First Take
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is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 72. As always, this is the Un-Undisputed, everything I cannot share with you during Undisputed, which will return with Nuclear Force on August 28th. On today's show, I will tell you what, to me anyway, are several astonishing stories about my early days in television and how close we came

to there being no first take, which would have meant there would be no undisputed, which will return on August 28th. Today, I will tell you what I was in awe about and what I was scared about as I watched Victor Wimbanyama's two-game NBA debut in the Summer League. Today,

I will review Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and I will admit to you in detail why I'm just a sucker for these summer blockbusters. I'm there. And as always, I will answer several of your provocative questions, including one about would Michael Jordan have been good at debating? No. I'll answer that in just a moment. First up, as always, it is not to be skipped.

Did an interview over the weekend with The Athletic for a story about the early days of First Take, a story that's now out on, as they say, the newsstands. You can call it up and read it if you so choose. I was blessed to be a pretty important part of the rise of that show and of the TV debate genre in general. I was in the eye of those storms.

I bring this up now because the writer who interviewed me over the weekend, Steven J. Nesbitt, asked me a lot of good questions. Asked me one great question near the end of our interview time. Steven Nesbitt asked me, "What if First Take hadn't taken off in 2011 when we turned it from cold pizza into a two-hour all-debate show? What if it hadn't gone anywhere? What if it had failed?" The answer is, I don't know. What if?

We all have a lot of what ifs. All I can tell you is I have been blessed again and again and again. I've had some dark days and nights. I've had a lot of very early mornings, as you know, out here in L.A. And likewise, three hours east of here in all my days in Bristol, Connecticut at ESPN. I've had early mornings. I've had long days. I've had sleepless nights. I've hit a lot of forks in the road, any one of which you could have stuck in me.

if things had gone just a little bit differently. So I'm going to tell you two or three of these stories, just to show you how astonishing it was that I'm sitting here right now. Stories that I don't think made it into the athletic piece that you can read if you so choose. But allow me to start from the start. This was July of 2006.

I'm sorry, I'm backwards on that. Let me reconstruct that. This would be July of 2004. Sorry about that. Again, this is a long time ago. So if I do my math correctly now, we're up to 19 years. We're going on 20 years ago. I was on my annual golf trip to Oklahoma City. I've talked about it before on the podcast. Every summer since I went away to college at Vanderbilt,

I go home to play with my, I call them my high school friends, they're really my grade school friends, play golf, Lincoln Park, Lincoln East, Lincoln West. I'm going next week, as a matter of fact. And on this trip back in 2004, we're getting ready to go out to play Lincoln East.

And I'm, as usual, upstairs in my friend Craig Humphrey's exercise room on his treadmill, flipping around trying to get something that I like on television to get me through my one-hour treadmill. Down a flight of stairs in the kitchen below me, Craig and several of my other friends are all having breakfast. They can hear me if I yell down the stairway,

to the kitchen and I'm flipping around and I land on a show called Cold Pizza that I'd never watched before. I'd heard of it, but I hadn't watched it. It's a couple of days after Wimbledon, they're gonna have Maria Sharapova on. And I must tell you, I thought it was so bad because it was so different than anything I'd ever seen in sports television that I yelled down the stairs and I said, "Hey, you guys, turn on ESPN2 right now. Check out this show called Cold Pizza." It's so bad, it's embarrassing.

That's what I yelled down the stairs. That's pretty much quote unquote. Would you believe that a month later, I was hired to be on that show, the show that I ripped? I was hired to be on it by one Mark Shapiro, then running ESPN, who called me and said, "Hey, I need you to come to New York and try to help save my baby." My morning show that we've created, I think it had been up and running for six or eight months at that point.

Mark told me that it hadn't registered yet in the ratings, that it hadn't been able to do above zeros. I don't know if that's true, but that's what he told me. Mark Shapiro told me the first time we spoke on the phone that I don't know if cold pizza will last another week, another month, or 10 years. And the truth is, cold pizza is still going now, and you could...

maybe stretch, but you could call it either first take or undisputed because they're both still the roots of cold pizza. So I plunged. I'd already always wanted to do a daily morning show or some sort of daily TV show, see if I had the chops for it. And I pulled up steaks and moved to New York. And we tried to add a debate component to the show because Mark knew that was my forte, that was my strength.

That's what I had done on Jim Rome shows, on pre-Monday Night Football shows, Monday Night Countdown on ESPN, led by the great Mike Tirico, worked with Sterling Sharp, worked with Joe Theismann, worked with Phil Sims. And in debate format, I worked with Michael Wilbon and Mitch Albom on what we called Nights of the Roundtable. Mark knew all this and knew

That's who I was and what I did. Woody Page had already been hired on Cold Pizza. Woody has a little more entertainer in him than I probably do. He can play the morning clown a little better than I can, so he was going to be the lighter half of the duo.

But we wanted to debate sports, which Mark thought had worked before on the network and might help save cold pizza. A story that was a show that was built more around the GMA model, loosely based on sports with a little bit of sports in it. So the day before we launched on September 6th of 2004,

We had one dry run, one very brief rehearsal of one dummied up sports topic. Me versus Woody with Jay Crawford moderating. I don't remember what the topic was because it was completely forgettable. And I'm not big on rehearsals, so I played half speed. I went about 50% of the force I try to bring every day on Undisputed.

I thought they just needed to see if the graphics worked, see if everything fired on time. I wasn't really thinking about debating. I was just trying to help them get through one dry run to make sure all the equipment functioned on time correctly. We got halfway through our four or five minute debate. We probably did two or three minutes. And our showrunner named Brian Donlan, who ultimately became a good friend of mine, a man who had done nothing but morning television shows,

in New York City, general interest shows, not sports shows. Brian Donlan was in the control room. We were at the old New Yorker Hotel in the basement where our studio was, 34th and 8th in Manhattan. Brian Donlan came literally running out of the control room onto the floor where our set was, and Brian Donlan screamed at me, "Pardon my language."

"You are way too fucking hot for morning television," said Brian Donlan to me in front of Woody and Jay and obviously the crew listening in the control room. He didn't mean it as a personal attack. He just meant that my style, in his eyes, wouldn't work on what he knew worked on morning television. I was too passionate. I was too emotional. I was too loud. I was too excited. I was too me.

And I sat back, shocked by his reaction, because I was playing half speed. And I said, with all due respect, Brian, I barely knew him. I said, given the ratings you've had so far for this show, maybe this is exactly what you do need on cold pizza. Was it ever. So my point to you is, what if my confidence had been rocked by that? It could have been. I was a fish out of water. I was overwhelmed. I'm in New York City on a show.

that's struggling, if not failing. And when in Rome, I'm trying to do what the Romans do. What if I had tried to conform to general interest morning TV standards? What if I dialed it way back? What if in 2007, three years later, what if cold pizza had been canceled just the way every other New York-based ESPN show was canceled? All of them, plugs pulled, plugs pulled, plugs pulled, except for

Cold Pizza, but because we had started to tick up slowly but surely in the ratings, I thought because of the debate segments that we added, Cold Pizza was the only show that got saved and moved up to the mothership in Bristol, Connecticut. What if the plug had been pulled? It easily could have been. We weren't rating that great, but no, they gave us all the chance. Do you want to move to Bristol? Well, yeah, I might as well. What if...

that plug had been pulled like all the other plugs were pulled. There would have been no first take. There'd been no undisputed. There'd been no me. What if when Woody Page, after two years with me, returned to Denver, where he's a legendary columnist, as you know, I think I just wore Woody out. I'm relentless. I admit it. I'm sorry. Forgive me, but it's just who I am. But what if we hadn't adopted

sort of a skip versus the world format over our final year in New York City in 2007. We went out and found Chris Broussard. We went out and found Rob Parker. We went out and found Jemele Hill. We went out and found Michael Smith. We went out and found the two live stews. Galen Gordon had a lot to do with that as our producer of the show at that point. I pushed to bring all these people to New York on a rotating basis, each would get a week.

And we began to click with this new rotation of quote unquote skip versus the world. So what if none of this had worked? What if we hadn't been moved up to Bristol? And what if we hadn't toiled in obscurity? Remember, it was a long time from we moved in May of 2007 until we took off in 2011, as you can read in the athletic story.

It felt like we did toil in relative obscurity over that sort of three-ish year period, but our ratings continued to tick up. And there was a crucial meeting in, I'm going to guess, 2010-ish in Bristol. Our showrunners of what was still Cold Pizza, it was rebranded as First Take, but we were still doing all the same segments. We'd do our pet segments. We'd do

ballpark food segments, we do cigar segments, we do non-sports-ish sort of segments because that's who we were and that was our identity from the start. But we continued to do what was called first in 10, which is four downs of four debate segments, which frankly over those three years shrank a little bit because the producers of the show didn't love them. Nobody in Bristol seemed to love them.

So we toiled in obscurity. Very easily, we could have been canceled at any moment, but somehow we weren't. Then came a fateful staff meeting in which we had a ratings guru come up from New York named Barry Blinn. Loved him. Always put on a great show as he explained to you as he broke down why your show was working or not working. Barry didn't really know cold pizza. He didn't really watch it or get it. He just knew what the numbers said. So he took our cumulative ratings for the previous year

And with the whole staff assembled, he put them up on a big screen so that he could show what happened cumulatively over time. Guess what happened? Every show, there was a spike four times. Big spike. I'll celebrate with a quick drink of dew. In said meeting, I was sitting in the very back with my guy Rob Parker, and Barry Blinn says to the whole group, most of them called pizza-ites,

Folks, you need to go back and study your rundowns for the past year and figure out which segments you're doing are causing these spikes. Are they interviews? Are they pet segments? Are they what segments? You need to get your heads together and figure it out and just do more of that because you're having some remarkable spikes four times a show.

Rob Parker in the back, then a Detroit columnist, he's elbowing me saying, "Say something, speak up." I said, "I can't do it in front of these people." Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say, and I don't blame them. So I began to talk to our showrunner at the time named David Brofsky, another good friend of mine, about why I believed that those spikes were tied to first and ten, to downs, first, second, third, and fourth down.

David didn't disagree with me, but he wasn't sure about it. But he did agree that we should have a big discussion about expanding the debate segments in yet another big staff meeting. This one was about to change my life. So we meet in our same conference room we met in every morning, except this was in the afternoon. Everybody was there, including Jay Crawford, Dana Jacobson, our very talented talent who basically ran the show and

Alternate and moderating first and ten refereeing first and ten which was still sort of skip versus the world in our our same rotation and as I walked into the room David Brofsky our showrunner waved me up to the front He said I reserved a seat right here beside me at the front I said, okay and David opened the show and said and I quote Skip has something he'd like to say

And I looked sideways at David like, "What?" I said, "I thought you were going to run the meeting." "No, no, this is your baby. You tell them what you've told me about expanding our debate segments." Well, this was painfully awkward for me. I was telling a group of people the very last thing they wanted to hear.

that I wanted to cut some of their parts of the show and add on to my parts of the show because I thought it was valuable to the show. Nobody wanted to hear that. I must have rambled with my pathetic plea for 15-ish minutes off the top of my head, not prepared for this. I'm speaking to Jay and Dana about cutting their time. It wasn't going well. It obviously was very poorly received.

Yet at the very far end of the table sat a woman I did not know named Marsha Keegan. She had just been appointed to oversee four different ESPN shows. First take, Mike and Mike, Numbers Never Lie, Sports Nation. Very new to the job. She was all ears on what I had to say about the rating spikes and how I thought...

"First and 10 should get a little more air time." She stood up as I ended and she said, "Hey, I've got to run to another meeting I'm late for." But, and she looked all the way down the table at me. She said, "Skip, when you're finished with this meeting, could you please see me in my office?" What? Didn't know Marcia, never spoken to Marcia. And yet I did sit down with her in her office. And I went back over every point I made.

She knew what the ratings said. Marsha was a lawyer by trade with an HR background. She didn't pretend to have any more than a working knowledge of sports, but she certainly knew people and she knew TV ratings and she had a very good sense of what worked and what did not. She told me she liked every point that I made. Marsha Keegan paved the way for all of this. Marsha Keegan made possible

what Jamie Horowitz and Charlie Dixon soon were able to do with First Take, which has turned it into full two hours of debate. Now watch what Charlie Dixon is about to do with Undisputed, August 28th. We did go all debate. I had two producers, cold pizza refugees, if you will, stop me in the hall and tell me

This was the biggest mistake anybody has ever made at ESPN. This will not work. You will fall on your faces. What if Marsha Keegan's other meeting had forced her to miss our meeting? Seriously, think about this. What if, for whatever reason, Marsha had missed our meeting? What would have happened? I don't know what would have happened. At that point, for me, First Take was becoming a dead end.

Would I have soon just given up and gone back into writing newspaper columns and magazine articles and books? Maybe. Very possibly. I didn't make much money, not by TV standards at that point. There was nothing really to hang on to. I was with my wife Ernestine. We weren't married yet, but she had a great job in New York and I had to live in Bristol the whole week and just see her on Friday and Saturday.

It was hard on us. I had to live at the Residence Inn in Bristol, Connecticut. I had a 365-day room. It wasn't all that fun, but I kept hanging in and hanging on. And if I hadn't, there'd be no Undisputed. And by the way, on August 28th, we enter our eighth NFL season right here on FS1. Our eighth. Can you believe that? Thank you, Marcia Keegan, for that. Without you, none of this would have happened. Man, have I ever been blessed.

Was I so blessed to eventually have Stephen A. Smith as my permanent partner on First Take? I was so blessed here in L.A. to have Shannon Sharp as my partner on Undisputed for seven great years, nearly seven. What if, what if? So I've thought the last couple of days about all those forks in the road that we all think about. What if you had gone here instead of here? And I'll leave you

quickly with my biggest what-if story of my life that I still think about to this day. This happened my senior year of high school. I had a journalism teacher named Liz Burdette who believed in me far more than I ever believed in myself. She pushed me so hard to write sports columns instead of play sports. She knew how much my baseball and my basketball meant to me, but she said, "No, your gift is your writing."

She entered me in a very prestigious scholarship competition for sports writing. It's called the Grantland Rice Scholarship, given annually at Vanderbilt University. It's a full ride. In those days, it was a full ride. It was $25,000, which covered everything, room, board, books, tuition. Nobody from west of the Mississippi had ever won the Grantland Rice. I didn't even know where Vanderbilt was. I didn't have any idea who Grantland Rice was at the time. First great syndicated sports columnist in this country.

All my friends going to the University of Oklahoma. I was dating a woman who became my first wife. She was a year behind me. She was a junior. She was, I'm pretty sure, going to the University of Oklahoma like me. She eventually came to Vanderbilt with me. But the point was, Liz Burdett stressed to me that, hey,

In order to qualify for the scholarship competition, you have to first get accepted to Vanderbilt. No small task for a public school kid from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And she said, you have to take the SAT test. I didn't know anything about it. I never studied for it the way kids have done. I think it's gone away now thanks to COVID. But last 20 odd years, it seems like kids prepped harder for the SATs than they did for their schoolwork. I didn't do any of that.

All I knew is it was a one-shot deal in Oklahoma City. The morning of December 6th, a Saturday at 9 a.m. across town from me at McGinnis High School, not my high school, was conducted the one SAT test that you could take to go out of state, obviously, to a school like Vanderbilt. And for the first and last time in my life, that morning of December 6th,

My senior year of high school, I overslept. I forgot to turn my alarm on. As God is my witness, I woke up at 8:45. It's a good 20 odd minute drive to McGinnis from my house. I threw my clothes on. I tore across town. Lucky to be alive as fast as I drove. I had already scoped out where the classroom was at McGinnis, so I pulled right up close to it and ran in the door.

The nun presiding scolded me with her eyes and shook her head at me, but she handed me that booklet and she handed me that pencil. And I went to the back of that classroom with all those private school kids feverishly working away at their SAT, and I sat down and I went into hyper focus. I did pretty well on the SAT. I got accepted to Vanderbilt. I won the scholarship.

It freed me from my broken home life. It got me out of there. It launched me. What if I'd slept for five more minutes, 10 more minutes? Would it have changed my life? Very possibly. I might not be sitting here if I'd slept for 10 more minutes. At some point, the nun was going to shake her head at me and say, no, I can't do this. You're too late. But she gave me a break. I have been so blessed. Thank you, God.

Let's take one of your questions, shall we? This is Kevin from Miami, Florida, who asks, "Why in the world are you so confident the Cowboys are making the NFC Championship game? It's your prediction every year!" Number one, Kevin from Miami. "I'm so confident because as a lifelong die-hard Dallas Cowboy fan, our lifeblood is delusional overconfidence. I can't help it. Give me a break." Yet number two,

I do not predict every year that the Cowboys are making the NFC championship game. Although I do almost every year say they're going to win the NFC East because I don't think that's that big a deal and I don't think it will be this year. I just think they're better than the Eagles and they will win the East and they will get to the NFC championship game. Number three, this time I do actually objectively believe because my Cowboys did win the offseason.

I mean, they stole Brandon Cooks. They stole Stephon Gilmore in trades. They stole both of them. Magic pieces to the puzzle. They drafted Amazi Smith. He's exactly what they needed as the anchor of their defensive line. They re-signed Donovan Wilson late in Vander Esch on what will be the best defense in the National Football League.

And number four, I think I'm being painfully objective. I'm picking them to lose a third straight playoff game to the San Francisco bleeping 49ers. And by the way, I assume, Kevin from Miami, that you're a Dolphins fan. I don't know that for a fact, but I'm going to assume it for the sake of this argument. So I will admit, we're stuck with Dak. But even worse, Kevin from Miami, you're stuck with Tua.

I guarantee you my Cowboys will go deeper into the playoffs than your Dolphins will go. And by the way, number five, we, as in Dallas Cowboys, won our first Super Bowl courtesy of your Miami Dolphins. That came on January 16th of 1972. Thank you very much. So there.

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I'll admit to you, another quick shot of this. I was surprised by all the buzz detonated.

by Victor Wimbonyama's summer league debut and then by the hype generated even for Sunday evening's second game that he played. Scary lousy in game one, as you probably know, nine points, two of 13 from the floor, one of six from three, but he did have five blocks, okay?

Showed some huge, literally huge potential in game two with 27 points and 12 boards and three blocks. Nine of 14 from the floor. Made a couple of threes and four attempts and made seven of 12 free throws. Not bad. But Wimby's debut attention actually rivaled LeBron's. Remember, he opened regular season game at Sacramento. That was the first one that we all fixated on. And I got to tell you, it offended me because...

Wimby's not in LeBron's league. Here I am, a LeBron quote-unquote critic. I like a lot of things about LeBron, but I tell the truth about him. But here I am, the critic of LeBron and a longtime Spurs fan, and I was offended by any comparisons to LeBron's debut. And I was even offended that Wimby's debut easily...

Eclipse Zions. I remain a Zion fan. I know all the negatives off the floor, off the court, on the court, weight, injuries. I got it all. Does he care enough? I don't know. I just know when he's right, he is really right. He is a wrecking ball of an offensive player, the likes of which I've never seen. Talking about Zion. Just in pure offensive impact, there is no way that at 19, Wimby is going to have

I'm talking about pure offensive impact that LeBron had when he was 18 or Zion had when he was 19. So to me, the reaction to Wimby has been this runaway internet overreaction. I know LeBron himself didn't help matters because he called Wimby an alien at, what is he, seven, three and a half? Called him an alien, so that helped detonate. But am I seeing the next Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? No, I am not.

Okay, I know that Kareem actually was in the front row for Wimby's debut in Las Vegas, the Game 1 debut. That didn't help calm the hype. But I'm not seeing alien here, LeBron. I'm sorry. I'm just not seeing it. I'm not seeing the next dominant superstar. Hope I'm wrong about that, but I'm just telling you the truth of what I saw in a very small sample size. And yes, I am risking overreacting to two summer league games against a lot of guys that

who will not be playing in the NBA come regular season. Okay, so what did I love about the early glimpses of Wimby? Well, obviously, I love his sheer height and length. When you combine it with the skill that he already has, he's going to be very good just on sheer presence alone. He's going to be an immediate factor just because he's a thing. He's 7'3 1⁄2".

With a lot of early skill, he has been very well taught. Just in defensive presence alone, he can just stand in the lane and bother shots, if not block shots. So I give you that. But I'm not seeing the kind of quick jumper that Chet Holmgren already is. If you've watched Chet Holmgren at Gonzaga, or even as we saw a glimpse of him in the Summer League last year before he got hurt, quick jumper, springy.

great timing on his blocked shots, and really has joy in blocking shots that I don't see yet in Wimby. But I do love the fact Wimby is already so skilled with his left hand, LeBron ambidextrous, because he's naturally born left-handed, so he's ambidextrous as he drives the basketball at the rim, which is why he's the greatest driver of the basketball I've ever seen at 6'9", 260 or 70 pounds. Now, what did I just like about Wimby? Well,

I do like his shooting mechanics. Again, very well taught, very well coached. On longer outside the lane shots, he's got a perfect shooting motion with a ridiculous rainbow arc to every shot. Gives you a shot, gives you a chance. Gives you a chance to ultimately turn into a lethally decent three-point shooter at 7'3 1⁄2".

Maybe a three-point shooter that could rival LeBron's career 34%. By the way, does anybody remember that LeBron, after he passed Kareem, is to become the greatest all-time scorer in the history of the NBA? That in the playoffs, LeBron set the all-time playoff record for consecutive missed three-point shots, 20 in a row that he missed? But I digress. Now for what I did not love in my first two glimpses of Wimby.

He has no obvious athletic explosiveness. I know, he's enormously tall. But I don't even see any great hand quickness that you see in a Jokic or a Luka. They just have great hand quickness. Everything with Wimby is in slower motion. Yet his approach to basketball, just his body language on the floor, suggests to me that there's a little man trapped inside this towering human that is Wimby.

he loves to dribble the ball up the court himself. He loves to high dribble because he's seven three and a half, high dribble into the lane, which of course left him often empty handed in the lane after the ball got knocked loose or stolen. But this kid seems to love shooting threes even more than he loves dunking on smaller opponents. This kid

seems to love blocking shots on the perimeter even more than he loves blocking them at the rim. I realize it's just 19, but I don't know that I'm sensing any real killer will in him, that will to dominate with his height and his length, to just destroy in the paint and at the rim. Kareem had that early on. If you saw any of Kareem at Power Memorial High School in New York, if you saw him

Freshman couldn't play at UCLA, but if you saw him on the freshman team or then what happened thereafter, he had killer will. Obviously, the early years in Milwaukee, you could just see it. He and Oscar won a championship together. Kareem at 7'2". His body language was just, I'm better than anybody on this basketball court. Every time he stepped on it, he thought he was better because he just was. Wilt Chamberlain, I don't know if any of you out there got to see, maybe you see the old clips.

Seven feet, one inches tall. They call him the Big Dipper, but you could just see him at Kansas. I'm old enough to have seen him play in college at Kansas. Got to the final against North Carolina. Did lose, but saw him early on in Philadelphia. Wilt just embraced the fact that he was the Big Dipper at 7'1", and that he was just so much more physically powerful than anybody who attempted to guard him.

Now, Bill Russell at only 6'9" had Wilt's number because the great, now late, Bill Russell could outsmart and out-tough and out-hustle and just out-intangible Wilt. But just look at Wilt's numbers. I mean, in his third year in the league, he averaged 50 points and 26 rebounds. I know there were more possessions back in the day, but he was a Goliath who wasn't going to let a bunch of little Davids slam with any slingshots.

Remember, in the summer league opener this year, Wimby got dumped on by a 6'10 guy named Kai Jones. I was shocked by that. He got posterized. I was horrified by that as a Spurs fan. Again, maybe I'm overreacting, but I just wonder about Victor's intangibles. Not sure about them. Will he prove to have the edge?

that the monster did that was created by Victor Frankenstein? Will he have that kind of edge to him ultimately? Will he develop a physicality that LeBron clearly had at 18, Zion at 19? Or even the subtle physicality that the great Tim Duncan had coming out awake at age 22. Called him the big fundamental, Shaq called him that, because he played with such forceful finesse

Trust me, Tim Duncan was a quiet force, but he was a physical force. And by the way, speaking of Tim Duncan, did Tim ever have anything happen to him off the floor that you can remember? Nope. Wimby had the incident with Britney Spears. I don't know what happened. It was just weirdness. But is that going to be his...

M.O., his history in the league, that weird things happen off the court to him. He's got bodyguards. I don't think Tim ever had a bodyguard. I could be wrong, but nothing like Britney Spears saying, sir, sir, ever happened to Tim Duncan. No big deal. I just bring it up because it became a big deal. Maybe Wimby does develop that unstoppable, unquenchable sort of thirst and desire to dominate, win championships, multiple championships. Maybe that'll slowly emerge.

Over the years maybe Greg Popovich can coach or maybe coax those qualities out of Wimby, but I've made it clear I've never been a big pop fan It's just too much of a media bully for my taste too much of a Belichick who is mostly a product of Brady just the way pops greatness was made to me by Tim Duncan's leadership and dominance didn't pop

Say once upon a time, and by the way, Pop also got courtesy of R.C. Buford. He had Manu Ginobili's clutch toughness. He had Tony Parker's extreme quickness. One year, Tony Parker led the NBA in points in the paint because he could get to the rim so quick at six feet tall, 6'1", maybe.

And of course, in the end, he had Kawhi's two-way greatness. But remember, it was Greg Popovich who said repeatedly, and I quote him, when Timmy walks out that door, I'll be right behind him. Timmy walked out that door seven years ago. And since Pop did alienate Kawhi and Kawhi forced the trade to Toronto, does Pop look like the greatest coach in NBA history? No, he has not.

But now that the Spurs hit the lottery, the Peter Holt family still in charge of the Spurs, the ones who elevated Pop from the beginning in 1996 from GM to coach, they have extended his deal with a five-year, $80 million contract. So they're reaching into the future by reaching back into their past, hopefully to recapture the dynastic black and silver glory years.

I don't have any problem with Pop's age at 74. That's no problem at all. But is he really the right guy to nurture Victor? I am shaky about this. Pop has a huge ego. Pop is the face of that franchise. He is the biggest star in San Antonio. At least he was until Wimby walked in the door and then walked in the Las Vegas door in the Summer League. Pop will want to impose his will on Wimby.

And again, I'm not sure how much will that Wimby has to impose on the NBA. Papa want to tear the kid down so he can take credit for building him up. And I'll say it again. I just hope Pop doesn't permanently alienate Wimby the way he did Kawhi. This will bear watching closely. By the way, I found it fascinating.

that suddenly Pop is making more money than Wimby will in his first, whatever, his rookie contract last two or three years. Wimby's deal calls for him to make 12 this coming basketball season, then 13, then 13.3, finishing with 17. Deal will probably be renegotiated, obviously, by then. So Wimby, in just his first three years, is going to average $13 million a year. Pop makes $16 million a year. Uh-huh.

I believe it was vitally important to Pop for Wimby to know that he does not make more money than Pop makes. Will Wimby ultimately put Pop back on the map and then turn back into genius Pop again? I sure hope so for the sake of Spurs fans, but in two measly summer league games, I just didn't see it. Not yet.

School is back, and Dick's Sporting Goods has what you need to win your year. We've got everything from cleats to sambas, dunks, and more. Plus, the hottest looks from Nike, Jordan, and Adidas. Find your first day fits in-store or online at dicks.com. Question from you. This is from Brent from Las Vegas. Do you think Michael Jordan would be good at debating? It's a great question. I believe Michael Jordan would be a terrible debater because, number one, he'd be like,

You're challenging my opinion? And number two, if Mike did allow you to challenge his opinion, he very possibly would lose said sports debate because he played basketball far better than he was able to demonstrate knowing basketball as in team building, as in knowing who can play and who cannot play. Obviously, the greatest player ever in any sport, in my opinion,

proved to be the worst GM and team builder in the history of the NBA. And I don't think it's even close. Huge part of sports debates is the ability to predict who can play and who can't, who can win and who can't. So the bottom line is, I doubt, I seriously doubt you'll ever see Michael Jeffrey Jordan engage in a public sports debate because for Mike, bad idea.

This is Gore from Paramus, New Jersey. Would you ever write a take or respond to a topic using AI? Huh? Gore, wait, you're asking me that question? Gore, I thought you had more respect for me. I am deeply offended by your question. I believe with all my heart and soul, I would be the last man on earth to stoop to needing or wanting an AI take or response.

I would die before I would stoop to using artificial intelligence to reinforce my points. Artificial is the last thing I am. The very, very last thing I am. And because it came up in the athletic piece that's up there now if you choose to read it, about the early days of First Take, again, big questions revolving around early First Take. Did we trick up the debates? Were they artificially induced?

Did we just pick a side to pick a side? Trust me, as God is my witness, never, ever, ever. I still read, as I did in the athletic piece, that my takes are way out. No, they're not. I dare you to show me one take of mine that's way out there. I dare you, right here, right now, to tell me I've been wrong about anything I've ever said. Because I've

I don't believe I have. I don't think my takes are against the grain or out there. I just think they're real and they're right. I'm saying what a lot of people actually think. They're afraid to say. I'm fearless in my takes, but my opinions are strictly my opinions. If Stephen A. or Shannon disagreed with me, they disagreed. If they agreed, they agreed. But we never tricked it up. We never contrived. Not once, not ever, ever. Trust me.

As God is my witness, and that's as strong as I can get. There is nothing phony or fraudulent or inauthentic or contrived or tricked up about one word that comes out of my mouth on television, not one word. I'm as real as I can get. You can like it or not. You can love me or hate me. But man, gore. I hate this question, but I'm actually glad you asked it so I could answer it.

Before I give you a quick review of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, I remind you, I saw the first Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Take another quick swig of dew here. It's hot outside. I saw Raiders on Sunday afternoon, June the 14th of 1981. I've got one of those biographical memories. I can remember every movie I saw with whom I saw it and where.

I saw it in a theater in Oak Cliff, just south of Dallas, with Nancy Nichols, my girlfriend at the time. I lived in Kessler Park near downtown Dallas. I wasn't the biggest Harrison Ford fan. I wasn't a big Karen Allen fan at the time. But look, this was Steven Spielberg meets George Lucas. This was supposed to be America's answer to James Bond, and I was the biggest James Bond fan and remain so.

So I just went to Raiders just to see what all the hubbub was about. And Raiders knocked me right out of my seat. They didn't have the great seats we have now, which you can readjust and the cup holders. Didn't have those seats. But I got knocked out of my seat at that theater in Oak Cliff. I guess that Raiders of the Lost Ark was the first really big summer blockbuster. And man, did it ever bust my block.

After I saw Dial of Destiny the other day, I went straight home and I watched Raiders again. Raiders of the Lost Ark. I watched it again for the first time since I watched it the first time. So it would be the second time I ever watched Raiders. And that was 42 years ago, if memory serves and math serves. And it was just as historically great.

Upon further review, the other night, then it was back in 1981, that giant ball rolling out of the cave after Indy, man, shootout with the Nazis, Marion's Bar in Nepal, remember that? Indy just sighing and rolling his eyes and shooting the expert swordsman after he'd gone through his routine. Remember the little turncoat monkey, the I hate snakes?

the all hell breaking loose when the Nazis dared to open the Ark of the Covenant, then the Ark at the end being stored in a gigantic warehouse with thousands and thousands and thousands of boxes of unfinished U.S. government business, all that for that. Raiders made me a fan of summer blockbusters, just like I'm a fan of watching the Super Bowl. Summer blockbusters are

are events to me. They're something you can look forward to, you can plan for. Ernestine and I have already made a date to go see the next Mission Impossible. Here we go again. This is only part one of the seventh. We'll be there because we go to be awed to see something very possibly we've never seen on screen before. I was never fanatical about Star Wars or Jurassic Park.

or the Mission Impossibles that came before, or for that matter, Indiana Jones. I'm never fanatic about any of them. I'm not culty about any of them. But they have consistently entertained me by fairly consistently showing me they can top themselves by creating things that we've never seen before on screen. Despite the pandemic and all the first-run movies that Ernestine and I now just happily watch at home sitting back on our couch,

There's only one way to watch Dial of Destiny or this next Tom Cruise Mission Impossible. There's only one way. You know what it is. It's in the theater, getting knocked out of your seat by the sheer force of it, the sheer sound of it, taking it to yet another level, all caps. For me, Dial of Destiny is yet another cinematic achievement. It is stunning in its sheer scope and magnitude.

It just feels so huge on screen. It's such a spectacle that you almost feel like you should go back to the box office when it ends and throw down a few more bucks because you didn't pay enough to see it. That's how I felt when it ended. Talk about bang for your bucks, man. Now, I'll be the first to admit, I did doze a couple times.

as the Nazis chased and chased and chased Indian wombat, this sort of female sidekick in this, chased and chased and chased. Got a little repetitive, increasingly less believable. Wait, how would the Nazis find them there and then there? And then they even found them there? How did they do that? But let me tell you, the last 20 minutes of Dial was right up there with anything in Raiders.

The going back in time, I'm not giving away anything here, there's no spoiler alerts, but the siege of Syracuse, if you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. Archimedes himself, then suddenly jolting full circle back to Indy's little cramped, sweaty apartment in New York City, 1969, in an ending that I will be the first to admit, flat out brought tears to my eyes because I didn't see it coming. Even me.

America's favorite villain. I cried. Harrison Ford at age 80 was just ornerier than ever. Still very much up to the task. Mads Mikkelsen, I've already talked about him before. I've always been a big fan of his. He is a very memorable Nazi villain. I'll admit I wasn't wild about Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but she won me over in the end. Now I can't wait for Mission Impossible, whatever we're up to, seven.

Can't wait to make a date with Ernestine. And in the end, I don't even like Tom Cruise, but trust me, we'll be there. This is Nick from New York. Are you excited or nervous that the Cowboys are going to have their own Netflix show? I'm not excited. Definitely not nervous. I'm more curious. I'm actually just fascinated to see how much Netflix can outdo me.

If you followed this, Netflix has paid $50 million for the rights to a documentary inside Jerry Jones during the Cowboys' dynastic Super Bowl years of the 1990s. Obviously hasn't won a Super Bowl since the 1995 season. So it all came really... Jerry bought the team in 1989.

The last Super Bowl was won against Neil O'Donnell and the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was a mismatch in early 1996. And that was really the end of it. Just for the record, I wrote three books, not two, not one, three books about all those days.

My first one started in 1989 with Jerry, but it was actually the rise and fall of Coach Landry. It was called God's Coach, but it had a whole lot of Jerry to begin and to end. My second book called The Boys predicted that Jimmy and Jerry would not last together. I took a lot of flack for that one, and they didn't last. And my final of the trilogy, Hellbent,

It was about just the 1995 Cowboys, that star-studded team that managed to win a championship in spite of all their selves. It was something to see from the inside out. I didn't pay a single penny for all the access I had to Jerry Jones. He was great to me. I spent, I'm not exaggerating, through those three books, hundreds of hours with Jerry Jones, just hanging out with him or interviewing him.

hundreds of hours. I feel like I have a pretty good feel for Jerry Jones. So I'm fascinated to find out what Netflix will find out that is above and beyond what I had in my three books. Surely it's much more for $50 million. I can't wait to see this. I have a very vested interest in this. In fact, having watched Dial of Destiny and looking forward to

Mission Impossible, a documentary on Jerry Jones that cost $50 million. Now that's a summer blockbuster for me. I'll be all eyes. That's it for episode 72. 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 returns August 28th.