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

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Here we go. This is the Skip Bayless Show, episode 69.

This is everything I cannot share with you during the debate show that is undisputed. This, as always, is the un-undisputed. Today, I will tell you how I came to work with Shannon Sharp and why I will miss him dearly. Today, I will come completely clean about how a week ago,

I almost made an eternally embarrassing mistake, that was on last week's podcast, concerning the Miami heat, or should I say the Miami cold. Ugh. And today, as always, I will answer several of your probing provocative questions, including one in this episode about my favorite saying, my favorite quote, and my favorite proverb. But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped.

And today, in a tribute to you, I'm going to start with a couple of your questions. First is from Connor from Ohio who asks, "What is your proudest moment on Undisputed?" And a second companion question, as you'll see in a moment, this is Tim from Denver who asks, "What goes into your prep for Undisputed?" Gentlemen, I can answer both of those questions by paying tribute

to my man Shannon Sharp, who of course left Undisputed this past Tuesday, the day after the NBA Finals ended with a farewell speech that brought down the curtain on that live Undisputed show and brought tears to my eyes and especially to Shannon's. What a run we had together, close to seven years worth. That's roughly 4,300 live on-air hours.

sitting across from each other at that debate desk, battling, laughing, and haggling over bets on games, featuring, of course, the show's weird currency, cases of Diet Mountain Dew, my favorite drink and my only vice in the world. Diet Mountain Dew, the breakfast of champions, the nectar of the gods. Back and forth, we bet cases of Diet Dew. 4,300 hours we spent together on air.

When I shared that figure with my wife, Ernestine, her response was, you spent more time with him than you spent with me. Well, not exactly true, but it did sometimes feel that way because, as I think you know by now, I live for undisputed, which meant that, in a way, Shannon and I were kind of a married couple on TV.

for years, it seemed like, for days and nights on end, we dominated each other's lives for almost seven years. Seven years. I did not watch a single game in any sport of any magnitude for seven years without thinking about what Shannon was thinking about the outcome of said game and how that outcome would impact tomorrow's Undisputed. The end of Tuesday's show,

was my proudest moment ever on Undisputed because I was so proud of what Shannon and I had accomplished together against such long odds. Now for a quick bit of background. I was a proud member of the worldwide leader from September 2004 through June of 2016. That's at ESPN. I started on a show called Cold Pizza.

which was at that point a morning variety show very loosely based on sports, a show that had been on the air for about 10 months when I joined, 10 months without doing much, if anything, in the ratings. Mark Shapiro, my friend, who at that point ran ESPN, wanted and needed to add some sort of hot topic debate component to that show to sort of sports it up a little bit. And he, of course, knew me.

as a spark plug debater on Jim Rome is Burning and on the Sports Reporters and on Prime Monday and over here at Fox Sportsnet on the Best Damn Sports Show. I'd even sat in with Stephen A., my friend Stephen A. Smith, for a couple of weeks as guest hosts on PTI way back in the day. This is 2003-ish. Heck, Mark Shapiro even knew me from the debates I did at major golf tournaments on the Golf Channel.

We're going way back here, opposite my then-debate partner, Mark Lye. And did we ever get into it, Mark and I. Loved those days. So Mark knew that's what I did, what I did best. I enjoyed arguing on live TV. Loved the instant thrill and the instant challenge of live TV. No take-twos. I loved the now or never of it. So Mark decided...

to pair me on cold pizza with Woody Page, who really knows his sports, been around for a long time, really gets it and knows it, but who didn't take sports quite as seriously as I did. Woody, as you probably know, is more of a jokester, and he tried to derail my arguments with some stunts and with some schtick, such as the character you might remember that he created and I actually named called Professor Screwloose. Sometimes Woody had jokes

a screw loose himself and sometimes so do I. But we had a lot of crazy fun together on cold pizza for about three years until Woody decided and he'd had enough and he returned to Denver where he is of course a legendary columnist and still a panelist on Around the Horn. Just for the record I have tended to wear out some of my debate partners just because I am so obsessed with what I do

And I think at some point, Woody just said, okay, that's enough of this. I'll be a little happier back home in Denver. Good for him. God bless him. Love him. But what a wild ride I did have on cold pizza in New York City, just across from Madison Square Garden at the old New Yorker Hotel down in the basement. That's where our studio was. And I loved working with the show's three primary hosts, Kit Hoover, love you, Kit,

Thea Andrews, love you, Thea. And of course, my man, Jay Crawford, who attempted to moderate or should I say referee our what we call first in 10 debate segments, which occasionally, if not often, went completely off the rails. Yet, just so you get this, when I first walked in the door at Cold Pizza, I was the interloper. I was the odd man out on what many probably viewed as a little bit of an oddball show.

because I was taking sports maybe a little too seriously for early morning TV. And initially, I think that show began at 7 a.m. East Coast time, went 7 to 9. I think that was our original time slot. It changed over the three years I was there, but it started out at 7 a.m. in the morning. And just to demonstrate how I was at first perceived at Cold Pizza,

We rehearsed only one time before I joined the show live on September the 6th of 2004. Just one time. We did one dummy debate topic, and I just did what I'd always done on all those other shows I just detailed for you. I went at it with Woody, but I didn't really try too hard because the truth is I don't like to rehearse. I don't see any point in rehearsing.

This is unscripted live debate. I am a live guy. You can't rehearse live unscripted because you're scripting it. You're acting. Yet, in the middle of my rather half-hearted attempt at a rehearsal, right in the middle of it, my new director at that point, Brian Donlan, came flying out of the control room, I can see it like it was yesterday, down the three steps, out into the studio,

And he said to me, and I quote, and please pardon my language, "You are way too fucking hot for morning TV." And I tried to control myself, and I politely smiled, and I said to Brian, who did become a friend of mine, "No, Brian, you need just a little bit of me on this show." I'm pretty sure that proved true fairly quickly. Just into our second year on air together,

During our second football season, we started taking the show on the road to various college campuses. We went to Ohio State, went to Alabama, went to Texas. And the kids would just go wild for our first and ten segments for Woody and Jay and me. Cold Pizza's ratings started to tick up and started to shoot up. And in 2007, three years in,

Every New York-based ESPN show got canceled except for Cold Pizza, which, as you might remember, was moved up to the mothership up in Bristol, Connecticut, and rebranded as First Take, though it was still pretty much Cold Pizza. So once Woody left Cold Pizza, about two years in, we began to bring in various journalists and radio personalities to take me on.

And that continued in Bristol. You might remember Jamel Hill, Michael Smith, Rob Parker, Chris Broussard, the two live stews. We developed a pretty strong rotation into which we worked all kinds of ex-player analysts up at Bristol. Merrill Hodge and Lomas Brown, Cordell Stewart, Chris Carter, John Ritchie, Tim Legler, Jalen Rose, Marcellus Wiley. I could go on and on and on and on and on.

It was that sort of skip versus the world format that propelled us to record ESPN2 ratings, not on regular ESPN. At that point, first take was on ESPN2. But through that 2011 NFL season, that Tim Tebow run, we set marks on ESPN2 that I doubt will ever be broken. My man Stephen A. Smith was on with me for a 15-minute segment

at the top of our second hour every Wednesday. But Stephen A. didn't become my full-time partner until late in that NFL season. And by the way, what a run he and I would have. So I gladly gave up the skip versus the world format at that point to be able to partner with Stephen A. because what a natural-born, uncoachable, unteachable electricity guy

charisma, a connection that the two of us had. It just happened that Stephen A and I got a great kick out of sparring with each other. Here we were two former newspaper writers from very different backgrounds, kind of from opposite ends of the earth. He from Queens, me from Oklahoma City, and we could just yin and yang with the best of them. Stephen A

I think quite obviously became the brother I never really had coming from a broken home that I did in Oklahoma City. And we still might be together if our showrunners, Jamie Horowitz, Charlie Dixon, Witt Albom, hadn't left ESPN and wound up out here in LA at FS1. It was Jamie and Charlie and Witt who had the guts and the vision in 2011

to do away with the last remnants of that morning variety show that was called Pizza and turn first take into wall-to-wall, two-hour debate. Pretty much built around me. Heck, in 2011, I even got nominated for an Emmy that year. That was a bigger upset than Tebow beating the Pittsburgh Steelers in that playoff game in Denver with an overtime touchdown pass. But I did. I actually got nominated.

Who would have thunk it? So I believed I owed Jamie and Charlie and Witt for how much they had believed in me. They needed me to come to LA and help try to put FS1 on the national map. And I needed that ultimate against all odds challenge. So I plunged. When I accepted the job, the initial plan was to go right back to our tried and true formula.

From 2011, Skip versus the World, me taking on a rotation of debaters, some media members, some ex-athlete analysts. Heck, they even drew up a publicity mock-up of the Skip versus the World concept. And that, as I picked up in New York to move to L.A., was exactly what I thought I would be doing out here. ESPN was kind enough

and trusting enough to let me stay on with Stephen A all the way through the NBA playoffs, even though it had leaked, I don't know, six weeks earlier, seemed like maybe two months earlier, it had leaked that I was going to FS1. And at some point along that end of the trail at ESPN, Stephen A had to miss a few shows. I can't remember why. And guess who we brought in to sit in for Stephen A. Smith?

Yep, Shannon Sharp, the Hall of Fame tight end who had finished a lengthy stint at CBS for, I think, three shows. I got a pretty good feel for Shannon on air, and it felt pretty good. So maybe just a month before my launch out here at FS1, Jamie and Charlie and Whit and I began kicking around the concept of bringing on Shannon as a full-time partner.

So Jamie and Charlie then flew to Atlanta to meet with Shannon, and they liked what they heard. And I started thinking, hmm, me against an NFL Hall of Famer instead of just a fellow journalist. I started to like it, and we plunged. In our first staff meeting, again pre-launch, Shannon told the group he wanted to become the first ex-athlete to prove himself.

that he could talk about all sports on TV, not just the one he played. Did Shannon ever prove that? Ernstine and I even threw a prelaunch party at our new place out here in LA. Shannon was there. Guess who else showed up? My man Stephen A. It was surreal. My past and my present in Hollywood. Pretty soon, I think Shannon and Stephen A started arguing politics, and I was like, I'm out.

It's one of those things where I can debate sports, but when those two get into politics, when anybody gets into politics, no, not for me. And I was out. Yet for me, the biggest advantage Shannon Sharp brought to FS1 and to Undisputed was, as you probably know by now, he truly, genuinely, authentically loves LeBron James.

He honestly and completely and wholeheartedly believes LeBron James is the GOAT, as in greatest of all time, eclipsing even Michael Jeffrey Jordan? That, of course, is insane. LeBron obviously is nothing more than the phony GOAT, but because Shannon so believed that LeBron was the best ever, he and I had TV gold. By unofficial count,

We did 9,764 LeBron versus Jordan debates, and Shannon lost every last one of them. My other advantage with Shannon was that, like most people who don't bleed metallic blue as I do, he absolutely despises all things Dallas Cowboys. I'm obviously a lifelong diehard Cowboy fan from the time I was 10 when I went to my first game, and they're actually second year of existence. So...

Once again, we had an extremely natural disagreement that sparked, by unofficial count, 12,991 cowboy debates. I must admit, Shannon actually won some of those because I can't help myself. I have no objectivity and sometimes no sense when it comes to my Dallas Cowboys, who, by the way, will make it

all the way to the first NFC championship game they have played in in 28 years. You can book it right here, right now. They will make it all the way to this year's, this coming year's, NFC championship game. Man, I'm going to miss my cowboy debates with Shannon. Heck, I'm even going to miss that goat mask he used to wear after the odd great LeBron game.

I'm going to miss what I got to do, which was shame him on live TV for wearing that goat mask when we would open the shows. Yeah, I'll admit it. I will miss the goat mask. But the truth is, what I love most about working with Shannon was, and this is no small thing, he dedicated himself to the process of preparing for Undisputed just the way he dedicated himself to playing pro football.

you just, you're going to have to trust me on this. Only two people in the world really get this right here, right now, me and Shannon, but Undisputed is a voracious beast in part because I am psycho relentless in my preparation and I do set that daily tone, but

Talk about having to feed the beast. It just keeps eating and eating and eating at you day after day after day, just relentlessly. 49 weeks a year, five shows a week, two and a half hours a day, 10 topics a day.

Look, you must watch the games carefully or I will expose and annihilate you because I watch every game very carefully that matters, the games that matter to us. So did Shannon. As I've long said, most debates are won the night before by doing your homework, your research, formulating your argument. If he goes here, I'm going to go here, and I got it.

Shannon had two Hall of Fame researchers, Steve and Ash, and did he ever utilize them both? Shannon prepared hard. On air, Shannon competed even harder. Shannon never took a sick day. Shannon was never, ever late. You say, "Oh, that's no big deal." No, it's a huge deal to me. Being prepared and on time is the mortar of a successful TV show.

Shannon always prepared, always on time, day after day after day. Now, Shannon liked to go first on just about every debate so he could get his position out before I pounced. So he went first nearly every time. The other huge strength of Shannon's was that he was able to sustain high energy for every single topic. Two and a half hours a show, day after day after day. It's

It's just such a huge part of this process. If I can refer to Tim Duncan, Shaq used to call him the big fundamental. These are the big fundamentals of Undisputed. The essence of live TV, preparation, concentration, and extreme energy. I have too much energy just because I love it to a fault. But so did Shannon. Shannon, as you know, workout warrior as am I.

Seriously, you have to be in supreme shape to go at it the way we went at it day after day, five days a week, 49 weeks a year, two and a half hours a day. It does get intense out there at the debate desk, and it just takes a lot out of you. As Shannon often said on air, I'm over here sweating like a Baptist minister. Sometimes he did.

Sometimes he needed somebody from makeup to pat him down after a segment. And I will miss Shannon during breaks occasionally saying to our man Nick up in the control room, Nick, I need a little air out here. As in air conditioning. Sometimes so did I. Shannon Sharp worked hard at Undisputed. I love Shannon Sharp for how much he gave me. I love him for what we accomplished. I love him for making possible decisions

a very special time in my career. When we first started out here, I was shown several critics, what they had written, that FS1 wouldn't last, that Undisputed would fail. I got news for you. FS1 is here to stay. Undisputed is alive and very well going on seven years as we look very forward to our eighth NFL season. Eight!

Are you ready for some football? I sure am. I can't wait for this fall when the Eagles are gonna fall. I'm gonna miss my man Shannon Sharp and all he did for me, all he brought to Undisputed. But I can't wait for what's next for Undisputed. See you soon.

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and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Bayless. Just go to Indeed.com slash Bayless right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Bayless. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Another question, Caesar from Virginia asks, have you ever had so much to prepare for that

that you've needed to pull an all-nighter? It's an interesting question. Many times, especially after very late NBA playoff games, I've needed to pull an all-nighter and wound up pretty much pulling an all-nighter without meaning to. Quick flashback, I used to frequently pull all-nighters during finals when I was at Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt University in Nashville. I'd just tell myself,

being the overachiever I was at Vanderbilt, come from a public high school, I just tell myself, you can come right back here to this dorm room and go to sleep when it's over. Just suck it up and do this now. Then when I got out in the real world, being to travel for my job as a sports columnist, I was gone three-fourths of the year every year. I just lived on the road.

I used to absolutely despise having to take an early morning flight, one of those 6 a.m.ers where you have to get up at 3.30 because you try to go to sleep and you can't stay asleep because you know you've got to get up so soon. And now that's what often happens nights before Undisputed. I have to be up out here in L.A. at 2 a.m. I was always up by 5 a.m. in the east and it didn't seem like that big a deal.

because that's when I always got up to get ready for first take, which, by the way, starts a half hour later than Undisputed. But I get up at 2 because I need 30 minutes to stretch and to read all the breaking overnight stories I might have missed when I went to sleep around 9. It's usually 10-ish on a normal night, but it can be much later after an NBA playoff game. But I just needed those 30 minutes to catch up

Then I need an hour on the treadmill to wake up while I'm watching the highlight shows and the post-game interviews. And I also need the endorphins I get from running just to wake me way, way, way up. But when a game lasts so late, when I realize I'm just going to get three hours of sleep, three hours. There was a time in my life I couldn't fathom just getting three hours of sleep. Then you go to sleep, and I can usually fall asleep okay, but I can't stay asleep.

Because I start waking up every half hour to open one eye and look at the clock. Lord help me. Many times, many times, I've looked at the clock and realized, okay, so it's one o'clock in the morning. I got one more hour. And I just say, you know what? I think a word I won't say. I just say, okay, that's enough.

And I just leap right out of bed at 1 o'clock in the morning. I always lay out my clothes. That's essential if you get up as early as I do. Lay out my work clothes, lay out my workout clothes. And at 1 o'clock in the morning, many times I just put my workout clothes on, my running clothes, gone right over to my computer and sat down and started reading and prepping because what's the use? One more hour would probably just make me even groggier for the 6.30 a.m. start out here for Undisputed. By the way, now that I've mentioned...

finals at Vanderbilt, you can book this. Tonight, tonight, I will have my recurring nightmare about missing a final at Vanderbilt, oversleeping for a final at Vanderbilt, going to the professor, begging to please let me make it up. And sometimes it's a he, sometimes it's a she saying, no, you cannot. This is Vanderbilt University, young man.

And I don't graduate. I will have that nightmare tonight. So thank you, Cesar from Virginia, for that. 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. This is Alex from New York who asks, do you go to sleep immediately after finishing Undisputed?

The quicker I get to sleep after Undisputed, the better I am the following day. The only time I ever sleep deeply is when I take a nap post-Undisputed. That's when my subconscious is free and clear. I'm usually so spent after Undisputed that if I do have a meeting upstairs here at Fox, up on the fifth floor,

I will have to fight to keep my eyes open during said meeting. Sometimes I'll catch myself dozing off. Sorry about that, Charlie and Witt. But to sum this up, on this past Monday night, ahead of Shannon's departure on Tuesday, I did pull an all-nighter because I couldn't sleep a wink. I tried and I failed. I was just so keyed up, so worked up, so torn up over what was happening, I just couldn't go to sleep.

The truth is, this past Tuesday, I tried to go to sleep in the afternoon, and I had a hard time going to sleep even then. Now let me tell you a little story behind the story. This is about last week's podcast. This is a week ago Monday. I told my producer, Tyler Korn, that in all the years watching, covering, analyzing the NBA, loving the NBA...

I had never, ever seen anything like what the Miami Heat were doing. Never, ever. I told Tyler that Eric Spolstra was in the process of pulling off the single greatest coaching job in the history of the NBA playoffs. The greatest. Because the same Heat team that went 44-38 in the regular seasons,

who finished dead last in scoring points during the regular season, who finished 27th in a league of 30 teams in three-point shooting during the regular season, who fell from the seventh to the eighth seed by losing the first play-in game at home badly and nightmarishly to Atlanta, to the Atlanta Hawks, who bullied the Heat on the backboard 63-39 in that first play-in game in Miami,

That same Heat team that had become the first eight seed ever to make it to the finals in a full season. First eight seed ever. That Miami Heat had just stolen game two at Denver and was about to play two NBA finals home games, home games with the series tied one-all. Impossible. The Heat had won game two because Eric Spolstra had had the instinctive coaching genius that

to leave a defensive liability named Duncan Robinson in the game at the start of the fourth quarter, even though the Heat trailed by eight points, and even though Duncan Robinson, to that point, had played seven minutes in the game without scoring a point, and in that game, to that point, was a minus 20 and plus minus. What? Talk about pushing the genius button.

Duncan Robinson immediately scored 10 points in two minutes, two threes and two twos. And the Heat went from down eight to up two and never looked back, leading by as many as 12 points with three minutes left in the game. What? It's just impossible. Duncan Robinson was one of four undrafted players who played big, crucial minutes for this Heat team.

Max Strews in that game two at Denver had hit four threes in the first quarter after getting blanked in game one. Gabe Vinson had scored 29 points in game three in the previous round against the Celtics. 29 points. Caleb Martin should have been the Eastern Conference Finals MVP against those heavily favored Boston Celtics who had lost a game seven at home to these Heat.

after falling behind three games to none against this eighth seed. It's just impossible. These Heat had blown Milwaukee off the floor in five games. Milwaukee, the best defensive team in the NBA through the regular season, blown them off the floor in five games. That despite losing Tyler Hero in game one of that series to a broken hand.

Yep, we're talking about the same Tyler Hero who averaged 20 points a game for these Heat during the regular season. They lost a 20-point-a-game score, a former sixth man of the year, in game one of the playoffs. Game one. And look at them now as they went home, tied one-all with Denver with two home games.

These offensively challenged Miami Heat with no Tyler Hero. Gone for good, it appeared at that point, with a broken hand, broken bone in his shooting hand. Yet, these hopeless underdog Heat had still shot the lights out in Milwaukee, New York, and Boston. It was just impossible. But, of course, Jimmy Butler turned back into Playoff Jimmy.

Scored 56 in Game 4 against Milwaukee and 42 against Milwaukee in the closeout Game 5, which prompted the NBA's best perimeter defender, Drew Holiday, to say that neither Michael Jordan nor LeBron James in their primes as first-team defenders.

All defense defenders. Jordan obviously won defense player of the year. But Drew said that neither of those two could have stopped the shots that Jimmy Butler kept making on Drew Holiday again and again and again. Just unstoppable. Playoff Jimmy had become such a force that heading into the finals against Denver, he had had hemi buckets trademarked. Hemi buckets trademarked.

Hemi Buckets just kept guaranteeing victories, guaranteeing, guaranteeing, guaranteeing victories. We will, we will, we will. And his many undrafted teammates just kept backing him up. It was impossible. So after talking with my producer, Tyler, I decided to risk opening, leading off last week's podcast with an ode to Spoh and to Hemi Buckets. I say risk because I tape...

on Wednesday afternoon after Undisputed's live show. And of course, the podcast drops on Thursday morning. Heat Nuggets Game 3 would be played Wednesday night after I taped. Hence, I was risking some calamitous finals turnaround game. Yet I'm thinking at worst...

Denver would be leading two games to one with very possibly four more games to go, maybe climaxing in a game seven at Denver. Again, the Heat had won game seven in Boston. So, going back a week on Tuesday night ahead of the Wednesday taping, I did script out a big Heat topic to open that episode, which was number 68, as you might recall. I decided to disqualify myself up front, saying that, hey, I'm flying blind here.

I don't know the outcome as I'm taping this of game three, an outcome that listeners, viewers would know as they absorbed what I had to say. So I don't mind doing this to show you how foolish I was. I'm going to read you some of what I had planned to say in last Wednesday's taping. And I quote me from last week.

This is by far the greatest eight seed ever. This is the equivalent of a hopeless March Madness underdog with a legit shot of winning an NBA championship. This Cinderella isn't just going to the ball, it can ball, as you just saw at what they call Ball Arena in Denver.

This is a giant killer who's actually a giant. A wolf in sheep's clothing. A Vegas dog who has a shot at winning Westminster. This just can't happen, but it is. The Miami Heat are the most underestimated team in NBA history. They have already won a record number.

10 games outright in these playoffs in which they were underdogs. That's a record. 10 games outright in which they were not favored. And of course, I went on and on and on and on about how through the years I've taken so much abuse from people I know because I love the NBA playoffs so much. And again and again, I heard,

Especially in these early seven-game series, there's no way the underdog can win because the better team will out, will prevail, will expose the other team as a fraud. Seven games are too many. Even friends of mine would say, just wake me up when the two best teams get to the NBA Finals and then I'll start watching. Not this year. So when Undisputed ended this past Wednesday, I'm going back a week ago, as always, I went from our second-floor studio

here at Fox, down to my dressing room on the first floor and I sat down on my couch and I glanced over what I had scripted the night before about how the heat were doing things I'd never ever seen and I glanced and I glanced and I thought and I thought and my feet got colder and colder. That little voice deep down in my psyche was whispering to me that voice has been pretty good to me over the years.

I call it my God voice. Maybe you just call it my better judgment. But it whispered very loudly, I thought, all that work last night. And then I said to myself, no, just too dangerous. And I scrapped that heat topic in favor of a Micah Parsons, Dak Prescott opening salvo. Thank you, God. What proceeded to happen Wednesday night...

and then Friday night, and then Monday night was even more inexplicably shocking, at least to me, than what had happened in the first 20 Heat playoff games. Yep, Cinderella right on schedule turned right back into an eight-seed pumpkin. The same Heat who had shot 39% as a team from three, 39%

As a team, for the first 20 playoff games, that's a big sample size, 39% shot 29.5% from three in those last three games. The Heat turned right back into the team during the regular season that just could not score. I kept thinking of a movie I vaguely like, and it's way before your time, probably back in 1971. It was a De Niro movie called "The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight." Well, they were. The Heat were the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

They played three straight playoff games in the NBA Finals, even worse than that opening Atlanta game that Atlanta lost at home to start the play-in. They played three straight Atlantas. That's what happened. The Heat went from one-all with two Finals games at home to getting gentlemen's swept, except that Nuggets in five felt more like a flat-out,

Impolite, no respect, sweep sweep. Nuggets in four. That's what it felt like. I had picked Heat in six. As I started saying on Undisputed, Heat in sucks because Miami just sucked. Never seen anything like it. The Heat played the most pathetic three games of an NBA Finals I have ever had to witness. Seriously, I've been doing this for a long time. Three straight.

in which they look like flat-out imposters. Who were these people? Maybe the better question, who were those people in the first 20 playoff games? I don't know. Obviously, the Heat's all-time finals collapse revolved around their best player, who really wasn't a best player. A longtime NBA source of mine, a man I know very well, a man who really, really knows,

texted me to remind me of what he has told me for years and years. Jimmy can't be your number one. He's not a Dwayne Wade. Period. Close quotes from text. Bingo. So why ahead of game five did Jimmy Butler tell TNT in a sit-down interview that if he is ever elected to the Hall of Fame, he will not attend the festivities and the enshrinement? My opinion is that deep down,

Jimmy Butler, for all of his bravado, some of it false bravado, just doesn't truly believe he is a Hall of Famer. And you can make a case he's not. He has no accolades during the regular season to speak of. Never even finished in the top 10 of MVP voting. Yet he did score 56-42. Game 4, closeout game 5 against the best defensive team, Milwaukee. But as the pressure and expectation mounted...

As Jimmy had to come out of the shadows into the playoff spotlight, he slowly but surely turned back into the second best player on a team without a first best player. You could just see in the eyes of his teammates, they kept looking to him to take over, and his body language kept saying back to them, don't look at me. He became timid. He became passive. He wore me out for three games, yelling at my TV, just attack, just go.

Get the ball in the wing. Swing it side to side. Swing, swing. Think, think like he's playing chess. Shot clock's 8, 7, 6. Dribble into the lane. No place to go. Don't know what I'm doing, and I'll kick it to him. He's covered. 3, 2, 1. Heave a 3. Air ball.

In the last three games, nobody keeps this stat, I'm sure, but Miami had to shatter the all-time finals record for shots that missed the rim. Had to shatter it. Sometimes they hit the backboard. Sometimes they almost broke the backboard. But they missed the rim completely, shot after shot after shot. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Jimmy Butler just shrank into the shadows, the shadows in which he had scored 56-42.

He quit attacking. He lost confidence in his shot. And ultimately, he lost all confidence you could tell in himself. So in game five, as you remember, he was two for 13 until late in the game when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, came this late flurry in which he scored 10 straight quick points. It was like he was willing the ball in. He's not a very good three-point shooter. And he made a couple of threes. And you're thinking, where was that the last three games? Yet, of course, right on cue,

He missed his last two threes in that game, including the one to tie with 17 seconds left. He just shoots line drives. They look like they got no shot of going in and rarely do. And of course, the denouement was Hemi Buckets drove it into the lane with 30 seconds left.

Lost his balance, then he lost his mind, and he threw the ball right to KCP, who happens to play for the Denver Nuggets. That was with 27 seconds left. He literally threw the game away, down only one at that point. In Jimmy Butler's first 12 playoff games this year, he averaged 31.7 rebounds, 6 assists. 52% he shot from the floor. He was a plus 35 through those 12 games. Plus 35, you're going to win a lot of games.

In his final 10 playoff games of this year's run, he averaged only 22 points a game, 6-6, but shot only 40% from the floor. So 52% from the floor for the first 12 and then down to 40% for the final 10. As his free throws fell from averaging 8 of 10 through the first 12 games down to 5 of 7 for the last 10.

Just wasn't getting to the free throw line. And finally, over the last 10 games, Jimmy Butler was a minus 46. So from a plus 35 for 12 games to a minus 46 for the last three. You tell me what happened. We all know. For the record, I did report that Jimmy's father had suffered a health scare, health issue,

It had to be distracting for Jimmy. And yes, Jimmy did miss the one game against the Knicks with a sprained ankle. It's possible it continued to hamper or plague him. But as Shannon Sharp always said to me, if you're out there, you're out there. No excuses. Jimmy was out there. He was way out there. Playoff Jimmy kept turning into way off Jimmy. And in the end, his undrafted teammates couldn't back him up or pick him up.

They needed to be inspired by Jimmy, not vice versa. Last three games combined, Gabe Vincent, Max Truce, they combined to shoot 12 of 52 from the floor. 12 of 52, that's 23%. That won't work. Combined, last three games, those two shot from three. Three of 27, that's 11%. That'll get you beat.

It's just, it was impossibly bad. Even in game five from three, Gabe Vincent, Struess, and Caleb Martin combined to go one of 14 from three. The hell of it was, despite all that, he still had a chance late in the game. That's because game five was the single ugliest, single messiest, single sorriest finals game I have ever had to watch. Ever, ever, ever. Been doing this a long time.

Game 5 should have been played back in my hometown in Oklahoma City in one of my favorite neighborhoods downtown. It's called Bricktown. Game 5 belonged in Bricktown. The Nuggets closed out the Heat in Game 5 while shooting 5 of 28 from 3. That's 18% and they won the championship. Huh? That's impossible. Somewhere Michael Jordan had to be rolling his eyes, if not chuckling. The Heat...

The Miami Heat went from the greatest underdog NBA playoff role ever, greatest ever, for 20 games, to the sorriest final three games of an NBA Finals ever, ever, ever. Yeah, the Heat got exposed. They got exposed more than any Finals team has ever gotten exposed because in the end, I guess they didn't really belong in the Finals. They turned right back into everything the regular season told you they should have been.

So in conclusion, here's a line I was going to say in last week's podcast, again, taped ahead of Game 3. Got it right here in my hand. I should frame this. What has happened in Game 3 will not in the slightest alter my opinion about the 2023 Miami Heat, how wrong that was going to be. But that little voice in the very back of my head saved me again. If only it could have saved the Heat.

This is Jordan from Georgia who asks, what is your favorite saying or quote? I like this question. I do have three by which I live. My all-time favorite quote or saying, you might say, is from a former Supreme Court justice who served from 1939 until 1962, and he had a very unusual name, which was Felix Frankfurter. Felix Frankfurter.

He said, "Anybody who is any good is different from anybody else. I have always dared to be different by just being me. I don't conform. I am not influenced by what anybody says or thinks or does. I do me, weird as me might be. I think differently. I live differently than anybody I know. I was blessed to find the one woman on earth

who suffers me being so different. You can call me quirky or eccentric or contrarian, which is my least favorite adjective used to describe me. But the truth is, I am just 100% me, as real as real can be. I'm not different just to be different. I'm different because that's the only way I know to be. Another quote,

up on my refrigerator door is from Oliver Stone, the great writer-director, who said, I don't regret much. I make them and I move on, meaning movies. I've written books. I've written many magazine pieces. I've written thousands of columns. And obviously, I've done thousands and thousands of live TV shows. I give each and every one of those every ounce of my being. I make them and I move on.

I do not care about the criticism. I do not dwell. I cannot wallow in self-punishment because I am a raging perfectionist. I must move on. I must say next day after day, which brings me to one of my favorite Bible verses, definitely my favorite proverb. This is Proverbs 23:9. "Do not speak in the hearing of a fool,

for they will despise the wisdom of your words. Translation, don't read the criticism. Don't read the Twitter haters. Have the courage of your convictions. Trust your God voice. This is Jack from Milwaukee. Do you work out with Ernstine? Hmm, that is something of a sore subject in my household. The answer is no, I do not.

Ernstine does work out as religiously as I do, but that's not why I chose her. We do mostly eat the same way. No red meat, nothing fried, low to no sugar. That was an initial attraction to her. And to her enormous undying credit, she did immediately stop drinking alcohol when we began dating. I don't drink a drop, and now neither does she.

Bless her and thank her for that. But early on, a couple of times, we did try lifting weights together. I've always thought I could be a pretty good trainer if I had the time to be. I could be a pretty good coach, a pretty good teacher if I had time to be. And of course, Ernestine and I immediately clashed in the gym. I tried saying, no, no, you should do it this way. I don't do it that way.

Well, why don't you try this machine? I don't want to do that machine. Ernestine is her own woman. She's very headstrong, very willful, very Ernestine. Our Maltese, Hazel, is exactly the same way, like mother, like daughter. So I always lift weights and run solo. I don't have a trainer. I don't have a workout partner. And she...

always does her own thing solo. She walks fast on the treadmill every single day, never misses, like me, and she lifts weights by herself, her way. But to me, no couple I know or have ever known has more fun together doing fun things than Ernestine and I do. I'm talking about watching movies or Jeopardy on TV. I'm talking about walking Hazel. I'm talking about eating out.

Anything fun, nobody has more fun than the two of us have, at least in my point of view. I have never had anything but fun with Ernestine for 18 years. Not once in 18 years that we have been together have I ever been bored one moment in her company. Trust me, that is a rare bond. Trust me on this. That is a very special connection for which I am eternally grateful.

That's it for episode 69. 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.