Stephen A. Smith: Laid Off, Rehired & Now Running The Show, Canelo vs. Crawford & His #1 Interview

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the Art Award. I'm
truly honored to introduce my next guest on my show,
not his show. Normally I'm on his show, but today
he's graced me with his presence to be on my show.
And this is really a man that needs no introduction.
His voice commands attention and opinions. He is the face

(00:22):
of ESPN. He's one of the most influential and polarizing
figures in sports media. His fearless takes have made him
a must watch and a lightning rod across the sports landscape.
He's the author of the book Straight Shooter, a memoir
of second chances in first Takes.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I want to welcome to the show my brother, a
mentor of mine, the one and only Steven Asman.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
What's going on? Man, Man, I'm trying.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I'm trying. I'm trying. You know, I'm trying.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
I'm trying to do my thing. Man, I appreciate you
coming on the show. As I said, and you know,
I got to start with this.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
I text you and like I do you know most guests,
I say, Man, how much time do I have and
what do you want me to stay away from? You
said Man, I got two hours for you, and uh,
we could talk about anything.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I don't hide.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
I looked at that thing, I said, okay, okay, and
I guess I wouldn't expect nothing less from you.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah. Man, can't be in a hoigh seat, man, you
can't be in this business as long as I have
and having the platforms that I have, and it's a
hot seat for so many people, and then all of
a sudden it's my turn to sit in the seat
and I'm running. I mean, that's that's kind of weak.
So that's where I come from.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Before we start, though, Man, I gotta tell you, man,
I really appreciate the small glimpse that you've given the world,
especially recently, about you know, you being a father. You know,
I think I think we I think I can say
we probably similar, man, Like you know, people know we
got kids.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
We don't put them on front street. We try to
protect them.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
But man, you you've shown sort of your relationship with
Samantha and your daughter Nila, but more.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Specifically man, Samantha.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, Man, she she crashed your NBA.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
She crashed it, and then she she followed that up
with the podcast and and she got your whole face.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
She got your whole face.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
She's definitely minded but necessary.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right, I'm looking at her and I'm just I'm leaning
in stephen Ay because she's funny, she's witty, she knows
her stuff. And you said that was just off the cuff. Yes, no, no,
no rehearsal.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
No, she's brilliant. She's she's definitely brilliant. She's gonna have
her pick of the litter. She's a straight a student.
She's a magnificent talent, no question about that. Very fun
love and very vibrant. Uh got a personality obviously, ain't
scared to express her opinions. You know, it's like, you know,
it's it's the Lord just basically reminded me, you know,

(02:44):
getting me back from all the transgressions, because it's like,
you know, Nyla and Samantha are completely different but also
similar with their gifts. They're both quick with it, they're
both quick tongued, and their shot with the sarcasm and
all that other stuff. But they're completely different. Nyla is introspective,

(03:04):
don't want no part of the camera. Camera, She don't
want the camera, want to live her life. She loved politics,
she she's Nyla calls me to complain about Trump really
and and I say something if I say, if I
literally say anything, I mean, you know, the tariff wars
a man, maybe it ain't as bad as we thought

(03:25):
it was. Yes, it is. Are you paying attention? You know,
stuff like that. And she know, she's she's very political
and and very and very striding in her beliefs with
that stuff. And Samantha is about the world of entertainment.
But in the same breath she prides herself on being versatile.
One minute you talk to Samantha, I'm gonna be a lawyer.
Another minute you talk to him be an actress. Another

(03:46):
minute you talk to her, I'm gonna be a director
and a producer. And then she looks at me and says, Daddy,
why not all of it? You're doing it? And so,
you know, I try to calm her down and ring
her in and stuff like that, and then she comes
to me with her grades and it's straight, A's you
see what I told you? You keep I'm telling you, Dad,
I got this. I got this. So that day you

(04:08):
saw her on camera, we were just passing through. I
was taking a home really, but I had to stop
in my studio and then she says, I want to
get in front of the camera. I said no, And
the next thing, you know, I go into the control
room and she in front of the camera. She did that,
and then they put this. They put the script up
to intro the NBA stuff that I was going to

(04:28):
touch on, and she's like, watch me work. And without
even reading what was in there until it started, what
you saw is what you got.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
You would never know.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
I never knew that my forehead required seven fingers to
tell her. I thought it was I thought it was said,
but you man, it's like six or seven. I never
heard that until that till that show. But that's what
she does. That's what they both do.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Man. I love it. Man, you've done a great job.
And I don't look like you slowing down.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
No time so home, but when you do, you have
success with my brother, ye had done a great job.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
With them, girl.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Success without a successful man. We got a lot to
get to. Man, I want to jump into this. You
were born in the Bronx, but were raised at Hollis Queen.
You're the youngest of six and your sisters and your
brother they joked that you were a mistake.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
But you said your mama wouldn't have none of that.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
My mother was like, you were the only one who
was on purpose. Come on, you know mother was born
and raised my mother times virgin knowledge that she would
always tease that I was the only one that was
on purpose because they were trying to have a boy
for so long after my brother Basil and all of
that stuff, and my mother wanted one more boy. My
father wanted one more boy, and they were like, the
other three those are the mistakes. You were the ones
that was on purpose. But you know, my family's good

(05:37):
and you know, so they always teach mama. Mama had
my back. But the fact that the rest of my
family was so tough on me made it easy for
me to accept it. Every you know, accept stuff coming
at my coming my way. Look at the world we
living in the day. Look at how cats come at you.
I can decipher the difference between somebody who's criticizing me
and somebody who's trying to character assassinate me. The fact

(06:00):
that I'm able to compartmentalize and stuff like that. Drake
could be talking about me. I'll disagree with Steven here, Stephen, Abe,
what you talking about my man, Man Bond. You know,
he got on me a thousand times rocks with stephen A.
But I don't agree with him on that, and I
take no offense to it because you're talking about what
I said or what I did in that particular moment.
Now who I am, and the fact that I can differential,

(06:21):
I can tell the difference between the two. I give
all the credit in the world to my family because
they toughened me up, not only in terms of my
ability to absorb criticism, but also my ability to decipher
what real criticism is and when when somebody is just
using it to really get at you on a personal level.
I know the difference.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
I love that man, and that's a gift.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
And you couldn't be in the business that you are,
at the level you're at without being able to do that.
You would crack at some point because you get a
lot of heat thrown at you. But you talk about
that in your book, and we get we're gonna get
into that at these certain pivotal moments, you know, dealing
with contracts at ESPN. You know, your brother Basil before
he passed, telling you what you were gonna become. You know,
those are those moments where you maybe a shrinking back

(07:01):
or questioning and they like, bro, what you doing?

Speaker 2 (07:03):
They got at you? So I want I wanna talk
more about that.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
But man, Hollis Queens, Man, talk to me about your
earliest memories being in that place.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, first of all, it was a very poor neighborhood,
but it didn't look that way cause it was single
family homes and so because of that, it wasn't the
projects and you thought it was cool. But my house,
we knew what poor was because Pops was living his
life and wasn't helping my moms the way that you
would hope that a man would. And so because of that,
it's holes in the roofs, it's freezing temperatures, no heat

(07:34):
in the house, and the winter time refrigerator's emptiest, rats
and roaches running around. As you know, it's it's us
being on welfare for a certain period of time where
we're hoping, you know, that we can get off that
government cheese and bread and all that. I've been there,
I know what all of that is about. And so
you know, growing up like that, it was hard and
not having clothes. I'm walking, I'm in the seventh grade,

(07:55):
walking around with a dashiki on, you know, I mean
all of that type. So it's crazy and people laughing
exactly exactly, So you know, it's all of those things,
and and you know, to have to go through that experience,
it's hard while it's happening. But what made it both

(08:15):
easier and harder to deal with. Easier from the standpoint
you appreciated her dedication, but hard from the standpoint that
you had to witness the level of of of dedication
she had to put forth just in order to make
sure that we survived, That we ate that we had
clothes on our back and the roof over our head.
To watch my mom go through that just shaped and

(08:37):
formulated my life. And it's still the work ethic in
me that never left because my mission was always to
make sure that I positioned myself to be able to
provide for my family. That was always what it was about.
It's like, you know, whatever sacrifices that I have to make,
you just brought up me as a father. You know,

(08:58):
one of the sacrifices I have to make. Sometimes I
gotta be on the road and I make sure my
daughters and I talk every single day. But they understand
and I love that you know what I'm doing, Like
I love the fact that I'm in television.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
You know why I'm at too, because I.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Make him click put on the TV. There he is.
You know, when somebody asks you where's your day, you
don't know. No, he's right there. He's at work. You know,
he's at the game. He's doing this, he's doing that.
I always it was a very very big thing to
me because it was me sending a message to let
them know, this is what a man is supposed to do.
Your number one responsibility as a man is to provide

(09:34):
and to protect when it comes to your family. And
if you ain't doing those two things, you not being
a man. And that's just how I was raised because
of what I saw my mother in doing.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
But your mother, Janet, you know that was your sweetheart, man.
You talking about her throughout your career, your life and
the book.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
You know, this is a woman who had to carry
the financial, emotional all the low are raising six children though,
and we'll get into Pops in a second here, but
not really there kind of lady was your mother, Jenny.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
She's the greatest human being I've ever known. You know,
I can talk about it with ease now. When she
passed away in twenty seventeen, I cried every day for
two years. I had to go to therapy. I had
to do a lot of stuff that I never thought
of my life. I would do when you're growing up
in the hood and all of that stuff you ain't
think about, no damn therapy. And the reality is that
even though it's not something to dismiss or to feel

(10:32):
slighted about or anything like that, that's not the culture.
That's not what it teaches you, which is why we
learned so much more now as we get older. But
I was that way really until my mother died. And
you know, whether it was my pastor a rap and
Ar from the Christian Culture Center in Brooklyn, New York,
whether it was my sisters, whether it was folks that
I worked with, they knew that I needed something. And

(10:55):
I got to admit to you that there was a
short period of time there with ESPN, with Max Kellerman
who used to be on with me on First Take,
on Molly caerm and others, where I did the company
of the service because I was on the air, and
there were times I didn't even hear nor see the
person right in front of me. It wouldn't happen like

(11:16):
it might be at thirty seconds here or a minute
there or whatever. But my mother's death distracted me so much.
It was so painful to me that I saw or
heard nothing, and I was just in a really, really,
really bad place because I felt like my world had ended,
like nothing mattered, and I had to be reminded, Yo, bro,

(11:36):
you got two daughters. Yo, bro, you got people who
love you.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yo.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
You got this show, you got your family, You got
a lot of people, you know depending on you. You gotta
rise above this. You gotta find a way. But when
you lose the one person in this world that has
loved you unconditionally since the day you were born, that's
one thing. But I always bring this part up to men,
and I think that any man that has lost their mother,

(12:02):
whether married or single, understands what I'm about to say.
If you are not married, you never ever ever think
about this. But when my mother passed, all I could
think about in my mind. And it wasn't until her
casket was lowered into the ground. It wasn't when she died.

(12:23):
It wasn't a few days that took place before the funeral.
It wasn't even at the funeral. It was right when
they were lowering the caskeke get into the ground. And
once they finished that, that moment hit me that the
only woman that I've ever known who would love me
endlessly and unconditionally is gone. And so all of a sudden,

(12:44):
that hits you, and you like, where do I go
from here? Now? Because I'm not married. If you married
before your mom passes away, Mama passed a baton per se,
so you might feel a little differently. But if you single,
you know that Barama gone. Yeah, you see what I'm saying,
And because it's gone now, it's like, what am I

(13:06):
gonna do now? So all of those kind of moments
really really really hit me. And it was just one
of the things that this contributed to a level of
misery that I have never felt in my life. And
I thought I felt it real big when my brother
passed away in the car accident in nineteen ninety two,
But when my mom passed away, I've never felt pain, misery,

(13:29):
emptiness like that in my life. And it took away,
It took a lot away. I think for a year,
I don't think people even knew who I was really
because it wasn't me. I just wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
I'm gonna stay on it. Just another question. You know
your mother was diagnosed with cancer how many years.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Before she passed seven and a half.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
What did you learn about your mother and what did
you learn about yourself? As she's battling a disease.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Like that, her toughness, obviously it just elevated to another level,
not just because of what she was enduring, but because
she didn't allow that pain to affect how she mothered
the mother that she was. She continued to be really
she never wavered. She had something to complain, but she

(14:15):
let you know, you say, she hasn't check your buts.
She let you know you know, and and that that's
the way that she was. What I learned about myself
was a strength that I didn't know I had because
she she gave it to me, and it was in
her last days before they transition. They're transitioning, and when

(14:35):
they transition, those who have lost folks to cancer know
what I'm talking about. You get to a stage where
you're there, but you're not there. You're just staring and
you're looking at somebody, but you're not talking. You don't
know if they're comprehending, you don't know if they understand
what you're saying. None of that. And for the last
few days she was going through that. But prior to that,

(14:56):
I sat in front of her and I was really,
really sad, and I started crying, and she was like,
why are you crying? Why are you looking so sad?
I said, what are you talking about? You know, by
this time we knew that she you know, her days
were numbered. And she said to me that this is
the way it's supposed to be. She says, if you
love me, and I know you do, you don't want

(15:18):
it the other way around. Do you know what it
would do to me if I lost you? She said,
parents are supposed to go before their children. It's my time.
I believe in God. I believe I'm going to a
better place. She said. I know you're gonna miss me,
and I appreciate it. But I've prepared you for this,

(15:40):
and I expect you to hold up and handle your
business moving forward. And so when she I remember that,
and the reason in the day that I remembered it
most the day of her funeral. Go to the funeral,
when we take it to the cemetery, and stuff like that.
And then we get home home and my sisters and

(16:01):
them there repass and everything was sitting in the house
and my sister Linda looks at me and says, when
you going back to work? And I was like what?
And then all of my sisters looked at me. You
heard us, And I said, what are you talking about?
You know it's it's a funeral. They said, what would

(16:21):
mom say? And what mom would have said was, cause
this was my mother to a t registered nurse for
twenty five years, second largest hospital in New York State,
Queen's General Hospital, Queen's New York, right off the Grand
Central park Way, down the block from Saint John's University,
across the street from the high school that I went to,
Thomas Edison. What would my mother have said? That same
registered nurse, she would have said, finished the job. She

(16:45):
had passed away game one of the finals the morning
of game one of the finals at twenty seventeen, and
they said, you know, good and well. Mommy would have said,
go finish the job, mourned me later, And that's what
I did. So when they told me that, I went
to work, finished the finals, and then I spent the
summer year trying to get over. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
You you ain't have a lot of wiggle room, man,
in your life, just between your brother, your siblings, and
your mother, you ain't have a lot of wiggle room
to fail. You don't have a lot of wiggle room
to feel sorry for yourself or to not be something. Yeah,
because you constantly had them. When you had they wouldn't
even give you two three day you had a moment
they pushing you. Yeah, you get to call me ESPN something.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Man. I lost what you're gonna do? Like, it's always
what you gonna do next?

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Yeah, man, I wanna I wanna take it back to
you know, the third and fourth grade. You know, I
think it was very very interesting that you know that
a young man that struggled to read is who he
is today. You make your living, You have your name
because you speak and you comprehend well and was a writer.
First talk to me about that, just just that early
stage when when you when you had the struggle where

(17:52):
you said, my communication skills is really a mask, but
when it was time for reading and writing comprehension, it
was I fell off a cliff.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
How did the dyslexia thing come about when that. I'm
sure many people weren't even talking about.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
That back then. Man, they weren't talking about it back then.
It was uh, my sister and a child, a family
friend named Tiver uh that lived around the corner. The
combination of to him and my older sister Linda noticed
they had read up about dyslexia and noticed that I
was having some of the you know those similar uh
you know, detrimental things, and they went to a doctor,

(18:26):
and a doctor validated it. Really, I didn't even back then,
y even back then, so I didn't know. And that's
what they told me and Linder. Even though I was
going to school every day, Linda went home two to
me five days a week after she got off of work,
where she would work on my reading and writing skills,
in my k and my comprehension. Now, it wasn't just

(18:48):
that I got left back. People don't realize that the
significance of it. I'm in the third grade and I
got left back. But I went to summer school and
got promoted back to my right grade by that September,
So it was as if I didn't even get left back.
I just had to do summer school. Well, then I
go through the fourth grade, complete the whole year, and

(19:12):
I got left back again. And this time I was
held back the whole year. And so back in you know,
back in the day and stuff like that. You got kids,
all all the fellas in the neighborhood, y'all all the
same age, and they all got their report cars. We
all going to the same school. We all getting our
report cards. And everybody want to see everybody report card,
and sure mine, and they just broke out laughing. I

(19:34):
mean it was, I mean, he bro bro I'm fifty
seven man, and I remember that like it was yesterday.
It was so embarrassing. I was so ashamed and embarrassed.
I felt like the dumbest person on the planet. And
I went back to my back porch at my mother's
house in Hollis, and I was crying. And she had

(19:57):
a window there connecting the back por to the kitchen,
like I wrote my book, and I heard her telling
my father I got left back. And my father looked
at her and he said, the boy just ain't smart.
You just got to get used to it. He's not smart,
He's not gonna be anything. Just get used to it.

(20:18):
Just get used to it now. And my mother turned
around and saw me looking through that window. So I
saw him say that. My father saw me when my
mother turned around, looked at me, and he just shrugged
his shoulders, shook his head like that and walked away.
And it was devastating. But I walked in the kitchen
and my mother was like she was a gas because

(20:40):
it was just it horrified her that I heard my
own father say that about me, that at the fourth grade,
I was a finished product, you know, just ain't no
hope for me. And I never forget. I remember saying
to my mother, I said, he made a mistake. He
doubt me. You said said that back then, right in
the front of face. I said, ain't gonna keep me down. Mom,
I got it, and I ain't say anything. And then

(21:03):
I told my sister what happened, and Linda was like,
let's put in the work is how we're gonna do it.
And Linda and that childhood friend spent like two years,
five days a week working on reading comprehension, comprehension, and
even back then, I have a habit that I keep
to this day. If I run across a word I

(21:24):
don't understand, I will stop reading. I will look up
the definition of the word, how it's contextualized, and then
go back and read it again. So when I read stuff,
even though I can read fast, I read intentionally slow
to make sure I understand every single word that I'm reading.
That's how I improved my vocabulary. And once that happened,

(21:49):
stuff started to take off. Because I always could I
always could speak. I always could talk, but if you
ask me to comprehend what I was reading, it was
always a challenge. To the point that even when I
graduate date with honors, and even when I do do
excellent on a test or whatever, I never is cocky
and as arrogant as anybody who's successful can be. It

(22:09):
is something I hold on to to this very day.
I never ever ever assume that I'm smarter than the
next person in the room. I just know I work hard,
and that's what I hold on to to keep myself humble.
I'm reminded every day. I got left back in my
mind every.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Day, what is your message though?

Speaker 1 (22:28):
To a young person, but even an adult, because sometimes
you got adults that God stuff that's undiagnosed and they've
been struggling their whole life, but they're allowing what they're
struggling with the learning disability to define them. You look
at a success story like yourself, what would you say
to them?

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Nobody could want something for you more than you want
it for yourself. What do you want? How bad do
you want it? You know, for me? You know, growing
up in New York, Yo, Bro, I loved basketball. I
grew up at a time when maybe what I considered

(23:08):
to be the greatest show in the history of college basketball.
Dwayne Pearl Washington for Syracuse. You know, he was ball
in the late eighties. Rob Strickland and the Kenny Anderson
and them came after them, leave the Weapon three in Georgia,
Tech stuff like that in Queensland. You know, Kenny the
Jet Smith was that archibishoal Malloy before he went down
to North Carolina. Boo Harvey, you know, I mean, I mean,

(23:30):
it's a godsham God and all those guys came later.
But I'm just saying I grew up around that culture.
I grew up when Magic and Bird were going up
against each other for the national championship, and then all
of a sudden they both in the pros and Doctor
J was still trying to win his first title before
Moses Malone came along, and I grew up around this time,
and so for my in my mind, everybody was about

(23:53):
that basketball. When I got left back, it was about
I wanted you and laugh at me. You can joke,
you can have a good time, you can ridicule me,
we can do all of that, we go back and forth,
but you will not legitimately laugh at me. I'm not
going to be a joke. You gonna see what I'm

(24:14):
gonna bring to the table. And I hope I can
play basketball good enough. I hope I'm good enough to
get a scholarship. I hope I'm good enough to do X,
Y and Z. But what I really really wanted, not
only was to never get left back again, but for
you to see me, listen to me, hear me, and
know my intellect was not something you could summarily dismiss.
That was my goal.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
But somebody that don't have that drive and they've just
submitted to what they're dealing with. How do you get
out of that place when you're like, man, it's a
learning disability and it's my crutch.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
I just can't do it.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Find a soft spot and squeeze what I mean by
that is, everybody has something they're passionate about. Everybody has
someone they might be passionate about. Everybody has something that
they love that more than achieving it, the fear of
not doing it because of the harm it may do
to you and others, supersedes the love. And that's really

(25:06):
where it comes down to. You gotta have that. I mean, obviously,
I'm sitting in front of one of the great great
boxes in history. Were undefeated, as you know, as a
super middleweight and a light heavyweight champion of the world.
I'm willing to bet that every time you walked into
the ring it wasn't about just being supremely confident. It

(25:27):
was about a fear of losing. And you in training
and you're like, I can't go out like this, I
can't go down like that, you know. And so I think,
like that, I'm able to handle criticism and stuff like
that because I'm usually contemplating a worst case scenario, and
my fear of that worst case scenario is what prepares

(25:50):
me to endure whatever stress and strain is going to
come my way. And after that, it's like, all right,
I've already faced that demon. Let's get it on.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
So I don't know if it's healthy. Beside tell my
wife at all the time.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Sometimes I started the worst case scenario and I work
my way back.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
I always do that.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
I'm gonna start here. We gonna work our way back.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Now.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
No, I've covered everything, because.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
If you don't consider, if you don't consider a worst
case scenario, in my opinion, you haven't truly prepared yourself whatever,
for whatever challenges you've elected to partake of, you haven't
prepared yourself because you haven't entertained the thought and the
fear of a worst case scenario. You walk in there, Kaki,

(26:33):
you're going to drop, You're going to cut a corner,
You're going to take a shortcut. If all you think
about is the glory, you gotta think about the pain.
That's why when Magic Johnson was on First Take a
few weeks ago and he was talking about I said,
I talked to him about what makes a superstar. He said,
somebody that could go on the road and sell out
the building. And I love that quote, and I said, okay,

(26:55):
what makes a superstar player? He said? You gotta win,
he said, but more importantly, it gotta pain you to lose.
It gotta hurt it gotta hurt your soul. You know,
it can't be something like man I was there driving Nah.
You know I gave my best effort, did you? Did you?
Because if it hurt that much, you wouldn't be able

(27:15):
to summarily dismiss it that easily. You can't. And that's
the kind of stuff that we look for when we
look at greatness on any levels. That's my number one
thing that I love about covering sports. It doesn't matter
what it is. And I tell you something because you
have a lot to do with this. One of my
favorite moments that really illuminated for you know what I'm

(27:41):
about as a sports pundit and commentator and journalists and
all of this stuff was that time we were at
Canilo Triple G the rematch and I'm sitting here, well
my non fighting as self, and I am debating with
you and Na Charlo right and Aero Space.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
I think I think er sp was did but I.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Know you and the yallos right, And I turned around
and I went like this, so I'm talking. All of
y'all started laughing because I said I'm talking, and then
I want to let I said, hold up, champion, Champion, Champion, champion,
all of y'all undefeated, and I'm the one arguing with
y'all because all of y'all thought that Canila had won
the second fight when you you articulated it was the

(28:26):
body shot, the body table up Triple G's body, and
I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no no. And then
I just I caught myself and I was like, undefeated champion,
I might need to shut up. You know what I'm saying.
It's like And the reason why I used that as
an example is because I'm covering it, I'm chronicling it.

(28:48):
But y'all know what I'm saying. And so because you
know what my greatest my greatest appreciation is what I
receive from great ones. My job to me is to

(29:08):
articulate to the masters who don't have the access that
I have to the great ones. You know what I'm saying,
And that is what I try to I don't try
to act like I'm that. What I try to say
is I know what it is because I've been taught
by them.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Yeah, but you also got it in you yourself.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
I think so, But in your lane and then your
fear lane, yes, you know you don't do what you
have done and what you're doing at the level you
know obviously, you know anybody can have a moment, but
but consistency is not talked about enough. And to be
at the level you've been at, you know you gotta
be different. You know you hear people say all the time, man,
you can't have it. You can't compete well and have

(29:48):
a fear of losing. What I do know about myself
is I had a fear of losing. And I don't
know if the fear of losing was greater than my
my my love when But I do know.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
They work for me. They both work for me.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, because you can't you can't find especially in a
pugilistic sport like boxing or the UFC. That's the one
point in time where I monitor cockiness. I don't believe
that it should be completely stripped from you if that's
your personality, because what works for you works for you.

(30:25):
But I have to be able to look at you
and feel like it's healthy because somebody has a license
to assault, if not kill you. And if you can truth,
exhaust every means and measure too to be in the
best pod put yourself in the best possible position to

(30:47):
be successful. I lose respect for you because it's like
somebody's got a license to kill you. You understand that they're
trying to hurt you. And if they do damage to
you inside a boxing ring or inside an octagon, you
do understand. They're not gonna get arrested anything. I mean,
this is this is legal. You gotta be ready. And
I remember somebody. Remember people looked at Floyd money made,

(31:08):
whether they thought he was so damned cocky and all
of this other stuff. But I know him, and so
I remember being around him before the Gaddy fight for
Gaddy God Rest for a Gaddy fight. The Eagles were
playing in the Super Bowl in Jacksonville against Tom Brady
and the Patriots, and I said to Floyd. We had

(31:31):
a nightclub and Floyd in there, and I said, yo, man,
that's the modern day rocket right there. Come on, bro
and Floyd. And Floyd grabbed my arm, excuse my language,
and he said, ain't no mother with six losses gonna
beat me. He said that Zach words and six losses

(31:52):
beating me, That's what he said. And I looked at him,
and I knew how serious he was. And so I
go back before the fight to watch Gaddy's fights. And
I'm saying if there was ever a thing that I
never believed about Floyd was when Floyd said he didn't

(32:13):
watch other fighters. I don't know whether it's true or not,
but I never believed him when he said that, because
I said, he can't be this confident without even watching somebody.
He's gotta at least see him, you know. And and
I went to the fight. It was in Atlantic City,
and he picked Gaddy up, I mean one at one sequence.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
He hit him on like six straight.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
He was magnificent. And I just said to myself, Okay,
that's a healthy cockness, because what he was saying is
I know something you may not. He wasn't saying I'm this,
I'm this, I'm that. He's saying I know something you don't,
which man, which says to me, he prepared himself.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
That's where the fear come in at too, right, And
I noticed just about myself. That's what got me up early,
and that's what kept me laying, that's right, I can't.
I can't, Allie. I thought about fight night. I thought
about the seven, eight nine rolls of press Rod.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
I thought about that, and it wasn't just about the media.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
But but y'all play a role in this too, because
it's some stuff y'all saying, and I'm not saying people.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
You know, you can have your opinion. I think he
gonna lose with it.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
But it's the disrespect, it's the it's the it's that
kind of stuff where I'm looking at y'all and I know, man,
you got your laptop open.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
I see the light on your face, and you it
is tonight to night. I thought about that.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
I thought about Sunday morning when I woke up and
came to and realizing that, man, what happened last night, Like,
oh my god, I got beat and I gotta look
at my wife and look at my kids. That's the
kind of stuff that drove me. That was the fear especially,
but that was the theory part though, that that that
that caused me to go to that level where.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
You can lose a basketball game, you lose a football game,
you get knocked out, that's embarrass.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
You have lifelong consequences, that's life long.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Concert We get knocked that that's embarrassing. So again, it's
levels to this and to me in a pugilistic sport,
that that that's the peak and one of the things
that I applauded about. You know you, you were far
more delicate than somebody like a Floyd was. But it
didn't make Floyd wrong when he was but he was like, yo,

(34:16):
you ain't gotta get in the ring. He said, we
could train. I appreciate your help and or fight night.
That that's me and Nick, that's me in it. And
I always appreciated that because so many people in the
media would say when he would say something, it's about me,
you know me first, and they would record that like

(34:37):
a negative and I'm going like this, Well, who's this
supposed to be about? He the one that got to
get in there. You can't help him fight night. He's
all on his loan. You can say whatever you want,
but when he get clipped.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
In the headline, what you're gonna do then?

Speaker 3 (34:54):
And so I appreciate that. And it's what I'm saying,
is that kind of mental that education is what I
can talk to a boxer and apply it to a
basketball player, can apply it to a football player. So
when I'm thinking about that, if you're an athlete, and
let's say, for example, you have a problem with me,

(35:15):
my attitude is look in the mirror, because there's no
way that I'm not going to listen to your story.
If I don't know your story enough, you didn't want
to tell it. I've been around, I'm not hard to find.
I got the platforms you want. This message disseminated. I'm
right here. If you want to ignore that and you
wanted to leave it up to me, then don't complain

(35:38):
because it's not like I'm avoiding giving you that. There's
plenty of times I've been on the air I'm going
like this, this is what they said say because it's
your story, so I want to contextualize it properly. Even
if I disagree with you, I want to be able
to say, yo, I hollered at him. I hollered at him,
and here's what he said. One of my favorite moments

(35:59):
in recent myth was when you came on my show
after Tyson fort Jake Paul. So I'm looking at it
as a pundit. I'm like, if Jake Paul do something
to this man, I said, nah that this is wrong.
This man is thirty years older than them, you know,
saying he's approaching sixty years and you can't do this,
you know. And I'm thinking about that because and I

(36:20):
felt that way when I saw Mike walking to the ring,
because I saw the brace on and I saw a
limp and I walk. He was walking gingerly and I
was nervous. And you came on afterwards and you said, yo,
had Jake heard him the boxing world me included, we'd
have had a problem. It'd have been a problem. And

(36:41):
I was like, see, because what that said to me
is that I'm in sync. You know what I mean.
It's like because I would not have come up with
that had I not thought about past conversations with you,
from everybody you the Floyd to Hearn's, the Sugar Ray
to Haggling, everybody in between. I would have never deduced
that kind of thought process unless I got that from y'all.

(37:05):
And so to me, you're absolutely right. It's all of
that thinking that goes into it and learning from greatness.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Man, I want to get back to the timeline man.
You you know, man, I I.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Steve and I struggle. I struggle man reading about your father. Yeah,
I struggle, man, because you know, my father wasn't a
perfect man, but he was present and my mother, you know,
she had her struggles, and that's one thing that my
dad always said. He said, Man, I may struggle and
have my stuff, but I'm here. I'm not going nowhere.

(37:37):
And I was able to take.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
That and be present from my kids and all of that. Man.
But seeing that kind of movement, man, and.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Hearing about you at ten years old, you know, you
and your mother looking for him and finding him at
your uncle's house and it's another one man, and you
start were you say, man, all heck broke loose and
then get y'all getting into your mother and then him
telling you y'all gotta go. But hearing you at ten

(38:05):
years old say, I learned that night that my mother
and my siblings were not as important as the other family.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
I mean, that's heavy.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
How did you deal with it? How did you process?
How did your mother deal with it?

Speaker 3 (38:28):
To watch man, it's just to bring back to hearken
back to that moment. I want any man, especially any

(38:52):
black man, who loves their mama the way we love
our mamas, to imagine your mother knowing about somebody else
and the combination of pain and fury that that brings.

(39:17):
But then I want you to take that same feeling
and imagine being an eyewitness to your mother confronting that
moment emotionally and physically because she was there, and your

(39:39):
father to her face, right in front of your face,
pushing her out the house to shield her from the
other woman and sending her home. S woman in a

(40:02):
situation like that, where your man is with another woman,
it's going to have a level of fury. But then
to watch him, instead of being contrite, apologetic, apologetic and
desperate for you for your forgiveness, your understanding, or whatever

(40:24):
it is in that moment, instead uses that moment to
reject you and push you away with the woman in
front of you and your son by your side. What
man can witness that and be okay with it? You see,

(40:48):
we all go through what we go through. And one
of the things that I abhor in our society is
the way Black men are stereotyped and excoriated because they
have this belief that black men are not good fathers,

(41:09):
when in fact, there's a whole bunch of us that
are great fathers no matter what's going on in our
relationship with the person. Okay, in terms of a relationship,
that's entirely different from co parenting and parenting, and we're
big on that in a lot more situations than we're
given credit for. And so I'm protective of black men

(41:33):
in that regard because I know how much we love
our children. I know how much we love our mamas.
But what my father did that day was emblematic of
every black man's greatest fear about how the world reviews
or views rather a black father. And you ten at

(41:59):
the time, so you can't really say much, but you
hold onto those memories. You never forget it. And so
as time went on, I remembered all of these things
when ultimately my father and I had our confrontation later
on in life, but it wasn't the one incident per se,
involving my brother and you know, his passing and insurance

(42:21):
money and all of this other stuff. It was the
compilation of all the things that he had done. And
the difference between my mother, my sisters, and I is
that my sisters were fixated on the infidelity. I was
fixated on the suffering he caused my mother because she

(42:45):
was doing his job. There's plenty of relationships that are
not working out in terms of marriages or co parenting
relationships where a man is holding it down as he's
handling his responsibilities. He's just not with the mom, or
they're not vibing, or they're going to get divorced, or
whatever it is. But he's still handling his business as
a father and as the leader of the household. He's

(43:07):
making sure that she doesn't have to deal with anything
beyond the emotional state of affairs involving their relationship as
husband or wife, boyfriend and girlfriend or co parents or whatever.
To me, that's life. What should never be a part
of life is that you're a man and you have
an obligation to children that you brought in this world,

(43:30):
and you said, bump it, let her handle it. I
don't want that. There's no excuse for that, and any man,
I don't give a damn whether it's one hundred years ago,
fifty years ago, twenty years ago, ten years ago now,
ten years from now, twenty thirty forty. When you are
a man, you have a responsibility to do everything in

(43:51):
your power to provide for your family, even if it
means death, do to trying. You have that obligation, and
if you don't fulfill that, I have no respect for you.
You know, I'm my daughter's you know, one and two
years away, respectively. From graduating from high school. I'm not

(44:12):
a father, I'm a daddy. They don't say father, they
say dad, but daddy. I'm a daddy, understand. And the
greatest moment is going to be when they graduate from
high school and then after that when they graduate from college,
because I positioned myself to position them to do that.

(44:33):
So boom, I did my job. That Everything else is dressing.
But all of these years have been about doing that job.
And to me, if you a father, how could you
think differently? I don't comprehend that, and I don't want
to comprehend.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
I don't want to now, as you just said that,
there's no excuse for that.

Speaker 2 (44:57):
But have you, throughout the years learn in your father's history.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Have you connected any dots where, oh, his father was
like that, or his grandfather?

Speaker 2 (45:06):
What example did he.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
Have, not his grandfather, not his father. It wasn't anything
like that. It was And I'm gonna tell you exactly
what I believe it is. I know it is. Man
pride hurts us all if too much of it shows up.

(45:29):
My father was perfectly fine, struggling but having the six kids,
and he was the man, bread winner, et cetera, et cetera.
But when it wasn't enough and my mother went and
got her nursing degree, she had a career. All of

(45:49):
a sudden, it was a different animal because they got
to supplement you. And when you have to supplement income
and you have to bring you have to step beyond
your own boundaries at that particular moment in time. Remember,
my mother and father were born in the forties, in

(46:10):
late thirties, right, My mother's born nineteen forty one, father
born nineteen thirty eight. You know, you had that going on.
And so what you have is a situation where if
you are of the mindset that this is the way
it's supposed to be, and there's a deviation from that,
and it compromises the level of dominion, control or whatever
you want to do. You'll notice that when we look

(46:32):
at you know, your father, my father, our grandparents or whatever,
that old school stubborn mentality about how things are supposed
to be getting the way of it. So I've heard it.
I heard him use that rationale one time, really, and
I said to him, fine, how come that didn't apply

(46:54):
to you still fulilling your responsibilities since you old school?
Because back in the day, you gotta Remember women weren't working.
There was so much that women were allowed to do.
Think about that. Think about how restrictive our society was
towards women, so men had to hold it down. So

(47:14):
if we're gonna be old school to justify how we
behaved in that regard, how can we could hold on
the old school mentality and tactics to make sure that
we enforced the mindset that says you take care of
your family. You don't lead that to somebody else. What's
if you're black in this country and you old enough.

(47:36):
One of your all time favorite shows was Good Times,
James Evans, Poor Chicago Projects, you know, JJ Evans Junior
and all of this, Thelma with her fine as self
at the time, and all of this other stuff, Michael
the kidd and you know, all of this stuff. They
didn't have much. But who brought home to bacon or

(48:00):
damn near die trying? Who is that? That was him?
Why was that the mentality? Because that's the way it
was supposed to be. And we try to teach differently
in this day and age certain old school things. I
don't want to go away. I don't want it to
ever be comfortable. You know, you got cats out here.

(48:21):
It could be some jiggilos, you know, saying women paying
their bills and they living with the women or whatever.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
It's a lot going on.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
You can't I don't give a damn how much money
she have. We ain't living a courd in to her means.
We live in a court in the mind. I'm not
living off no woman. I don't care what our society
says in this day and age. I'm not being misogynistic
or anything like that. I'm respecting and valuing women from
the standpoint of showing you, yo, if I'm the man

(48:49):
in your life as a dad, as an uncle, as
a father, as a husband, whatever, I'm going to be
focused on holding up my end of the bargain to
make sure that I'm not a debilitating presence in your life.
I'm not a negative. I'm not a liability. I'm an additive.
You know. That's my responsibility or or die trying. And

(49:12):
I don't believe that kind of mentality should ever go away.
That's just how I roll. I'm not I don't mind
work anyway. I'm training my position of my daughters to work.
Get yours, get your college education, get your money. Don't
quote unquote need. But in the same breath, when you
have understand that it ain't just to take care of yourself,

(49:35):
you gotta remember your responsibilities to take care of your
family too. But you also got to be with a
young man that's gonna hold it down or die. Try
and you understaying you can't. I ain't wanna. I ain't
want to think about some no good pump with no
ambition trying to come to my daughter and they coming
to meet me. Were gonna have a problem, bro, We

(49:57):
gonna have a problem because the first thing I'm gonna
loo at it's how much he wanted to work?

Speaker 2 (50:03):
What are you doing with your life?

Speaker 3 (50:05):
What you doing? What you got going on? We're going
to school, what you studying? What's your ambition? Don't come
to me, no college student. I don't know what my child.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Started, my brother. It's a non starter. We can't even
it's a nons We can't really go past.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Let me tell you something. You saw mart Lawrence and
Will Smith and bad boys too. You understand when when?
When when that cat came to this door? What you're
doing here? You know what I'm saying? All of this
stuff like that? Nah, it would it would it wouldn't
be funny with me. It ain't happening. It would be
more like fifty cents than the thieves when he took
the dude that when he back with his boys in

(50:44):
the garage, like you know, you know.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
That's my baby. That's what you got to I got
you got one daughter. I got four boys one girl,
but you got two daughters. So it's the truth is
if you don't respond like that, that's hab normal, that's strange.
I'm gonna ask you this. I'm gonna move on. Have
you found forgiveness for your daddy?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Have you have you? Have you forgiven him?

Speaker 3 (51:06):
I forgave him the day I gave his eulogy.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Come on.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
When he passed away in August of twenty eighteen, fourteen
months after my mother had passed away, I was, we're
going to the funeral service, and my sister Calmen, Calmen,
she said, oh god no, because I called that seven

(51:32):
o'clock that morning. Funerals at ten o'clock. I called at
seven o'clock that morning. I said, I just want to
let you know I'm giving the eulogy. She's like, what,
Because everybody knew how I felt about here. Calm was like, Steve, no,
Steve No. I said, it's not a request. I'm just
letting you know. I'm inform you what I'm gonna do.

(51:53):
I'm giving the eulogy. She said, Steve, please, please Steve.
She said, oh god, I know. She says, Steve please.
What would mom wants? Because my mother, to her dying breath,
loved my daddy and defended him. And so I hung

(52:18):
up the phone with her. And I'm driving to the funeral.
I'm living in North Jersey at the time. I'm driving
the funerals in Queens, New York, about an hour away,
and I pick up the phone and I called past
the Aar Bernard from the Christian Cultural Center, and I
said to him, here's where I'm at, Here's how I'm feeling,

(52:38):
because I remember, you know, during my mother's service, I
was so mad because she had sacrificed so much, as
so much of her life, her good times had been
stripped of her, and I was just furious, right, And
I just said, even up to that point, even up
to that point, even up to that point, And I said,
I got some things I want to say. And Pastor

(53:00):
Bernard said, You've earned the right to say it. He said,
but I would caution you that there's nothing wrong with forgiveness.
And then gave me some scripture from the Book of
Matthew and he talked to me for about a half hour,
and he says, so you could still say what you say,
but remember that whatever you say, you're gonna have to

(53:22):
live with cause Pops is gone, but you're still here
and you're gonna have to live with it, he says,
So know that before you say anything. That way, whatever
you say, you'll know you can live with it. I said, cool.
And so I went to the funeral and there was

(53:44):
so many people there cause my father was like the
life of the party. See, you know in the home,
it was different outside my father, I mean, kids loved them,
neighbors loved them. My father was very outgoing. He was
a sports star. You can play basketball, was a great
picture get drafted by the New York Yankees in the fifties.
But my mother was pregnant with my older sister Linda.

(54:04):
But my father, my mother Calypso danced. We love Calypso
music from the Islands West. Then then you know all
of that stuff going on. So my pops, my Pops
was like the life of the party. So he had
a lot of friends, and all of these people rolled
up and they said nothing but the most glowing things
about them, you know, right, not the most I mean

(54:25):
you'd have thought you'd have thought he was Moses or nobody.
I mean, it wasn't the prophets. I mean, it was unbelievable,
you know. And so the family sat there because they
were waiting to see who's gonna go up and saying.
All my sisters turned and looked at me because they
knew here I come, and nobody wanted to say anything.

(54:47):
They was like, and I got neighbors there that were,
you know, neighbors that were my sisters are all older
than me, So my neighbors were their age three, four
or five years older than me, that kind of thing.
And they were all there, all the people that grew
up in Hollis with us, all of them. And I
rolled up there to give the eulogy, and my first
words were, it was very, very nice to hear everything

(55:10):
everybody had to say about my father, But you need
to understand that when it comes to his children, we
have an entirely different version of him. I said that
my cousin Derek who I'm very tight with. My cousin
Derek goes like, this was over, you know, close family

(55:36):
friend used to date my sister.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
He was like, oh, you can see him doing it
looking at everything, you know, And my sister's like, oh god, no, god, no,
you know.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
And two of my neighbors, they were the Johnson's, Billy
and Tony. They was like, don't do this, you know,
I mean everybody, because everybody, you know, they know I
can speak. And they were like they were they were
expected me to just go in, and I was about to.
I went like this, I said, my father, knowing my nephew,

(56:10):
how much my nephew loved his granddaddy, my nephew Josh
TJ and all of them, how much they loved my
my you know, grandpa and stuff. I was like, bottom
line is, my father wasn't a very good man. There
were a lot of things that he was lacking and
stuff like that. And then it was like for a
minute and everybody was like, just say oh my god.

(56:32):
And in the middle all of that, I said, but
here's the thing. I said. My mother, the greatest woman,
the greatest human being I've ever known, know nothing about sports.
I said, I'm pretty popular. I'm on ESPN, I'm knowing worldwide,
and my mother's like EPs and whatever it is. I

(56:54):
don't know where he works because she doesn't follow sports cats.
And I said, but here's the thing, I said, my
mother knew what a fastball was, she knew, she knew
what a no hitter was, she knew what a home
run was, she knew what the stolen base was. She
knew what a ball she what a walk was. I said,

(57:15):
my mother knew all of these things. And I said,
there's only one reason she knew that because of him,
because he was so special to her, the greatest woman
and the greatest human being I've ever known. I said,
that's why she knew. So if somebody so precious felt
this way about this man, there must have been something.

(57:40):
And then I went down the list of all the
great things my father used to do to make us
laugh and to make us have a good time, and
all of that stuff, and the forgiveness and the nostalgia
and all of that stuff kicked in during the speech.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
So you didn't get it after talking the past.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
I didn't get it. After talking the past. I got it.
Pastor helped me formulate my thoughts and make a decision.
But the real forgiveness kicked in as I was talking
about him, and I was remembering a family picnic, or
I was remembering a party we had gone to, or
you know, a family gathering or whatever, and I was

(58:18):
remembering the jokes that he would tell that would make
us laugh and all of this other stuff. And I
ended it by saying, no, he wasn't perfect, but he
was my dad. Wow, man, I love him.

Speaker 2 (58:32):
Wow, God bless him. Man.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
I moved on.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Man, that's powerful. That's powerful man.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
For many many reasons. Number one, so everybody in the
room didn't have a heart attack. They sound like they
I can only imagine by they was looking like, Now, Stephen, they.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Don't do it. But but for yourself.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
People don't realize that, man, about forgiveness. Man, they think
that by holding the grudge, by holding the issue, the offense,
whatever it is, that I'm holding you hostage. And people
also don't realize that sometimes not sometimes when when forgiveness
is needed, it's even toward the dead, because.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
That person that's in that grade that's no longer living, they.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Still hold something again, they still got something that's holding you.
If you don't release them and push it away.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Man. So that man, that's powerful man.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
And I just you know, I know this happened many
many years ago, but just hearing this for the first time,
I really appreciate that, man, And I think it has
a lot to do with your success as a man,
as a father, just you being.

Speaker 2 (59:32):
A person you are. It's hard to hold something like that, man.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
And I'm not forgiven.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
I would have been preoccupied, That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (59:37):
I'd have been preoccupied. I would have been distracted. I
wouldn't have been I wouldn't have been able to tap
into my best self because I would have been holding it.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
That's my point. Yeah, So man, that's powerful man.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Anybody listening on this broadcast and you got something to
let go, man, let it go, push that thing.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Let it go.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
But they ain't apologize, they might not, but get it off.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Of you so you can keep being who you need
to be and soreing the way you need to sowar So, man,
I appreciate you sharing and that. But but the other
thing about your story, and which is similar to mine,
is you got real stuff going on in life. You
got pressures, you got things, you're working through as a kid.
But sports was a tremendous asset and outlet for you
and basketball. You know, you played all other sports in

(01:00:15):
the streets and different things like that, but basketball became
your love and your thing, and it got you a
scholarship at you know HBCU, yep, Winster Salem State, which
you have a you know you still do a lot
for HBCUs to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
But I need you to clear some up up me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
I don't know who made it, but you know what
the meme out there, Steven A. Smiths average one and
half point, you set that record straight on your podcast zero.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
But what I'm saying, just talk to the people. Why
why is not Why is that not true?

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
I cracked my kneecap in half first year. Yes, So
what happened was is that I never got to play.
I would come there and literally to this very day,
like I'm sitting here with you right now, it's thirty
three years removed from college. I cracked my kneecap in

(01:01:11):
half in nineteen eighty nine. I was at the Division
I school six in screws in my knee, I'm on
the ball, I'm on the court for five minutes. I
could ball a little bit. I'm limping right after. I'm
not lasting longer than that, chronic tender nights, kneecap, never strong,

(01:01:33):
always slim to begin with, and I was never healthy.
So I was sitting there going like the where the
hell y'all get the one and a half boys for me? Please,
y'allus I got. I got my scholarship before I cracked
decap and half, do you understand? And then they kept
me on scholarship because I came back after I had

(01:01:53):
to leave school to come back to Queens, New York
to rehab because my mother mother's medical insurance paid for
my rehabby because the Division two school didn't have they
didn't have the facilities necessary to be able to rehab.
You like that, I said, So when they came, I said,
I came back and won my scholarship because even on
one leg lipping, I bust some people behind. But at

(01:02:14):
the end of the day, the bottom line is I
didn't plumb like what y'all talking about. I might have
appeared in in two gates for a minute because I'm
lipping thereafter, I'm living. The coach used to joke, you know,
I'm from Kentucky, he said, you know what we do.
The horses they bring they got a lip it, We
shoot them. That's what he was saying. He said, I

(01:02:35):
should shoot your ass. That's what he would. I'm like,
I'm fine. I'm like, it's no problem. And this is
the thing that kills me. I'm like, so I go
in this industry. And I marched my way up the ladder.
From an intern at the Winston Salem Chronicle, the Wistern

(01:02:57):
Salem Journal, the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I get my high
school job at the New York Daily News. I get
a college job at the Philadelphia Choirer. I climb up
seven different damn promotions. I go from there. I'm on
television with ceing NS Side and Fox Sports, then ESPN,
and I'm in my fifties and now y'all want to
bring up the n I ain't do. I'm like, ain't

(01:03:18):
y'all about thirty years later? But if that makes y'all
feel good that you do somewhere, you go ahead. But
you know how it is, and I'm like, go ahead
and do it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
I'm like, you know how it is being at the top.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
I'm doing what I'm doing. You understand what I'm saying
I'm like, I'm like, okay, you know, do what you
gotta do. I can take it. And so it's just
like with the with the boxing video where I look horrible. Okay,
I got two, not one, but two tor rotator clubs.
I got surgery on both to prof it. Okay, but
let's find some knucklehead. Tell me you ain't got a
torm rotator. Come to twig and look, loosen it up.

(01:03:49):
And then he's videotaping me.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Without doing yell, ask me how I get out?

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
His son was video taping me and the trainer son, yes,
in my house, all right, But I'm like this, I'm like,
it's fine. If y'all want to think I fight like that,
go ahead, it's okay. But I'm in my fifties and
this is what y'all want to do. Who am I
looking to fight? It's okay, I'm like this. So in
other words, let's find what he's not number one at

(01:04:14):
to ignore hard.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
What happened when you're on top.

Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
People get tired of see you win exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
And so mind you, we live in a different age.
You understand you could go to Google or whatever and
get all of that stuff like when they google you,
you can get that stuff. We enable it where they
can't find it. Why are you able to find it
with me? You know why? Because I tell them leave
it all up. Ain'tybody hiding? You're see what I'm saying.
That happened. You understand you ain't You know? You also sore?

(01:04:41):
You go back and you look heavy? Go back, don't
go back a decade, go back three four years ago.
I'm skinny, fat, no muscle, no definition. I got a
pot belly. I'm two hundred and eight pounds with thirty
percent body fat. Is that how I look down? You
see what I'm saying. So I'm I'm I'm fifty seven
and even in that out shoot, I haven't worked out

(01:05:02):
the last five weeks. I got a flame elbows, but
I'll be back in the gypsuit. But I'm like this,
I'm in the best shape I've been in in thirty years.
What y'all doing? Oh? You show the contract? You unstead
I'm saying, I ain't gonna confer whether it's true or not.
But you saw the contract to see the other contract?
Seriously see that coming? Do you know what's coming down
the pike? So this is what I'm doing. I'm going
this way. What you doing? What y'all doing? Y'all got

(01:05:24):
time to do that, and I'm going like this rather
than have time to do that. Wyantn't you ask a
brother for some advice. I might give it to you.
I'm happy to help because I want everybody to succeed.
See this is how I think. So you got people,
I got my boxing coach. Could you please let could
you please let us do a video? Please? No, not yet,
let us up? No, let him leave that up there

(01:05:45):
right now. Basketball, I was good enough to get a
scholarship to pay for my education, That's right. Did you
ever think about that? I didn't get a scholarship to
go pro. You understand, on my best day, with no
knee injury, I want no damn Allen Iversins, Steph Curry,
Kyrie Irvin or anybody else. They still would have smoked me.
But I was good enough to get a free education.

(01:06:07):
What you're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
But when you can textualize it like that, you take
all the power over. Now what I'm laughing with you,
now what that's what it is. You gotta go cook
some up back in the basement or in somebody's room
wherever you did that, you gotta go do something else
because people just get tired of seeing you win it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
And there's the thing. Then you got these clowns, and
some of them are in my industry. I didn't write
my own book. Oh really, So I just I just
I had somebody else tell my life story. I had
somebody else give those details. Did you know that Simon
and Schuston has editors? Do you know that they have
fact checkers? Do you know that when you talk about, oh,

(01:06:45):
he didn't get any doctorate from Winston Selic, I didn't
from Maya alma mater. That calls me for contribution. I
didn't get a doctorate. I just made it. So when
I gave the sport, when I got the doctorates, and
I gave the keynote address, that graduate that was made
up to, I've just got that. They just gave me
word that I got inducted into the Black College Hall

(01:07:07):
of Fame this coming September. Do you want to come
to Atlanta and see that I made that up to?
I mean, it's like you start reaching. It's like really
you start reaching. It's like you start reach preaching. It's like,
is your life that bad? I guess so. So it's
it's an effort to humiliate, to break, to do all
of this other stuff. How does it feel to know

(01:07:29):
you're not doing any of that with me? I continue
to ascend, and I'm gonna keep on ascending until God
tells me otherwise.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
Well, as life works and as life happens, as we know,
you know, oftentimes and guaranteed, but oftentimes one door is shut,
another door open. So you know you're having that situation
with the knee. You know, with the encouragement of the
university coach Clarence Big House Games, you get your degree
in mass communication and they encourage you, hey man, take

(01:08:00):
take it this route. You graduated ninety one and this
kicks off the journalism career at the Winsom Salem like
you said, journal Greensboro News Record and in North Carolina
to the New York Daily News in the Philadelphia in Quiry.
But while you're in Carolina as an editorial assistant. Think
you said you're making what fifteen hundred.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Fifteen thousand, three hundred or fifty thousand, one hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
I think it's three hundred. I think that's what's in
the year.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
You know, your brother Basil I love this because you know,
your father, your biological father, wasn't there, but you and
Basil got closer as y'all got older, and now he's
playing that role and that's just a powerful thing. And
how sometimes you know, we don't have what we think
we need, but it's it's a ram in a bush.
But I love it because you know, you're kind of
lamenting to him about you know, I'm I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
Complaining about being at high point.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
But your brother, man, he starts to not only speak
life into you, he starts to speak prophetically you where
you at at that stage, and your brother starts saying
stuff like, man, you're gonna you're gonna be on ESPN.

Speaker 3 (01:08:55):
That's exactly what he said.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
He said, You're gonna be on TV. The newspaper is
not your last stop.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
You're gonna be one of the biggest stars in sports media,
and you're gonna be a household name. How did your
brother Basil have that kind of vision and have prophetic
vision where he spoke some years away from when it
was actually gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
My brother was one of those guys that he prided
himself on just getting it, Like he can walk into
a room and light up a room. And his whole
point was, have you listen to you speak? Do you
understand the conviction with which you speak? He said, if

(01:09:33):
you're wrong, somebody's gonna have to prove it because you
mean what you say. I like that, and that's how
you bring it. And he always told me that. He said,
it's impossible for somebody to listen to you speak and
not stop and listen. They can't dismiss you while listening
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
They might not agree, but they can't dismiss you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
Cahn't dismiss it. They got to react to it. You
provoke a response. That's what you do. And he said,
that's what television is. That's what made Howard Cosell the
superstar that he was. Who was my idol. I idolized
Howard Cosell growing up for two reasons. Number one was
his relationship with Muhammad Ali, and number two, how distinctive

(01:10:16):
his voice was. When he spoke, you knew it was him.
And my favorite example to highlight what I'm saying about
Howard Cosell, it wasn't him on a Wild World of Sports.
It wasn't him screaming down goes Fraser. When Fraser got
knocked out by George Foreman after getting knocked down about
seven times and stuff like that. It wasn't down, Goes Frasier.

(01:10:39):
It wasn't. It is over. It is over. Ali has
done it beating George Foreman. It wasn't any of that.
It was him doing halftime highlights on Monday Night football.
But you never saw his face during half that this
halftime highlights brought to yo by R breathing apart and
true to form. What would I do? I pull it

(01:11:00):
out and look up, what's Meryll Lynch Broke Ridge Firm
stuff like that. I was like, that's what Merrill Lynch is.
I never would have thought about that at that staging
point in my life had Howard Cosell not mentioned the
sponsor for halftime highlights and so he, to me, made
Merrill Lynch omnipotent. You know, you knew who they were

(01:11:24):
because of him and his voice. And my brother was
the first one saying that. You now, later on it
would be Sunny Hill in Philadelphia world known. Everybody knows
Sunny Hill or basketball. You know the mind that he is,
and he's mister Philadelphia. But before him, my brother was
the one who told me that, and so two months

(01:11:46):
before my brother died was when he.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Said, he said, that was the last conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
It was the last conversation we had. It was in August.
I'm trying to face to face. It was in August
ninety two, and he was like, Yo, this is what
you're going.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Did you believe watch?

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
No? I didn't. I didn't. I knew that I had
a chance to be successful, but I didn't see all
of that. And so everybody uses a motivation. And when
my brother passed away, I remember everything that he said.
And you know, families have this habit of going to
the gravesite, laying down some flowers, talking to thed deceased

(01:12:24):
loved one, et cetera, et cetera. For me, I made
the decision I would not go back until I achieved
what he said I was gonna achieve. And it took
me eleven years. But in October of two thousand and three,
espnkme and hired me. And when they hired me, one

(01:12:47):
of the first things I did was go to the
grave site and I was like, bro, I did it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
You're here. I'm want to start.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
I'm going to start start there and keep going from
that point because you know you made that that that
was more of a vowe to yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Yeah, the vale and motivated me.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
And it was a long row eleven years, a long
time and a lot of ups and downs and you know,
different things that you had to go through, and you
made it to ESPN. And when you first got there though,
you know, the the the higher.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Ups, the executives, you know, they getting.

Speaker 1 (01:13:21):
Feedback from everybody, but the Steve Nasa and Steven they said,
what y'all think?

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
What y'all think? And you said, didn't nobody want you to?

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
No, it wasn't when I got there, before you got there.

Speaker 2 (01:13:29):
It was before I got there, Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:13:31):
Mark Shapiro who's now the president of wm ME and
and you know, and and and runs and runs them
with Ari Emanuel and some others. Kevin Frasier, my boy
works for Entertainment tonight now, but at the time he
was working for uh ESPN. It was him and a

(01:13:53):
person by the name of Kerry Chandler who was running
h R for ESPN. They had Kevin, I knew her
I had met a few weeks earlier, and they both
went to Mark Shapiro because Kevin Frazer wanted off of NBA.

(01:14:15):
It was called NBA Shoot Around at the time. He
didn't like the show whatever whatever, And Mark Shapiro was like,
what can I do to keep you on? What do
you need? Kevin said, stephen A. His name is stephen A. Smith,
Go get him. And Mark Shapiro is like, who's this guy?
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
You had Fox?

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Yes, at Fox Sports, I was contributed to the best
damn Sports show. I wasn't permanent. I didn't want that,
but I remember that show. I was early show and
I was doing Last Word with Jim Rome sometimes and
all that stuff like that in the National Sports desk
as well. And then I got the call from ESPN

(01:14:53):
to come up for an audition. And later on Mark
Shapiro told me he went into a room he had
like twenty five direct reports, and he said, one guy
who ultimately became the executive VP there, his name is
Norby Williamson. He's no longer there, he said. One guy

(01:15:14):
was like, I guess we can try it. Let's see,
he said. The other twenty four people all said, hell, no,
we don't want him. He doesn't fit here. He's not
our cup of tea. We don't want that. And so
he said that call him in for an addition. This
is him later on telling me what happened. He said
to me he had never experienced such universal vitriol against

(01:15:39):
one person like he said. I couldn't believe. He said,
I said, there has to be something. None of them
knew you, none of them had met you, none of
them have talked to you. They just went by your
on air persona and said we don't want him here.
He said, twenty four different people did it. And he said,
I said, there has to be something to this, because

(01:16:00):
I've never seen that in my career. So he called
me in for an audition. So I rolled up there
and I was ready. But when I knew and I
knew I had to be, they put me through like
eighteen different interviews that day. It was only for like
fifteen to twenty minutes per interview, but I had eighteen

(01:16:20):
of them, and the very very last interview was with
this individual by the name of Mike McQuaid.

Speaker 5 (01:16:26):
Hold on right there, stay right there for a second.
Mike was over me when I was at ESPN boxing.
So tell me that story. Yeah, So Mike call him
dark Data. He is dark Vader me about.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
It because his personal I mean he is stowing, but
he's really he's really a great guy.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
You get yeah, and if you and if you put,
if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, you
have no problems with my no.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
Problems with Mike. Do your job. You don't do your job,
it's a problem. It's a problem.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
See the other side.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
You gonna see that other face with a straight face,
won't miss words, won't pull any punches, and will check
you in a heartbeat. But Mike and I. Mike interviewed
me and he said, you know you had Fox and
that's nice, he said, but some would say that's you
being the big fish and a relatively little pond, because

(01:17:14):
ESPN obviously feels the big pond at a worldwide leader.
And I looked around make sure nobody was around, and
I said, I mean no disrespect, but I'm not gonna
be a little fish in anybody's pond. Put me in
front of the camera and you'll see what I can do.
I said, that's fine. He said, okay, let's go, and

(01:17:35):
then I walked in for the audition, and I knew
that I was gonna knock it out the park because
when I walked into the audition. Kevin Frazier was behind
the desk ready to interview me to do the audition,
And so when I did the audition, I finished the
audition at about two forty five. At about three thirty,

(01:17:58):
I'm driving home New York and three forty five, my
agent called me and said, congratulations, you got to do
You just got a three year deal with ESPN. And
Mark Shapiro would lady tell me it was the greatest
audition he had ever seen in the history of his
time of them. He said, I ain't never ain't never

(01:18:19):
seen nobody light up a camera like that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Did you talk to McQuaid after, No, you didn't see him. No.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
But when I got there, he was my direct boss,
and he wanted to be because he was like this
boy special.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Yeah, man, I had you know, we are are boxing show.
We did twenty some shows a year, whatever the case
may be, and you know, appreciate all the producers and
all the.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Stuff throughout the years.

Speaker 1 (01:18:47):
But but when Mike McQuay showed up, we kept hearing
about Mike mcquad, Mike quad, and I'm like, everybody thought
that was gonna get fired because he just pulled up.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
He wasn't talking straight shooter. But we didn't know him.
You've only heard about it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:01):
But Joe Tessa tour my guy. He said, he said
things are gonna change for the better man. Everything went up,
like everything when everybody's level went up, the standard went up,
the product went up.

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
When you walk into a room with Mike McQuaid, you
had better do your job. There's nothing to negotiate about.
Everything else is open to it. Like like you know,
I can talk to him. You know people who work
and put in that work, because he ain't somebody that elevated.

(01:19:34):
He leaves by example, he's the executive VP. Now he
was there for thirty seven years before this happened. This
man put it in and tireless worker. So you don't
want no excuses. Now you're saying when you say, if
you can't do something, tell him if you got a
schedule in conflict, but your commitments you honor. And you

(01:19:58):
know it's like you got of putting that work. And
that's him. That's him, and you know he knows the
business backwards and forth, so you're not pulling the wool
over his eye. It ain't a thing he hasn't see.
So to try him would be a mistake.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
But if you work and you a grinder, and you
and you that that person that you striving to be
the greatest.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Totally he's perfect for He's totally good, but he's perfect.
But I'm saying he's perfect for you.

Speaker 3 (01:20:20):
It's right.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
He'll stimulate you to be better.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Ask your question, man, where you get your Where you
get your style from? Man? Where you get your when
you get like your.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
You know, like you know, they got to say it
like it's in me, not on me. You know, people
can try to dress you up. You have a start,
but you got your your physical style. But then also
to walk. Man, they be talking about you walking into
basketball guy. They say, man, he walk, He's walking in
the place like he owned the place, like he want
of the players.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):
Where that comes from? Cats jealousy. I'm gonna tell you
that right now. I'm gonna tell you that, and I am.
But do you walk in like that? Yes? I do.
I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna
say and I say this all all fun of love stuff.
Let me tell you something. I'm joking around, but I'm
also serious. You see me on first take on television.
You see one of these other shows up the hold on,

(01:21:08):
what's up? What's up with that time? What's up with
that shirt? What's up with that suit? I mean what
we're doing because it's like I'm letting cats know. Oh,
it's a standard. Now. I don't know whether this is
true or not. I'm entitled to my opinion. I believe
I'm the best dressed cat in sports. I really really do.
I'm talking about consistency. I'm feeling about an outfit here

(01:21:31):
like this. Sometimes I'm looking at Ryan Clark like he
got me somebody I'm looking at somebody else I got
all right, I got it. But I'm talking about in
terms of consistency, the long haul, the marathon. Oh, I
don't believe there's anybody in sports that could touch me.
So what happens is it makes me laugh because I'm
listening to players and former players on their podcast and

(01:21:53):
they talking back. He walking in and I'm going like this,
don't distract from what's really going on. I'm not walking
into the place like I'm one of the players. I'm
walking into the place like I'm the best dressed cat
I've been here.

Speaker 4 (01:22:09):
That's what I'm doing don't get it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:13):
I'm not This is not about playing when you want.
That ain't the basketball court roll. I didn't ask ESPN
to put the camera on me. I didn't ask ABC
to put the camera on me. But did I think
I was worthy based on my outfit? Yes? I did.
I'm sitting there like this. Do you see this suit
on me? Do you see how I'm drafting? Do you
see how it's falling? Do you see how it's collapsing

(01:22:35):
on the yeah? I got? Did you see the shoes?
Do you see the man bag that I might Rocketcasion?
You don't know? Do you see the shades that I'm right?
I'm like, I'm not walking in there like a player.
I'm walking in like players. Look at me and take
notes because some of y'all need help. You see what
I'm saying. Some of y'all need help. You know. It's

(01:22:57):
like you can walk with swagging all of that stuff
because of the game, But that's not the game walking
on that's a runway. And I'm not gonna walk into
an arena like I'm pulling up in the loading dock
area and you got the camera on me, and I'm
dressed like it's just another day. No, no, y'all. Oh,

(01:23:19):
this is what it's about.

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
But you know they think they got the stylist.

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
They don't dress they don't and they clearly that ain't
need help. They clearly I will tell you this. Don't
get me wrong. I have I had a cat that
that that taught me, that pulled me there, you understand.
So so my man at Niema, my man Charlie at
Neiman Marcus and Garden State. You know, he was the

(01:23:44):
guy that first pulled me, closed a little bag, he whatever,
allow me to dress you. And then as he dressed
me and showed me the way, I'm sitting there like,
oh really, and then you know you see the lady.
You see everybody else looking at it. They're looking at
the looking at it working. And then I got rid
of the belly too. I'm like this, oh lord, now
it's falling on me. I'm like, I didn't know. I

(01:24:06):
didn't know. I'm actually feeling like I'm looking this wasn't
look because it's several people to help me. First of all,
we had Billy King, Pat Crochey and Larry Brown when
I was with the Sixers, when I was young covering
the Sixers and Larry Brown was the first one that
I saw rock and sweds shoes with a suit. Pat
Crochey used to rock these Italian shoes and blue Aaron

(01:24:30):
McKee because Aaron McKee always rocked these blue suits. And
your dark skinned brother with the blue suits looking smooth
this hal you know, I'm like this, damn, they all
looking good, you know. And so I started tweaking, going
from jeans and a shirt with a tie to trying
to rock some decent shoes and a suit whatever. Right then,
as my finances improved, all right, I could afford I

(01:24:50):
could afford a few suits. I started rocking that. And
then I would go and it was, oh my god,
Dawayne Wade, I got it. Give him credit for this.
Boy did he get me? Man? He used to because
he always thought he's so stylish. And I'm looking at
like pink panther, something shining, I'm like please. But sometimes

(01:25:12):
he was he was sharp, and I was like, he
does have gas, so I'm like, he's doing better than most. Okay, cool,
that's all right. So one time in the off season,
this brother was like hosting this like fashion show and
he had some fashion folks from Europe and all of
this other stuff, and I walked in late. And when

(01:25:34):
I walked in late, I had on one of my suits,
which obviously baggy, looked like mcam pants and all this stuff.
And he called me out in front of everybody, he
can fit three legs up in there. And then I
was like that, damn, I'd be good, right. I was like, ooh,
that was low. That was low right. And then that
same summer, ESPN magazine wanted to do a shoot with

(01:25:58):
an athlete and a and a pundit, and d Wade
chose me where he got to dress me. I had
to wear whatever he said. And I didn't like that.
I don't like it at all. I thought he was
making fun of me. Right, he had me something like
them red pants and some tight red ass like come on, said,

(01:26:19):
come on, you can did that? I said, okay, He said,
these cats don't understand. I just couldn't afford it. So
then as the salary increased, and then all of a sudden,
this time for it is BRIONI is zenious all of
these cats, and I'm like, y'all gonna started something. And
so I met the guy, Charlie. And then after I

(01:26:41):
met Charlie and Charlie dressed me for a few outfits
and stuff like that, and then I figured out a
lot of stuff on my own. Suddenly I started telling Charlie,
now I want this, I want that, I want this,
I want that. I want to double breasted here, I
want the single breast. I want to rock the vest here.
I want to And now it's like it's next level
and I'm like this. Y'all could act like you don't know,
but you know when I roll up into a spot

(01:27:03):
how I'm dressed, we understand. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
Let me tell you that I had a style of
telling me One time. I said, man, you just look good.

Speaker 3 (01:27:09):
That look good.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
He said, do it look good to you? I said,
y'all like it? He said, you can wear it, but
you gotta own it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:15):
That's right, whatever you wear, because if you ain't confident
everybody know, don't put it on. Everybody know. And see
it has my point where all of these casters talking smack.
When you walk into an arena, the basketball court, all
of y'all wearing the same damn thing. You got the
same utiphone, don't you. It's twelve fifty cats on a roster.
You're a sand You the phone you're a football player.

(01:27:36):
There's fifty three cats you wearing sand you the form
the individual is who rolls into the arena or the stadium,
that walk right there, that's you. Do you want it
to not? Do? You want it to not? And you
see a lot of these casts they talking, but they
don't want it. They don't really really want it. You

(01:27:58):
want us to focus on your game. You should want
us to focus on your wardrobe. If you're gonna do
that walk, if not, come through the back door, find
a different way to get an arena. But if I'm
gonna walk in there, I show up at the NBA playoffs,
I show up at the NBA Finals or whatever. Oh,
if I'm doing the show and I'm near the work,
oh I'm gonna be dressed to the nines. Ain't no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
But you're not changing, and you're gonna keep walking in
the the way you've been walking.

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
The way I've been working. That's how I walk. I
ain't faking it. That's how I walk. That's how I walk.
You're saying, And I'm walking in there like they thinking
I'm trying to be one of the players. No, I'm
trying to show you. I dress better than the players.

Speaker 1 (01:28:34):
All right, So you know, I want to get back
to the to the to your first thing of ESPN
that was with from three to nine O three nine,
and then man, you get this two year hiatus. I
don't want to spend too much time on how it ended,
but it was heartbreaking. You know, it was heartbreaking. You
got the dream Drive and it's many factors that that
that that went into that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:53):
But when you is it a fire and or they
just didn't renew.

Speaker 3 (01:28:58):
Well, they didn't renew, but I was fired, Okay, I
mean because when when they don't renew you, that's what Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
But you got this two year hiatus where you're trying
to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (01:29:08):
Your sister not giving you a break again, was it, Linda?

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:29:11):
When you when you man, I don't know what's gonna happen.
I'm trying to figure it out. And but you get
that second run and this time I think you were
you were slated to just be on radio.

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
Yeah, I was confined to radio for the first year.

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
Right now, you had a conversation with Skip Baylor's in
the parking lot and that was the origin in the
in the in the in the in the beginning and
the genesis of ESPN the first take right, and y'all
went for a long time, and you started noticing Skip was,
you know, moving a little bit different. Everything was still good,
but just we didn't have what we had before. And
then eventually he departed.

Speaker 3 (01:29:43):
Well it wasn't that he nothing with the show. No, personally,
on a personal level, he was being a bit different
because he knew he was leaving. I did it now
and because I didn't know, and I couldn't hold it
against him once I realized why he kept it from
me because Jamie Harwitz, I formed, a boss at the

(01:30:09):
ESPN who ultimately was in control of FS one at
the time, came in with a mega deal and you know,
he was still under contract with ESPN, so you know,
it was nothing in writing or anything like that, but
he knew what the kind of all he knew it
was out putting on the table compared to what the
ESPN was putting out there for him. He knew that

(01:30:29):
that was it, and so I understood it. My problem
was that at the time I didn't know, so it
was like, damn, you know, I mean, what's going on?
You know? And and ultimately he told.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Me so he left, went to Fox and now you're
at the Helm. This is your show. That's right in
steps Max Keller. Yes, I think y'all had a three year.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
I went, five years, I went, I went. Max was
doing uh Sports Nation and what have you, and obviously,
you know, I needed a partner. They was looking for
somebody to replace Skipped for five days a week, and
I knew that his personality was different than that of
Skip Bayless. But obviously he's a brilliant brother and knows
his sports, and also he had really good relationships internally,

(01:31:13):
and so having those relationships internally, knowing that I had
aspirations to move first Take to ESPN because at the
time it was on ESPN two, and I had aspirations
to move the show to ESPN.

Speaker 2 (01:31:24):
For those that don't know, bigger audience, E one and just.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
All of that stuff. You know, well people, you know
my habit, you know that's what they're gonna do. And
so because of that, I knew that that was something
that he would help move along. And sure enough that
you know, after he came on board, you know, that
was one of the commitments that they were willing to make.
So I was happy about that.

Speaker 1 (01:31:42):
It was working until it wasn't, And you said, pretty
early on you started noticing just it. Okay, you know,
I got my approach. I'm straight to the point, I'm
unapologetic about it. Max has a slightly different approach. But
you felt like it wasn't gonna work long before then.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
I felt like I felt like about two years in
and I didn't think it was gonna work long term.
I didn't have regrets about bringing him on board. It's
just that you know that as time was evolving and
you saw the other shows and you saw the talent
people clamoring for a point of view mattered. You know,

(01:32:17):
he knows what he's talking about, and when he opens
his mouth, you got to listen because you know, I mean,
the brother is brilliant, but in the same breath, they're
looking for conflict and confrontation.

Speaker 2 (01:32:29):
It's a debate show.

Speaker 3 (01:32:30):
It's a debate show, and it got to a point
where that's not what folks were getting. And so you
see people opening their mouths and talking about you know,
it was Stephen a one at this or whatever. Let
me look into the camera and tell people something that
you may not know about me, but you better learn.

(01:32:51):
I pay attention to research. It's not about what I want,
It's about what the audience wants. We got focus groups
and all of that stuff that they do in television.
It tells you what the audience wants, what it's clamoring for,
what it thinks it needs, what it thinks it needs
to get rid of, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
So what it was saying was we together did it work. Now,

(01:33:16):
maybe it was a byproduct of what we had trained
the audience to be accustomed to with me and Skip,
and the fact that that wasn't there. Okay, it's something
they lamented. My point is that's what they lamented. It's
not personal. It's not personal. It's not personal. They didn't
say me, him or whatever they said us. So what

(01:33:41):
I was saying was, Okay, they said that in year
two and three, and four, and now here we are
in year five. What y'all gonna do about it? Why
would I want to stay on that if that's what
the audience is telling us and we're not doing anything
about it. So I was willing to come off first
take and do other things. And obviously they didn't want that,

(01:34:05):
and so they made the decision that they made. And
when they made that decision, I knew that my career
was on the line because if you kept me on board,
I had to make it work or else. And I
was like Steven A against the world. They were like

(01:34:25):
what I said, I'll take on all comings. I don't
care who it is, I said, because one way or another,
it's gonna be interesting because I'm bringing up Popo ria talents.
It's not just one person I'm depending on, I said, So,
you know, before it was Michael Irvin and then it
was Shannon Sharp. Ryan Clark was dead, Marcus Spears was dead,

(01:34:46):
Jeff Saturday was dead. Dan Olaski ultimately came on board.
Cam Newton, other league ultimately came onboard. Mena comes came
on board, Kimberlye Martin came on board, Monica McNutt and
Andrea Carter and Chanel Gooma, Cam Brian Wentors, Kendrick Perkins
and Jay Williams and everybody came on board. So no
matter what day you pick, it could be Chris Canty,

(01:35:07):
it could be Bart Scott, it could be Harry Douglas.
It's like the list goes on and on. It's like
stephen A is going against.

Speaker 1 (01:35:15):
Everybody, so it's new smoke every day and say about
that they loved it.

Speaker 3 (01:35:23):
But we had resist. We had record ratings for the
last three years.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
Which I didn't lose the rating with with Max.

Speaker 3 (01:35:28):
Do you said that one? We were number one, But
the audience was telling us we were stale together. So
I was saying, a choice has to be made. So
when you hear people talking, they talking like stephen A
just opened his mouth and said, Yo man, I want
to be here, Yo man, this is what I want.
You don't know me. I go by what the audience

(01:35:50):
tells us, meaning that audience is gonna have different opinions.
All these is gonna give an opinions that we disagree with.
But if Dre is calling about and you know this
because you've been you've been on television with me before.
If they said that the man that brother got knowledge,
but he sound a little monotone, we need a little
more energy. I'm gonna say, yo, bro, you need a

(01:36:11):
little more energy. You're saying. You know, they're gonna sit
up there and they're going like, all right, Shaq, yeah
you you mumbling, but you know what the hell you
talk about? You are four time chair. No the straight,
no straight, that's my dog. He knows that. Charles Barkley,
you know you funny as hell. But Kenny got to talk.

(01:36:31):
You know what he's saying because they the comedic approach
they getting from Barkley, they're getting a combination of that
and the basketball stuff from him and Shaq Kenny. They
took it at Kenny. You know you you you you
you working alongside any there's a different expectation. You don't
have the same expectation if you Kidrick perkis that you

(01:36:52):
have if you Brian went Toors, Brian Winters is a
different expectation than Sean Sharandi You. They're different than Ryan Clark.
Ryan Clark's different than Cam Newton. Cam Newton's different than
Shannon or Michael Irvin. There's expectations, and so you have
to pay attention to that, even if you don't agree
with it, even if you're not going to do it,
you have to be mindful and cognizant of what it is.

(01:37:14):
So I'm looking at people and saying, rather than being
ignorant and trying to find some different headline that create
clicks that have no truth to it, why don't you
remind people of what the industry entails and what leads
to decisions being made. I've been number one for thirteen
straight years. Knock on wood, it can all end tomorrow.

(01:37:36):
I get that, But you can't take away from me
that I've been number one for thirteen years? Well why
have I Because I wake up and just run my mouth.
You don't think I pay attention to what the hell
of audience wants? What they're saying. You know, I got
a podcast and as a Steven Ah Smith show, it's
a YouTube show. It's a podcast a whole bit cat's
talking about a whole bunch of stuff. I'm talking politics.

(01:37:57):
I got presidential candidates talking the me representatives and Senate
figures and governors and everybody else. I'm addressing real stuff
going on. Why because I have a passion for it
and it deviates from what you normally see me. How
could Stephen they do this?

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
What?

Speaker 3 (01:38:15):
So? How the hell does he know this is gonna
pull up? Because I paid attention and I said this
was a voice that was missing. Here's what they're looking for.
This is how you this is how you go about
doing it. And that's the kind of stuff that I do,
so I can tell you. You could call a box,
but I tell you right now, I said, I'll tell yo,
drag you're doing the fight. You're doing the fight. You're
gonna be working Netflix. You're gonna be doing Canilo Crofs.
You gonna do that fight. Oh and I'm in the

(01:38:37):
back of my mind. I ain't got nothing to say publicly,
but I got an idea who you should be working with,
who would work and who wouldn't, Why it would work,
why it might not. I have this why because I've
been in the business for thirty years.

Speaker 2 (01:38:50):
But that's one of the biggest things.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
You says you learned from the first contract with ESPN
a second contract. First contract, you looking at handclaps and
oohs and ays, then you learn it it's about these
nu But he's hard number. That's what the executive, that's
what the suits, that's what the people that's paying, that's
what they looking I like you, but your numbers ain't exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:39:07):
One of the biggest thing having an audience out there
that's paying attention to broke ass dudes. You understand I'm
saying that ain't got going on, that still can't get
that can't get a job in the industry, but you're
gonna ignore the dude that just got the contra tracks,
not one couple. Okay, that's still at the top of
my game. So I'm like, were you gonna listen? You

(01:39:29):
know what I'm saying. If I came to you and
I said to you, let me talk to you about basketball,
but Michael Jordan rolled up and said, let me talk
to you about basketball. Different store, No I'm saying, I
mean exactly. I'm like, it's like you just sit there
and you're looking at it, not comparing myself to Michael
Jordan and anything like, Yeah, I'm certainly not doing that.
I'm just simply saying. It's like pay attention. It's like

(01:39:49):
I'm trying to show it to you, because when you
get my age, it's no matter how healthy I am,
how good I'm feeling, whatever, I am fifty seven. You know,
at some point in time, it's like, what do I
want to be remembered for. I like to be remembered
as a cat that helped the whole bunch of cats
get in this business and thrive in this business and

(01:40:12):
make it happen. I don't have to do as many
interviews as I do. You've seen me all over the
place throughout the years talking to people. So there's plenty
of cats. There's plenty of cats that have been in
this business for years, and you don't see them being interviewed.
You don't see me backing up in interviews. Why they
did it for me? Why can't I do that. I
want you to succeed. I want Matt Bonds to succeed.

(01:40:35):
I want to hold Gill and all of these I
want them to get this. I want to be that
guy that I want y'all to remember when it's time,
when it's my time. It could be five years, it
could be ten years, it could be fifteen years, but
it's gonna end, and I want people to be able
to look at me and say, yo, man, he tried
to help brothers. He tried to help since, he tried
to make stuff happen for other people. That's what I

(01:40:56):
want to do.

Speaker 2 (01:40:57):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:40:57):
I've been seeing you do it on ESPN, just all
the names that you name, and I know that's intentional,
and they speak about it. You don't always speak about it,
but they speak about it. And I know the help
that you've given me, whether it's a phone call, whether
it's advice, whether it's contractual stuff, but just even something
like this.

Speaker 2 (01:41:12):
Man. And that's why I mentioned this at the top
of the show. I don't take that light.

Speaker 1 (01:41:15):
Because I'm a busy man. I'm a public figure, and
I know I can't be everywhere. I can't do everything
I want to do for people. But to be able
to send you a text and for you to get
back to me the way you did not know what
take time?

Speaker 3 (01:41:25):
That's life. We're busy.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):
But for you to say, bro, you got two hours
and we can talk about whatever that's to means something
to me because I know, yeah, we.

Speaker 2 (01:41:32):
Want to talk and we got a good rapport, but
you also know what this is gonna do for us,
So we men. We appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (01:41:37):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:41:38):
I got a couple more quick ones and we got
to get out of here. You know you've came, You've
overcame a lot of adversity in your life. What's one
personal failure that has reshaped how you approach your life?

Speaker 2 (01:41:48):
Something you fail.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
At But now that that has changed my trajectory and
how I move now, I.

Speaker 3 (01:41:54):
Would have to say me getting let go by ESPN
I thought I was before I really did. I really did.
I really did, and it was for all the wrong reasons.
It was for the applause, it was for the recognition,
it was for things that I normally don't care about.

(01:42:15):
But I was seeing the money, and I was saying,
this is gonna lead to me getting paid because I
don't really care about popularity. I care about being recognized
for it to benefit off it financially. You understand, I
don't want the applause without the money. A matter of fact,
I take the money without the applause. You see what
I'm saying. So I'm not that guy. But I thought

(01:42:36):
at the time, because of how hard I worked and
how recognizable I had become, that that was going to
materialize into a financial benefit for it that would have
exceeded my wildest dreams. And it turned out to be
the opposite, because when they came to me with what
they thought I was worth, I had a thought process

(01:42:57):
that I was worth more, but I had no it's
to validated. I didn't have focus group, I didn't have
data and analytics. I didn't have any of that information
that I had when I came back in twenty and eleven,
when I got put on first taken twenty twelve. When
I negotiated my contract in twenty fifteen, that was an

(01:43:18):
entirely different stephen A than what they had seen six
years earlier, because it was like, this is what the
focus group says, this is what the analytics say, this
is what the data shows, this is what I'm worth.

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):
Yeah, let's start there. You don't have to argue about it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:33):
And it was beautiful because it touched me in a
certain way. As a black man, when things don't go
your way, you tend to adopt a victim's mentality. And
I'm not saying you're wrong about it, because a lot
of times we are victims and we have been victimized.
But it's one thing to be that, and it's another

(01:43:55):
thing to think it. You can be it and accept
that as reality and march folk. I'm just gonna adapt
and overcome, which is what my mother preached. Or you
can wallow in it and use it as an excuse
to prevent you from ascending. The latter was me back
in that time. I was thinking, man, this BS, I

(01:44:16):
deserved this, blah blah blah blah blah, and I didn't
look at myself. And when I learned my value by
studying the business the way that I was supposed to.
Whatever resistance they gave to me, none of those thoughts
entered my head. It was business. Our goal is to

(01:44:37):
get the greatest amount of talent for the cheapest price imaginable.
You have to make a case for yourself to prevent
us from doing otherwise, that's your job. If you don't
do it, we gonna get away with it. And then,
not only did I learn that mentality dray shortly thereafter,

(01:44:59):
a few years later came a business owner. And what
am I trying to do? What do I got a
problem with? I got a problem with every time I
turn around, somebody coming to me for a raise, and
anybody deserved it, damn it, I want to get it.
You know what I'm saying Now, I want to pay them.
I want to compensate you. I want you to be
all right. But every dollar I give you is a

(01:45:20):
dollar coming out of my pocket. So it's like, I'm like,
this is one hundred year, fifty thousand. Let me see
if I can get them for one four. You know,
you start thinking like that different and then all of
a sudden you looking at your bosses and it's like, ah,

(01:45:41):
got it, and my edifying myself about business and about
my business made me a better man as well as
a better professional, a better professional because I learned to
depersonalize and understand this is how the game plays is played.
No matter who you're dealing with, you got to accept that.

Speaker 2 (01:46:02):
Do you like being famous? You like what comes with it?

Speaker 1 (01:46:07):
Having to overly think about your daughters and a safety No,
I don't like that you can't just go anywhere and
do anything.

Speaker 3 (01:46:12):
Oh I hate that part. You know, it's several things.
Number One, I'm not gonna lie and tell you being
famous doesn't have its perks. Being successful monetarily, professionally, et
cetera does not have its perks because it does. You know,
it's nice to go. It's nice to walk walk into

(01:46:32):
a mall and know that you could buy whatever you
want that mall. It's nice to see dealerships you drive
and by and know that if you want to get that,
pull right over, I could get that. You know, it's
nice to roll up in a spot like a tom
Ford or Brioni or something with five thousand dollars suits
and it's like, no problem, I can get that. It
is nice. It's a beautiful feeling. You know, you go

(01:46:54):
out to dinner, you ain't got to worry about paying
the check. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. The popularities of
obviously as a dad, as an uncle, as a brother,
dad can get on you. That can break your nerves
because people know those you love, which makes them targets
at times. That's problematic, one of this little pet peeve.

(01:47:17):
And my girl's gonna kill me for saying this, but
it's just the truth. You know, when you have a woman,
it's not like you don't know other women. I'm just
trying my friends. I'm not talking bout anything. I'm not
taling about anything. You got a wife, it's not like
you don't know other women. Right, So you go out

(01:47:39):
and you could be out. It could be a friend of.

Speaker 6 (01:47:42):
Your wife's and somebody clicking, clicking, you're clicking, and you
find yourself like, you know, you cool because the wife
or the honey knows that you you know you out,
you know, you told him, look, babe, I'm going out
with this person and God then I'll be there, I'll
be back, you know here.

Speaker 3 (01:47:58):
So you so it's fun at home, right, But the
people don't know that, and they're taking these pictures of you.
And I'm I'm particular about this with men. You it
never crossed your mind that you might not need to
take that picture. They don't even think about it. They
don't even care. All your men, I mean, man, man, cold,

(01:48:20):
one on one, go right out out the window. You
just looking at them like damn. You know you ain't
you ain't worth a damn. You know what I'm saying,
because you don't know's it's no problem. But you didn't
know it was no problem. You thought you was gonna
cause me apron. Yes, that's like the equivalent of trying
to din the brother out. You know they don't, they
don't really, And that's a peppizzi. I don't mind that
with women, you the women you take you, I don't

(01:48:41):
have no problem. But when you the dude, and then
and then, and not only that, it could be a bar,
it could be a lounge, you could be a club.
You got brothers that will walk away from their girl
to roll up on you, taking selfie, taking pitch.

Speaker 2 (01:48:54):
It's like this, have you no shame?

Speaker 3 (01:48:58):
You forgot what it is is to be a man.
You don't do that. You don't do that. And then
and then with the ladies out there, and then with
the ladies out there, let me tell something to the
ladies too, because I'm very particular. I've done this, drake.
When a woman is with her man, nothing disgusts me
more than when she rolls up on me to put

(01:49:19):
her arm around me, touch me, to take a picture
with me, or something like that, and then say not
to her man. I'll stop him your whole day. You
good with this, bro, just to show him respect, like
you don't do that? Oh please, he's fine, He's fine. No,
he's not. He might say so because he might want
some later, but the bottom line is, but the bottom

(01:49:40):
line is he's not fine because you're being disrespectful. That's
a man you with. You don't do that. So it's
on both sides of the fits. It's little pet peeves
that I have with the full fame and pop. But
you stuff say what you're willing to live with that
because of the I'm not apologizing for that. I'm a capitalist, bro.

(01:50:00):
I will deal with all of that to make sure
I get paid. I mean, as long as the checks
come on. Now, if I'm broke, I don't want to.
I don't want you to know me. Yeah, you understand.
Don't want you to know me. But if I got
a little paper, well, if that's the reason because of fame,
popularity and stuff like that, and that breeds good finances,
it's a sacrifice. Un will in the stomach.

Speaker 1 (01:50:21):
Tell me about this a couple of moments. You got
a love for boxing. Yes, we're gonna win to fight man,
that's coming up the.

Speaker 3 (01:50:28):
Big Crawfford, Crufford. I'm not hesitating, Crufford. I'm not even hesitating.

Speaker 2 (01:50:35):
You're gonna stand on that call away to September thirteenth.

Speaker 3 (01:50:37):
I love Canilo. Crawford will beat Canilo. Crawford will beat
Canilo by decision. I can't see anybody knocking out Canilo Alvarez.
But I do believe that if you can box and
you can move, that you can beat Canilo. You can

(01:50:58):
outpoint him.

Speaker 2 (01:50:59):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:51:00):
And when I think about Canilo, one of the things
that I don't like about Canilo, despite his greatness and
a neck is wide as Broadway for crying out loud,
the thing that I don't like about Canilo is that
it's like almost every shot has to be a power
sho yes, and that's not beating Crawford. I will confess

(01:51:25):
I think Javonte Davis's training cal I think he said this.
I think he said this. He said Crawford could find
himself in trouble. And I'm not sure it was him,
but I think it was him. He said Crawford could
find himself in trouble if he decides to engage with
because Canilo is the naturally biggert strong fighting and I

(01:51:46):
don't care that can that Crawford's gotten bigger, and I
don't care that Carnolo's Crafford's gonna go in there just
as big as Canilo. Canilo is accustomed to fighting at
the weight and Crawford is not. And Canillo is a
genius in this regard. You don't see him show up
for fights not ready.

Speaker 1 (01:52:04):
He's always he always prepared, He's always ready, He's always prepared.

Speaker 3 (01:52:07):
So I think he's the slower fighter, though, And I
think that Crawford is brilliant as a boxer, and I
think that between switching to Convention on the South poor
using his jab and movement, I think that Crawford is
going to outpoint Canilo because he's faster, but he ain't.
I don't think he's gonna knock him out.

Speaker 1 (01:52:28):
Yeah, we're gonna leave it there, my brother, Man, I
appreciate you more than you know.

Speaker 2 (01:52:32):
Man, Thank you, Appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (01:52:34):
Croudy bro yess sir,

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