how he didn't even play high school football. To my knowledge, I'm not sure he ever played football on any level. Let's take Bill Belichick. He did play some Division III football at Wesleyan, but he was much more of a lacrosse player. So does it tick Emmett off that Bill Belichick now gets credit as the greatest football coach ever? And he didn't really even play football at any level except D3, which is

probably way less than a lot of Texas high school football teams caliber. For the record, I wrote and spoke hundreds of thousands of very positive words about Emmett's greatness over those seven years I covered him. But I also wrote and spoke the truth about Emmett Smith. Not that it was ever all that negative, but I did speak the truth. Cowboy assistant coaches and

told me that Emmett was such a naturally gifted run to daylight runner that they quit trying to force him to hit the numbered holes between the obviously the center and guard and then the guard and the tackle. They started basically calling plays Emmett handoff right, Emmett handoff left or Emmett toss right, toss left. They just completely simplified it. They just let Emmett choose where he wanted to go

because he was so naturally gifted that then he could duck and dodge and all but hide behind those overpowering offensive lines that he had paving the way for him. Those gigantic, dominating, elephantine offensive linemen, Mark Tooney, Nate Newton, Eric Williams, Larry Allen. I could go on and on. We could mix and match those through different years, but...

Norv Turner used to tell me, Emmitt Smith's got the greatest quickness in a confined space I have ever seen. And yet Norv would laugh as they headed for their first Super Bowl after the 92 season against Buffalo out here at the Rose Bowl, Pasadena. Norv would laugh, in fact, the Saturday night before the game. He said, you know, all week I keep reading and hearing what a genius I am. He said, we got the simplest offense in the league.

It's bare bones. Our pass routes are just bare bones. Emmett, hand off right, toss left. That's all they did. They were so good and so good at that that they were dominating. Remember, Emmett was only 5'9", ran low, great power base, great balance, all-time great balance, just ducking and darting around those agile elephants until Emmett,

as I often said and wrote, he would often be five or six yards upfield before the linebackers could even locate him. And even though Emmitt ran a shockingly slow 40 time ahead of his draft, four, six, Emmitt Smith ran four, six. You would think that would just get him disqualified.

I never, ever, in any football game I ever covered or watched with Emmitt Smith featured, I never saw him caught from behind with a football under his arm. He just had what they called football speed. And Jimmy Johnson had the genius to move up in the draft from, what was it, 21 to 17 to snatch a falling Emmitt Smith, falling through the first round, which brings me to Emmitt Smith's greatest game ever.

I was there, Giant Stadium. This was early January 1994 after the 93 season or at the end of it. That season had begun with Emmett holding out, you might recall, for the first two games, both Cowboy losses. I thought he caved in and settled for what Jerry eventually gave him, but he came back week three, and the Cowboys roared back and wound up playing the Giants that day at the Meadowlands.

for all the conference marbles. Everything was on the line. Home field advantage throughout the NFC on the line that day at Giants Stadium. And with about two minutes left in the first half, Emmitt already had 151 yards rushing, but on a breakaway play, he got sort of slung down from behind, hard hit on his shoulder, right shoulder, and he dragged that shoulder straight to the locker room.

And he came back out of the locker room sort of early in the third quarter. He did go right back into the game. But throughout the second half and into an overtime that would be played, he dragged that right shoulder just hanging, dragged it back to the huddle after every carry, grimacing with every step. But listen, with that ball under his good arm,

Emmett was great that day. He took over in overtime, wound up with 229 total yards. Cowboys did win that game 16-13, and Emmett Smith was hailed as a heroic warrior. The great John Madden, may he rest in peace, later said that the only time he ever left a press box after broadcasting a game and went all the way down to the locker room to congratulate a player was

was after that Emmett Smith game. He wanted to tell Emmett how impressed he was with Emmett's fighting through injury. I also went to that locker room. An assistant coach and a trainer told me the very same thing. They told me that Emmett had suffered a slight shoulder separation. It's a grade one

not a grade two, just a grade one. And as the trainer said, and I quote, half the guys in this locker room are playing with that same injury. And I believed him. The assistant coach told me that at halftime, they tried to get Emmett to take a pain killing shot, but he refused because I was told Emmett said he was afraid of needles. So the following night,

I was up in Bristol, Connecticut at ESPN to do the show that I did for about seven years called Prime Monday Ahead of Monday Night Football. And of course, that night, a primary theme on that show was ranking Emmitt Smith's performance among the most courageous in sports history. You know all the ones, the Willis Reed hobbling out to play for the Knicks, Game 7, and

You might or might not remember Jack Youngblood, a guy I knew very well when I covered the Rams out here. He actually played a Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers on a fractured leg. And you can also imagine that in the pre-show meetings, as people are throwing out all these incredibly courageous sports moments, I'm rolling my eyes. I can't remember if I used the no needles note on TV that night, but I did say that I was told

by a cowboy trainer that half the guys in this locker room are playing with that same injury. And by comparison, I said on air that night that to me, real courage was, if you remember the thriller in Manila, Ali versus Frazier, they nearly killed each other in the ring.

After the 14th round, Ali was ready to throw in the towel and Joe Frazier beat him to the punch, so to speak, and did throw in the towel. So Ali, quote unquote, won and both of them nearly lost their lives. Both wound up in the hospital for extended periods. God only knows the later life price that Ali paid for the punishment he took in that ring with Joe Frazier for 14 endless rounds.

So during a break that night on Prime Monday, my man Joe Theismann, you remember Joe, confronted me in the lobby. I'm sorry, in the hallway. It's just right outside the studio. Joe was an analyst on Prime Monday. And of course, if you remember, Joe's leg had been broken during a Monday night football game by the great Lawrence Taylor. So on air, Joe had raved about Emmett's gutsy performance. And I suppose what I'd reported about Emmett

It made Joe either look or feel a little foolish. So he and I got into it back and forth. He put his hand on my shoulders and was shaking me. I assumed that operating underneath Joe's anger was that old, you don't know because you didn't play. But I did know. I told Joe about Emmett's fear of needles. And I said, Joe, you got your leg broken. This wasn't that. And Joe backed off. We did remain friends, or at least friendly,

I do like Joe and I admired his talent both on the football field and on the air. By the way, Emmitt's injured shoulder was never again brought up, never again an issue through the Cowboys three playoff games. They did get the week off, but they had Green Bay at home, San Francisco at home. I never heard a peep about Emmitt's separated shoulder. Nothing again. Then came Buffalo in the Super Bowl.

Game Cowboys trailed at halftime, but Michael Irvin challenged Emmitt at halftime. You take this game over, and he did. Did he ever. He was the Super Bowl MVP. But coaches and teammates continue to tell me how Emmitt could occasionally, so melodramatically, exaggerate injuries on the field. Sometimes maybe as a psychological ploy to sort of sandbag the defense, make them think he was really struggling, then gash him.

I remember the great Jim Brown, maybe a little before your time, but I did get to see him some on TV. He would pull that off, pull that ploy off. He'd drag himself back to the huddles after being gang tackled, and then, boom, here he'd come again, sandbagging the defense. So Emmett would stay down. It's kind of like NBA-esque, all this flopping, exaggerated injuries on the floor, trying to draw a flagrant one or two.

But I started calling Emmett Smith Emmy Smith because he deserved TV Emmys for these televised, oh my God, performances of his. Emmy Smith, I thought, was a pretty clever, spot-on nickname for Emmett Smith. He was so gifted. He was so blessed. Such an all-time instinctive runner that he lasted an impossible 15 seasons.

for a running back, and that was because he was the opposite of Ezekiel Elliott, who, as we all know, ran two and tried to run through contact nearly every play. And Zeke had three very good years and got paid and had four really bad years, shell of self years, because he was used up. He had, quote unquote, died for the cause.

Emmitt Smith was the best I ever saw at avoiding contact, evading career-threatening shots, living to play another play, running right out of bounds, ahead of contact, and giving up that one or two more yards that if you lowered your shoulder, you might or might not get. I've never seen anything like Emmitt Smith and probably never will. But I'll put my analysis of Emmitt's greatness up against anybody's.

I'll put my reporting on Emmett's career up against anybody's. And once more, I would be happy to have Emmett on this podcast or on Undisputed. Compare notes, compare football knowledge. He questions my credibility. So join me on this podcast. You can have all the time you want or on Undisputed on live TV and destroy my credibility. Be my guest.

Yes, I have a microphone, but you can have one too. We can share a microphone. Battling microphones, battling credibilities. Show me, Mr. Smith, exactly how much you really know about the game you played that I didn't. Then I'll show you what I know. You know what? The real frauds are all these ex-players who perpetrate and perpetuate this myth that they know because they played.

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 Dick's.com. I end with a final painful thought about Michael Jordan. Started with Michael, I'm going to end with him. This is the man I covered, the man I got to know a little bit in Chicago during that last dance season.

You've probably seen the documentary. I also got to know his coach, Phil Jackson. Phil was back in the news the other day. You probably caught it. Blast from the past, saying he no longer watches NBA basketball. The league lost him the way he believes it lost a segment of people during the bubble playoffs because there were way too many Black Lives Matter slogans on players' jerseys, painted on the floor.

that he and a segment of the audience turned off by. Too much politics. Can't combine politics and sports, said Phil Jackson. I spoke my piece about all that on Undisputed. Phil, by the way, is being interviewed by the famed producer Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons. Rick Rubin, an early promoter,

of hip-hop, starting with Run DMC. It just seemed ironic to me. So does Phil Jackson have some sort of racist streak somewhere down in him? I don't know for sure, but Scottie Pippen certainly believed that he did. But here's the point. Michael Jordan loved Phil Jackson with all his heart and soul. He blindly loved Phil Jackson. So did Shaquille O'Neal, and so did Kobe Bryant.

and I never got it. I never could understand exactly why those three, those three were so willing to die for Phil's cause. Those three black superstars, all-time greats, gladly won 11 championships for Phil Jackson. I always said Phil's greatest ever

at juggling managing superstar egos. That was his talent, not X's and O's. He didn't need X's and O's. He left those to assistants, if that. Phil did play basketball. He was six feet, eight inches tall, which was pretty imposing. He did win two rings as a pretty good off-the-bench player for the Knicks back in their championship run, 1970, 1973. But mostly...

Mostly, Phil Jackson was a Svengali. He was a sorcerer who could cast these spells over superstars in ways no coach has ever been able to cast a spell. It was just so weird how close he could get. He could get very close to a Michael, a Shaq, and a Kobe, but he could still command their respect to the point that Michael, Shaq, and Kobe obeyed his every command.

believed in him to a shocking fault. My Chicago Tribune days, everybody called Phil the Zen master, and I called him in print the spin master. The truth was, he was a lot of high-minded smoke and mirrors, a lot of I'm smarter than the rest of the room, hocus pocus, so much of that to what he said to the media. And yet, all along, a six-championship trail

Michael Jordan bought every last ounce of it. But now, in my first year in Chicago in 1998, it was looking like Phil and Michael were on their way out. And I was just dumbfounded over what was happening. Phil had branded the year, had wrapped a bow around it as The Last Dance, the name of the documentary. That was the story that he tried to sell to the media, and the media bought, including me.

that the Jerrys, as in Reinsdorf, the owner, and Kraus, the GM, wanted Phil gone in favor of a college coach named Tim Floyd at Iowa State. Michael seethed over this. Michael was driven by this. Michael made it clear

If Phil is sent packing, then he, Michael, would follow right out the door into the sunset into retirement. And trust me, when Michael vowed, Michael backed up. There was no bluffing with Michael Jeffrey Jordan. So one day, 1998, during the Eastern Conference Finals, I wrote a column. We were at Indiana. It was Bulls versus Pacers. I wrote a column calling Phil's bluff.

He was furious with me because I hit a nerve of truth, I believe. My column was basically saying, wait a second. If Phil hits the open market, he'll have another job at the snap of fingers. So why would Michael prematurely end his bull's career? Because at 34, Michael had, I don't know, two or three years left of prime, I thought.

at least two more great years, why would Michael quit over Phil hitting the free agent coach market? Then lately, some new information found its way to me. A very high placed source in the Bulls operation of the late 90s relayed this to me. This source, I implicitly trust, told me that Phil had made it clear to Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner, he did not want

to coach past 1998 because he knew what was happening. The team was getting old around Michael and Phil, according to my source, told Jerry Reinsdorf, I don't want to coach a bunch of young players around Michael because, you know, that would require some actual coaching. Phil just coached superstars, all-time greats. And I'm thinking when I heard this, what? So,

The last dance was a big lie. It was a fraud. It was a sham. It was a motivational trick or ploy by Zvingali Phil, the spin master, used to ignite and propel Michael Jordan to a sixth and final championship.

There was no need for Michael Jordan to retire prematurely, and yet he stayed out of basketball for the next three years. He didn't come back in Washington until he was 39 and then 40. Just ceremonial years. He wasted the last three years of his prime for Phil Jackson on principle. I admired it. I used to laud him for it, but now it makes no sense. Now it just seems like a shame and a sham.

Phil went right on, as you know, to Shaq and Kobe. Shaq and Kobe. And after three championships, Phil wrote a book blasting Kobe, saying Kobe was nothing compared to Michael Jordan and that Kobe was virtually uncoachable. He wrote that. And then somehow, Phil Jackson managed to mend that fence with Kobe Bryant because he can cast his spell and he recast it.

and somehow put him completely back under that spell to the point they won two championships together without Shaq. What? He's a sorcerer. He's a wizard. He's an evil genius. Eleven championships were won for Phil Jackson by black superstars. Then he had the audacity the other day to say Black Lives Matter did not matter to him. Did not matter. If not for Phil Jackson,

we would have had two or three more great years of Michael Jordan. And yet, Michael Jordan had one weakness in life. The strongest man I ever knew had one weakness, one blind spot, Phil Jackson. That's it for episode 62. Thank you for listening and or watching.

Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All-Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. Please remember, Undisputed, every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern, The Skip Bayless Show, every week.