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Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 122.
This, as always, is the Un-Undisputed, everything I cannot share with you during Undisputed. Today, I will tell you why I can't help myself. LeBron James is at it again and why Jerry Jones is not at it again because he's making it harder and harder for me to root, to even root for my Dallas Cowboys and why Kaitlyn Clark's transformation
is so shocking to me and why Russell Westbrook, about to be on his sixth NBA team, would not be in my Hall of Fame. And as always, I'll answer several of your probing, provocative questions, including what one question would I ask Jerry Jones? Can't wait to tell you that. And finally, would visiting...
Mountain Dew's headquarters be my version of the Willy Wonka factory? I love that question, and I can't wait to answer that question. And finally, today, I will close with my rest in peace for Bev Humphries. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. LeBron James is at it again. He is the rarest of the rare, the shrewdest of the shrewd,
the shrewdest of any operator I've ever encountered in all my many years covering, deciphering, delving into sports. LeBron James will seize upon every single opportunity to blind you into thinking he is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. And of course, he's already hypnotized billions of blind witnesses.
who will buy into whatever phony goat argument he's selling at the moment. Those billions of blind witnesses will defend their man, apologize for their man, sweep all of their man's epic fails right under the magic carpet. He has now ridden all the way to Paris as if all those epic fails never, ever happened. So I did first guess right here on this show that
What LeBron is doing right here, right now. I told you he is leaping aboard the most deeply talented team USA ever at age 39 going on 40 so that he can quote unquote lead the prohibited favorite to gold, which would give him one more gold medal than Michael Jordan won.
and would give, of course, the billions of blind witnesses yet another bogus reason to say, see, he is the GOAT. Yeah, and I'm the tooth fairy. Michael Jordan participated in two Olympics. He won his two golds without losing. LeBron lost his first. Michael Jordan was clearly the best player on both of his teams. Then he's
and said, you know what? I'm going to leave this to the younger guys. And that was it. Just two for two. Not LeBron. Not now. LeBron James will cherry pick whatever opportunity, the cheapest opportunity, to remake his pathetic goat case versus Michael Jordan. I dare you to disagree. I dare you to tell me I'm wrong. I dare you to think about this.
What happened in 2020? We had a pandemic. Much of the NBA season was lost to COVID. LeBron James got to rest up for about five months. Think about that. Got to rest up for about five months at a fairly advanced age and stage in his career. And that was before the NBA, of course, set up shop in the bubble in Orlando for a brief into the regular season, followed by the playoffs.
And shrewdest operator LeBron James smelled blood. He realized a lot of teams were going to burn out in the bubble. They were going to get homesick. They were going to get cabin fever. They were going to self-destruct. LeBron realized, to his credit, that if he could just keep his Laker team together on the same page, he could win one last ring by default.
All he had to do was be the last team standing in the bubble. The Lakers won that mental marathon more than they won a real live NBA championship. They simply endured, as my man Jared Dudley said, then a Laker, as he said of the Clippers, them boys did not want to be in that bubble. Bingo. A lot of teams did not want to be in that bubble near the end of that bubble.
LeBron took full advantage, fresh off five months of rest, and he led his team to a Mickey Mouse championship. Congrats, blind witnesses. Then early last basketball season, as you'll remember, came the first inaugural in-season tournament, NBA in-season tournament. It had a Mickey Mouse feel to it, I'll admit. But guess which player...
took it way more seriously than any other player took it right from the start. Guess who was driven to win this silly little thing? The guy in year 21, the NBA's newly minted all-time leading scorer. LeBron, quote unquote, led his team to a quote unquote championship, the last of any kind I believe he'll win. None of the really good teams ever
took the in-season tournament that seriously. Not Denver, not Boston, not Dallas, not Minnesota. And remember, it happened so early in the season that LeBron James in year 21 was still pretty fresh. First game was November 3rd, went into early December for the championship game. And by the way,
Can you remember what happened right after the Lakers beat Indiana in the championship game? They proceeded to go three and 10 because LeBron had put all his eggs in that basketball basket. And of course, LeBron took it so crazy seriously because he smelled another goat case opportunity. I see you, LeBron.
And then, of course, you know what happened. The better teams got more and more serious as the season wore on. The better teams started to rise above the Lakers, who finished 36-27 after the in-season tournament, finished eighth in the standings, had to play in the play-in, as you recall. And then what happened? Pretty much the same thing that happened a year earlier in the Western Conference Finals. Remember that? Let's go back a year.
Remember those four games against the Denver Nuggets? Western Conference Finals. LeBron James, forgive me for bringing it back up. Forgive me for beating that dead horse. But in those four combined fourth quarters against Denver in the Conference Finals, LeBron shot 7 of 23 from the floor. All four close games in the fourth quarter. 7 of 23 from the floor and 1 of 10 from three. In that closeout home game, Game 4,
Against those Nuggets on their way to winning the championship. LeBron had two late chances to tie the game with a two-point shot. Neither shot made it to the rim. Epic fail. All I heard from the LeBron apologist, oh, he ran out of gas. He ran out of gas. Late year. He's year 21.
Give him a break. He ran out of gas. I've heard that excuse again and again for LeBron, even in his younger days, I heard that. Ah, but what happened this year? He was still fresh because the playoffs had just started and they ran headlong into the Denver Nuggets, except I was told on Undisputed by various people across the table, this is perfect because it won't be a long, hard playoff run to the Western Conference Finals. They get Denver in the first round.
LeBron will be fresh enough to finish off Denver this time. And what happened in game one? Lakers are right there at Denver. Game one. You remember, you saw it, you blind witnesses. You've erased it from your memory now. I don't know what LeBron was doing. He can be the drama king. He clearly was pouting, maybe because he had taken so much criticism for disappearing in the fourth quarter's
of those four games in the sweep the previous year by the Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals. So much criticism that it looked to me like he was pouting, and it certainly looked to me like he just flat-out quit on your Lakers. Until it was too late, he took a couple of late shots after the game had been decided. Pouting, wouldn't shoot, wouldn't participate, disengaged. That's the greatest player ever? Seriously?
Jordan never did that. Ever, never, ever, never. Remember game two? Game tied, 16 seconds left. Here came LeBron up the floor. And wait, he went Jordan on KCP. Little subtle push-off. KCP goes sprawling up the floor. LeBron stops. The three-point line has a wide-open three, reminiscent of Jordan getting away with just a little push-off.
Brian Russell, game six at Salt Lake. I was there, front row, press row. A little push off. Then Michael, not from quite the three-point line. He was kind of in between the three-point line and the free throw line. Michael went up and he shot it and he was so convinced that it was good that he held the pose for all to see as the ball ripped cleanly through the nets.
LeBron went up from three and LeBrick. It was a monumental moment for the Lakers, for LeBron's legacy, and he missed. I'm not going to condemn him for it, but he missed a shot that would have changed everything. Lakers would have gone home one-to-one with all the momentum. Do you remember that now, or have you swept that under your magic carpet that's on its way to Paris as we speak? So now,
The last few times we've seen Team Gold, our guys, Team USA, what happened? Well, South Sudan proved way better than a lot of us thought South Sudan would be. I don't know what the point spread was. At one point it was 34 and a half, and then, I don't know, Paul Pierce was trying to tell me it went to 40. I don't know, somewhere between 35 and 40 points. South Sudan's pretty good. South Sudan gave us all we wanted in an exhibition game.
And Germany proved to be, frankly, as advertised. They're pretty good. They're not great, but they're pretty good. Gave us all we wanted. They're legit. But guess what? The king rode to the rescue in both games. LeBron was phenomenal in both games. He was great late playing bully ball in both games because he was playing for keeps. He was playing harder than anyone else out on the floor.
As I tweeted after the Germany game, LeBron James is the king of practice games. I had to watch him come off the floor after the Germany game, captured on video as he walked up the tunnel. I love the competition, he said. Competition. I love the competition. Well, it's a practice game against South Sudan and against Germany that I caution you might not have given much
everything it had to give. Maybe it gave a little less than its best because that's how a lot of the Euro teams, a lot of the teams from all around the world play practice games. They hold back a little just to lull you to sleep. They don't show you their full hand. They save that for group play and the medal round, which starts Sunday against Serbia. LeBron James, king of practice games.
Remember, our opponents upcoming are shrewd operators just like LeBron is. Maybe they're sandbagging. Maybe they're lulling us to sleep because these don't count except for LeBron. The world is raving about LeBron James and they should be because does he ever look and act the part?
In all my years, I have never seen a going on 40 year old basketball player entering year 22 in the NBA. I mean, who who lasts a year 22 anyway? Look this great. LeBron is 39 going on 29. My man Keyshawn on Undisputed reduced that down to he looks 27. I'll give you 27. He does look 27. Sensational shape. Still explosively athletic. Has it all.
Even worked on his shot to the point where it's starting to get fairly trustworthy from three. He's even pulling his hand back quickly, just snapping his hand back, which shows that he's in such a rhythm that he can just fire off any old way because he's got this. Do I trust it in the medal round game? Big three from LeBron for all the marbles? I don't. But the point is, he has made everyone forget that
that he and his Lakers have lost eight of the last nine games, playoff games, to the Denver Nuggets. And in at least six of those games in the fourth quarters, LeBron has sucked. LeBron has left his team not high and dry, low and dry. But he's seizing another great opportunity to pull the wool over the eyes of all you sheep thinkers out there. You...
Alcoholics, LeBron Anonymous in need of LeBron rehab. All of you out there are seeing this LeBron look so sensational in practice games. Now I'm hearing from Paul Pierce and Keyshawn Johnson. LeBron's the best player on the best team. Well, is he really? I'll give you this.
He should be fresh. Remember, their last game, that closeout game five, gentlemen swept by Denver, was April 29th. So once again, LeBron is cherry-picking the perfect opportunity to, quote-unquote, lead the prohibitively favored deepest Team USA ever after he's had, what, close to three months off? That'll work. Cherry-pick away, LeBron. Shrewd operate away.
So now I'm already hearing that LeBron will be the Olympic MVP and it will clinch his GOAT status. And I'm saying, well, let's hold the phone. Let's see what happens in the real games that start Sunday when all those other teams will start taking these games just as seriously as LeBron was playing the practice games. And you watch. If LeBron James suffers any injury,
Epic fail upcoming. Let's say the medal round. Blind witnesses will have his back. I ran out of gas. Come on. Think about it. He's almost 40 years of age. He's entering year 22. What did you expect? Well, you can't have it both ways. I expect to see LeBron James do everything in his considerable power to convince the world that he is the goat in these upcoming Olympic games. I expect him from here on and he may play five more years.
I expect him to seize every cheap, easy opportunity to remake his laughable goat case. LeBron, it will not work. LeBron, I see you.
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This is Tom from New York, New York, who asks, would you rather a Cowboys Super Bowl win, a Sooners National Championship, or LeBron and Bronny win an NBA title together?
Now, I'm not sure, Tom, how Bron and Bronny made it into this sentence, into this question. It seems to me we have two big, juicy apples and one rotten orange. I'll strike rotten. Just one orange, just to be nice. I do love Bronny. I know he struggled in summer league, sometimes offensively and a lot on defense, which did scare me, did concern me.
But I still think if you put Bronny alongside LeBron and AD and Austin Reeves and on and on, I think the better players will make him play better. I think it's just he was born to play with his father. His game complements his father's game. So I root for Bronny, even as it's difficult to root for his father. But for me, at least a Bron and Bronny championship would be tolerable to watch, but
Remember, if LeBron wins another championship after age 40, I would get bombarded by the blind witnesses with an outcry of this clinches his GOAT status. Now, I'm going to say it again. GOAT status is way over for LeBron James. We cannot cancel out the past. We can't wipe the slate clean because it's in indelible ink. There are just too many meltdowns.
Remember 2010 against Boston, games four, five, and six? Remember the first finals for the Heetals, 2011 against the Mavericks? Remember 2014 by Spurs blowing LeBron off the court by a record finals margin? Remember game one of 2018 at Oracle when LeBron had one of the great shooting, distance shooting nights of his life, then turned down the last shot to pass to George Hill, then pouted through overtime as they fell apart?
I'm sorry, it's over. Forget about the goat status. So forget about LeBron and Bronny being part of this question. This for me comes down to my Sooners or my Dallas Cowboys. And just remember this. Try to understand this. Try to grasp the magnitude of what's going on right now in my heart and soul. I was born into the Sooner tradition. It's literally in my blood from my grandfather and my mother.
born into it. Went to my first game, as I said the other day, at age five with my grandfather. I adopted the Dallas Cowboys by accident when I was 10 years of age because I was taken by my uncle to a Cowboy game because I wanted to see my favorite team, at that point, the St. Louis Football Cardinals, and I fell in love with the Cowboy uniforms, and the rest is history. Sooner's blood, Cowboys adopted. So, obviously,
My Cowboys haven't even been to an NFC championship game for going on 30 years after the 95 season. Haven't been to a Super Bowl since Michael Irvin, Troy Emmitt's team won that Super Bowl almost 30 years ago, going on 30. And yet we were down 27 to nothing before halftime of a home playoff game against Green Bay. And nobody paid for it. Nobody. Mike McCarthy's still the coach. Dak's still the quarterback. Same old, same old.
It's just getting harder and harder to love my team. Jerry Jones is making it almost impossible for me to root for my team. So now back to my Sooners. Okay, we've had way more success since that Cowboys Super Bowl than the Cowboys have had because 2000, we won it all under young coach Bob Stoops. Then we lost to Nick Saban's LSU in the championship game and we lost to Pete Carroll, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, national championship game the next year.
And then four out of five years, we at least made the playoffs, the 14 playoffs, and played in the semifinal. Baker lost to Clemson. Baker lost in double overtime to Georgia out here in Pasadena at the Rose Bowl. Then Kyler lost to Alabama. And then Jalen and Lincoln Riley got blown off the field by Joe Burrow and LSU. But still, we were in the national semifinals. So...
All that said, if you want to know the God's truth about me and how I operate, especially after what stinking Lincoln Riley did to my team, he left under the cover of darkness. He gave up the last two years, the last two games of the year when we had a chance to go to the playoffs. If we'd won at Baylor and at Oklahoma State, we had a real chance of going. And Lincoln Riley quit on my team.
my beloved Sooners, because he was already doing a deal with USC. Boy, you know what they say about karma. It's biting stinking Lincoln in the butt right now. Not sure how much longer he'll have his job at USC. And wouldn't it be something if our coach Venables and our new team in the SEC not only made next year's expanded playoffs, but won it all?
with our new quarterback, Jackson Arnold, at the controls, the satisfaction I would feel for that to the bottom of my heart and the depth of my soul would be inexplicable to you. It would be beyond anything I could ever feel as much as I love my Cowboys for the Cowboys. Give me a Sooners National Championship. This is Justin from Los Angeles. When LeBron plays for Team USA, is that the only time you root for him?
Well, yeah, I'll give you that. But now let me give you my one pet peeve about the Olympics. As much as I love my country, still the greatest country in the world, no matter all of our problems, I don't need to watch us dominate the Olympics basketball tournament to prove that we have more basketball superstars than any other country, because as much as the rest of the world has caught up with us,
They don't have the depth of superstars, obviously, that we have on display right now. So could one of our opponents get hot from three in one of the medal games, knock us out? Sure they could. But would that make me want to burn an American flag and move to Canada? Obviously not. I just, it's hard for me, and I've covered a bunch of Olympics, but it's hard for me to accept that there are those out there, those ugly Americans who,
who actually see the Olympic Games as almost a substitute for war, flex our might, show the rest of the world what we're really made of athletically. I don't need that. I'm still going to love my country as much as I always have and always will, even if we lose in the quarterfinals to South Sudan. So I'll root for Team USA.
but not as psycho crazily as I do for my Sooners or my Cowboys. And I will root for LeBron's team, but as far as rooting for LeBron, I'll root for him with gritted teeth. Thank you. Okay, now a quick word about Kaitlyn Clark. And that word is, huh? That's my word. Huh? What? Why? Who is she now?
So obviously, Caitlin Clark came into the WNBA as the greatest scorer in the history of college basketball, men's or women's. And that was in large part because she was clearly the greatest distance shooter we'd ever seen in women's college basketball. I'm talking about jump shooting logo threes. Never seen anything like that.
Easy range, jump shooting, not set shooting feet on the floor, jump shooting, flicking wrist, launching from logo effortlessly and making a good mini. Here was the female Steph Curry. Yet right before your very closed eyes, Caitlin Clark has morphed into the female John Stockton from Steph to Stockton. The other night I was watching Caitlin's postgame performance.
And I heard her and saw her actually say, I sometimes lose sight of the basket. I sometimes lose sight of the basket.
Said the greatest score in the history of college basketball. Think about that. I sometimes lose sight of the basket, said Caitlin Clark, meaning she's now so dedicated to so fixated on passing the basketball that she forgets to shoot the basketball. What? Huh? Yet, as we all know, I don't need to remind you that the weight of an entire league is
It's it's ratings weight has been placed on this young woman's slender shoulders. And at times she clearly has crumbled under that weight. And I don't blame her. So she quickly realized she can be more consistently spectacular, can more consistently live up to her billing, to her expectations as a passer than a shooter.
So right here, right now, as the WNBA has taken its Olympic break, Caitlin Clark leads the entire league. Think about this. Leads the entire league in assists by 41. She has 41 more assists than anybody in the league. I didn't see that coming, which brings me to how she passes the basketball. Caitlin Clark will try just about any pass anywhere at any time.
She will try to thread any needle through three or four defenders to get the ball to Aaliyah Boston to create a viral highlight so that she can better live up to her billing. I've watched Kaitlyn Clark try one bad idea pass after another, one after another, after another, after another, until...
She also, right here, right now, leads the WNBA in turnovers by 58. I want you to let that penetrate your brain. Kaitlyn Clark has 58 more turnovers than any other player in the league in just 26 games. It would be almost hard to do if you were trying to throw the ball to the other team or throw it out of bounds. 58 more than anybody.
It's impossibly bad, and it's obviously impossibly wrong for the Indiana fever, yet nobody talks about it because, obviously, Caitlin Clark is the dark-haired golden child of the WNBA. By far, by far the biggest reason that WNBA ratings have exploded in ways unimaginable.
But yes, understand, Kaitlyn still attempts lots of threes. In fact, the most in the league, she shot eight more threes than anybody else, attempted eight more. And she's certainly running away with the distance of three-point shots attempted because she will still launch the occasional logo three. But she's fallen into, for her, by her college standards, a pretty terrible slump.
from the three-point line. So her last seven regular season games before this break, from three, Kaitlyn went 17 of 65. That's 26%. That's, for her, a slump. But what really shocked and disappointed me was that Kaitlyn Clark declined to participate in the All-Star three-point shootout, which was on the Friday night before the Saturday night game last weekend.
Kaitlyn said she's mentally weary. I get that. She's been playing basketball for sort of one year straight until this break. And she said she hadn't had time to practice taking balls from racks and shooting them against the clock from three. I understand some of that, but you know and I know great shooters just shoot. I just thought she'd be arrogant enough in a great way. Let's just say confident enough to just stroll out there
up against all the veteran three-point shooters, just the way Larry Bird did in his three-point shooting contest days. Just stroll out there and basically say, I got now because she's way better than they are. Or at least I thought she was. And then, of course, she proceeded the following night to go out in the All-Star game itself and go 0 for 7 from 3. Yikes.
So she obviously has lost a good bit of confidence from three. And OK, I get it. But I must admit, I lost a little respect for Caitlin Clark. I thought she was it. Capital I, capital T. And for now, I just think she's really good for the season. So far through 26 games, the female Steph has
is shot 32.7% from three. That ranks 37th among qualified shooters in the league, 37th out of 50 qualified, 32.7%. So now she's more Stockton than Steph. And she is a gifted, once a generation passer. Yet when she was at Iowa,
Her distance shooting, just her scoring period, always transcended her passing, as great as it was. But you know and I know, most people pay to see or shoot, not to pass. So in time, this league will desperately need Kaitlyn Clark to figure out how to shoot that ball from three again, to, so to speak, go back to college and
where she made 38% of her three-point shots.
When it comes to towing, seeing is believing. That's why Chevy Trucks Advanced Camera Technology offers up to eight available cameras for 14 unique views, so you can focus on the view that really matters. Chevrolet, together let's drive. Learn more about Chevy Trucks at Chevy.com. Safety or driver assistance features are no substitute for the driver's responsibility to operate the vehicle in a safe manner. Read the vehicle owner's manual for important feature limitations and information. This is Walter from Falmouth, Mass.,
What is the one question you would ask Jerry Jones if you could? That is easy for me, Walter. Very simply, I would say, Jerry, what do you really think of Dak Prescott? I'm talking about real, deep down, lie detector think of Dak Prescott. And if he would be completely honest with me, I believe Jerry would answer that question with, man, I'm still stuck with him. I believe Jerry would say,
lie detector. Biggest mistake I ever made was caving in and paying Dak the last time. I believe Jerry would tell me, by God, I don't want to throw good money after bad and do it again with Dak. But I believe Jerry would also add, I'm sorry, I'm just afraid to trade him. I'm afraid to let him walk because I'm not sure how to replace him. That's what I believe Jerry believes deep down, heart and soul.
It still feels, maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part, it still feels like maybe Jerry is edging toward tanking for Shadur, as in Sanders, as in maybe Dion follows Sun to Dallas. All I know is through the offseason, through the draft, we've gotten worse. Well, the Eagles got way better. The Commanders got a lot better. And the Giants got a little better.
And that scares the unholy hell out of me. So Jerry, I know you're 81 years of age. I know you talk occasionally about your mortality. You face up to it. You know you're not going to live forever. You'd give anything for that one more Super Bowl to go with the three that you won in the 90s that should have been five. Don't get me started. But Jerry, don't be afraid to do what you always did in the oil fields.
Do what you did that got you the money to buy the Dallas Cowboys. You plunged. You had a high tolerance for, as you say, ambiguity, high risk, high reward. Plunge, plunge, plunge. Get rid of Dak. Trade him. Let him walk. However you have to do it. Give Trey Lance a shot. See what you got. You might have something pretty special. But you know and I know, Jerry,
Dak will take you only so far. You know it, only so far. And so far isn't even close to a Super Bowl. Jerry, you're owning and operating the Dallas Cowboys. You have turned them into mediocre, you know what? This is Suri from Dallas. What was the last Cowboy game you attended? Okay, Suri, understand I've been doing national television shows
Monday through Friday since September 6th of 2004. So I'm going on 20 years, almost there. I don't want a gold watch for this. But what I'm here to tell you is that if you do what I do on national TV, our show is not just Cowboys, even though we do a lot of Cowboys, but I have to watch every game I can watch every Sunday and obviously Monday night, now Thursday night.
I have to watch a broad spectrum of games. And if I travel to the Dallas game, I get locked into the Dallas game. And if you don't watch, you will get exposed on live national TV in the debate format that we deploy on Undisputed. You will get exposed, you will get embarrassed, and ultimately you will get humiliated. And I can't live that way.
So I'm extremely content watching my Cowboys on television because football was meant to be watched on television. I'll never forget the late, great Tech Schramm, the original genius, the founder, general manager and president of the Dallas Cowboys back in the 60s. I got to know him in the late 70s through the 80s, 90s. Tech Schramm told me, maybe the first time I ever sat down with him,
Our game was meant to be watched on television. Tech Schramm even went so far as to say he envisioned a day when the National Football League would play its games in a closed studio with no fans, with billions watching just on television. Could get the cameras maybe even closer to the field so that they wouldn't necessarily obscure the vision of fans watching the game in a stadium.
I love to watch my Cowboys on television. I see more. I feel more. I know what it's like to go to games because I started going to Dallas Cowboy games in October of 1978, and I did not miss one. I went to every one of them, home and road, all the way through the playoff loss at Carolina.
following the 1996 season. So it would have been early 97. That's a long time. That's almost 20 years of going to every Cowboy game. So I know what that feels like. And I still prefer watching them on television. As far as the last game I actually attended, it would have been a game I covered not working in Dallas, covering the 49ers at that point. It would have been
December 8th of 2002, it was Terrell Owens, 49ers, at what was left of the Dallas Cowboys, featuring Chad Hutchinson at quarterback. I got to know T.O. in those days with the 49ers. Teammates did not like him, but I defended him. I apologized for him. That day at Dallas, he caught 12 balls for 123 yards, obviously revisiting the scene of his crime when
Two years earlier, he had celebrated on the star, knocked off the star by George Teague, if you remember. That was September 24th of 2000. But that was the last time I was there for a football game at the old Texas Stadium. And honestly, I don't miss it. Quick word on Russell Westbrook.
So the other day, Russ agreed to give up two point seven million of the four million he was owed for next year on his opt in so that he could be bought off, excuse me, bought out and he could hit the market as a free agent reportedly bound for his 16. This time, Denver Nuggets. OK. All right. Reportedly, Joker has campaigned privately. Let's go get Russ.
They lost Reggie Jackson. Let's go get Russ. Paul Pierce even making the case to me now on Undisputed, they should start Russ. Start Russ? Seriously? His knees are pretty shot. He has to put ice on his knees. You see him on the bench. I've heard from Clippers insiders, knees are pretty shot. But wait a second. The Clippers did move on from Russ after he'd had such a productive year last year as what, their seventh man coming off the bench under Ty Lue?
They did because like every other team that Russ has played for, they just decided they could do better that he was more trouble than he's worth. So this is what astounds me, always blindsides me on national TV about Russ. Every time he comes up on Undisputed and I hear an ex-NBA player, ex-NFL player,
speak in awe of him, in awe, all of them. This goes back for years, back to my ESPN days. Everybody who speaks about Russ speaks in awe of him. They all but worship Russell Westbrook because he got that dog in him. He plays so hard. He is so athletically explosive. And I just, I'm being honest here, from my heart, I don't get it. Russell Westbrook
It's going to be a slam dunk first ballot Hall of Famer simply because he did something I sure didn't see coming. I would have bet against. He averaged a triple-double four out of five years. Averaged a triple-double. Oscar did it back in 1963, and I thought I'd never see it happen again. And Russ did it, and he did it, and he did it, and he did it again. All for teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs.
To me, if you boil Russ down, in the end, he's a solo act of a stat machine who always proves to be more trouble than he's worth. Russ plays extremely hard for Russ. Sometimes that can help a team, sometimes not. Four times, Russell Westbrook has led the league in turnovers. Think about that.
Russell Westbrook has the worst hands of any point guard I have ever closely watched in pro or college basketball. Never seen a point guard with such bad hands. Just loses the handle left and right. So much so that when he was with the Lakers, often on Undisputed, we put together low light tapes with clown music underneath them.
of his impossibly bad turnovers that would get kids pulled from church league games. Even worse, Russell Westbrook has consistently finished at or near the bottom of the entire league in three-point shooting year after year after year. Hence the nickname Westbrook. High turnovers, poor three-point shooting, lethal combination, not a winning combination.
So Kevin Durant finally concluded, I can't win a championship with Russell Westbrook as my primary decision maker. Then Paul George left Oklahoma City and said, no, no more Russell Westbrook. And James Harden tried Russ and said, no, I'm out. And LeBron and AD couldn't wait to convince Laker brass to go get Russ. And they could not wait to get rid of him.
After they saw what he really was up close and personal. And now even Ty Lue, the great Ty Lue has said, no, that's enough. Russell Westbrook would not be in my hall of fame. I don't have a vote, but he wouldn't be in mine. Russ plays hard for Russ. So many X star athletes are so blinded by the lights, by the highlights of Russell Westbrook. And maybe that's going to include Nikola Jokic, who
now reportedly is campaigning for us. Joker, be careful what you wish for. This is Vance from Hartford, Connecticut, one of my favorite cities. Spent a lot of time there while at ESPN. Would visiting the Mountain Dew headquarters be your version of visiting Willy Wonka's factory, asks Vance. It's a great question. Vance made me smile, then it made me laugh.
I guess maybe, Vance, you can envision me at the Mountain Dew headquarters, losing my mind, gulping way too much Diet Dew, turning into a giant lemon or a giant lime and exploding the way Violet Beauregard did Willy Wonka. But no, I wouldn't go that far. It's not like Diet Dew to me is some rare magical candy, like it's
some everlasting gobstopper. I just like the taste and the kick of Diet Dew, period, end of story. But I will say this, I loved your question because I do love the Willy Wonka story. One of my favorites, and of all the Willy Wonka movies, The Depth, The Chalamet,
The 1971 Gene Wilder is by far the best. If you've seen the more recent ones, I dare you to go watch it and tell me I'm wrong. Gene Wilder was Wonka. And I loved everybody who played Augustus Gloop and Veronica Salt and Violet and Mike TV. I loved the Oompa Loompas the most in the 71 version. I just loved the story because it's such a wildly creative story.
with such profound morals and lessons dear to my heart, as is diet do. But Vance, I just have one diet do a day because it is the breakfast of champions. It is the nectar of the gods, and it is my only vice. I spoke at the end of last week's show about Bev Humphreys, the wife of my best, longest friend, Craig Humphreys.
radio legend in Oklahoma City, childhood friend of mine. I told you about Bev Humphries, a very close friend of my wife Ernestine's. I told you how Bev was dying of breast cancer, which had marched up into her brain. Doctors had given her two weeks, and those two final weeks were too awful for me to describe.
And I know all the gory details and they were gory beyond description. What that woman went through really for a final six months was agonizing for me and my wife. Neither of us cry a lot. We're not criers. Trust me. We have both cried lately more than we ever have combined in our entire lives. Cried and cried and cried some more uncontrollably.
Because we were so horrified over what Bev was having to go through, having to endure inhuman torturous. As we checked in and we checked in and we checked in and we waited and waited for that dreaded phone call from Craig. That call came on Monday night. As soon as I saw it pop up in the caller ID, I knew Bev had lost her motor skills and
She'd lost her speech, but to the very bitter end, she could still hear her son, Sam, and her three stepdaughters were sitting by her bedside. One of the girls told some story to Sam that made him laugh, just for a second, made him laugh. And at that very moment, Bev Humphreys stopped breathing. I believe all she needed was to hear her son laugh once more.
I will be there for her funeral on Saturday. I will be honored to speak at her funeral. I was honored to know and to love Bev Humphreys, who fought longer and harder than any human I have ever known. I love you, Bev.
That's it for episode 122. 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, 930 to noon Eastern, the Skip Bayless Show, every week.