Transcript of Le Batard & Friends Presents: The Step Back - The Decision (feat. Jim Gray & John Skipper) New

I mean, can I ask you to provide a dramatic reading of some of Dan's column?

LeBron's choice will reveal whether ego or glory fuels him.

Wait a minute. Hold on a second. Are we going to do this to you too?

Yes.

This is going to make me very uncomfortable because this is a young me writing a column about fit for a king. LeBron James is coming to Miami. It is the news that LeBron would change Miami sports basketball in a way that— okay, I'm not going to like that.

How long? How long? How long had you been a columnist before I get into this? How long had you been a columnist?

It's been a minute. This is 2010.

No, I would have been a columnist at this point for still about 10 years, right?

That's a vet right there. All right, here we go.

I'm tired of this man being celebrated for what?

This is the step back.

James drives, steps back, puts up a 3.

Bang!

LeBron James from downtown.

The Cleveland Cavaliers select LeBron James.

LeBron, what's your decision? I made a difficult decision, but I understood what I believe our president is trying to divide us.

My first response was, "You bum." Welcome to episode 2. I was 25 years old, and I wanted to be liked by everybody.

The decision.

From the time we landed in Miami, that first night when we got there at, like, whatever time it was, I was like, "Fuck!

What the hell just happened?" LeBron's choice will reveal whether ego or glory fuels him.

Dan didn't actually write that. That was just the headline.

I just wanted to set the table. I don't write the headlines.

I thought Amin knew these things. I thought he might have—

I thought you had more power than that.

And just so we know the order of things here and who's on top, Dan's on the front page and I am somewhere else. I am on 4D, my column starts on 4D. And we're talking about the same thing. Somehow mine got pushed to the back, but hey, it is what it is. All right.

Wouldn't this be a flabbergasting insanity if after building this breathtaking monument to ego, After piling me, me, me upon more me, me, me to build a mountain of hype that has no precedent in sports, and after planting his flag atop it with a dramatic flourish in a ridiculous made-for-television moment on ESPN at 9 PM Thursday, the King then made a decision that was unselfish and humble? If he decided at the end of this absurd climb to bow before team? That's what LeBron James would be doing by choosing the Miami Heat. He would be telling you that he values winning above all else. Above ego and glory and brand and money and commercials and hometown and fans and comfort and fame. It would be an unprecedented decision being made by a 2-time Most Valuable Player in his prime, and it is crazy that we've arrived here. I'mma tell you what this is. Ladies and gentlemen, and this is gonna be a theme throughout the entirety of this series. This is a time capsule. Up until 2010, certainly throughout my entirety, my childhood, the number one accusation levied at players was, "You guys don't care about winning.

All you care about is yourselves and money. Why don't you humble yourself and be part of something bigger than you in order for the ultimate success, which is winning?" And LeBron did that. He said, I'm forgoing the money and I'm going to go somewhere that's going to— he took a pay cut. It's a pay cut, right? So to come to a place, as Dan said, bow before team. LeBron says, okay, I'm going to be a part of something. And how did we respond? It was the exact opposite. It reminds me of when people say, hey, defense wins championships. Defense is the most important part of the game. Defense, defense, defense. All right. Ben Wallace, Hall of Famer.

Hell no.

He only averaged 6 points a game. Wait, what happened to this thing that we were preaching my entire life?

But where I disagree is that he wasn't bowing to team. He was going to the team where the me would be most obvious, would stand out the most, would be most successful so that he can then take off and continue to be him. And so yes, he needed team, but this wasn't about team. If it was, he would've stayed in Cleveland and said, hey, this team can eventually work it out. Or he would've stayed in Miami after 4 years and said, hey, this is my team. I won with this team. Continue to win with this team, it was, for the most part, about LeBron.

You're extrapolating forward. I'm saying the moment he says, "I'm leaving my own show to go play with two other guys to be part of team," to an organization that's known for being very team-centric, and to leave money on the table to make that happen, 'cause even though eventually they did do a sign-and-trade, originally Cleveland didn't want to do a sign-and-trade, so he's gonna have to take less years and less money. He ended up getting the same amount of years but still took a pay cut. All of that was the sacrifice of self to be part of something greater than what I am. He did that and we instantly turned on him and said, "You loser, you coward." All right guys, we're gonna go back in the time machine.

It's spring 2010. Steve Jobs has just introduced FaceTime.

Ah!

Which, by the way, a great name for it, right? FaceTime, you know, not a great name. Personal Hotspot. They probably should rethink what that's called. The Cavs lost to the Celtics in the second round that year. LeBron's suitors were the Knicks, the Nets, the Bulls, the Clippers, the Heat, and of course the Cavaliers. They're all preparing pitches, including an animated pitch, Family Guy. Yeah, you remember that one? We have the Sopranos reunion, which was—

what's good here, Carl? Even if we are in a witness protection program.

Now we just gotta find a place for your friend LeBron to live. Pretty terrible.

Who would have thought that Edie Falco and Div Gandolfini could be terrible at acting?

I know, right?

Yeah, and the writing matters.

And on June 2nd, LeBron actually went on CNN with Larry King.

Do you lean at all toward the place you know the best? I mean, do they have an edge going in?

Well, absolutely, absolutely, because, you know, this city these fans, I mean, has given me a lot in these 70 years. And it, you know, for me it's comfortable. So I got a lot of memories here, and so it does have an edge.

Now there's a story circulating today, I don't know if it's true, so I wrote it down just to make sure. You could tell me that you're going to get together, you with Bosh and Wade and Stoudemire and Lee and Johnson and Allen and Nowitzki, and all of you sort of— it's just funny, you're We're gonna build like a little committee. Yeah, a little free agent committee. Free agent committee. No one can stop you. You're all free agents. The league can't tell you not to do this, right? What if you go there and I go here and we go here? Is that possible?

Oh, I don't know to that extent, but, um, it will be fun. It will be fun to get all the free agents together and, you know, figure out a way how we can make the league better.

It took him to get a couple of names into the list Till I realized, oh, he's just naming free agents. He said, "You and Wade and Bosh." Like, wait a second! June 2nd you had this, Larry King? And then he says Stoudemire, and then I was like, oh, okay, hold on.

But you realize the reason that that answer is so telling in retrospect. LeBron's got an idea of what he's going to do at that point, and since then has gotten very fast at answering any question carefully or lying, knowing what the reaction is going to be. But he tried to go honest here, and so he gave him, not to that extent, but it could be fun. it wasn't received as any kind of news because everybody was like, "He ain't gonna do that.

That's not—

that's an asinine thing to do.

He'll never do that." And you know what's funny? I wonder, had Larry King not been Larry King, had it been Jim Gray, for instance, if it were someone from sports who was doing the interview and not Larry King, news generalist, asking that question and getting that response, would it have created much bigger waves? I don't remember this interview at all.

Well, we're gonna talk to Jim Gray, who did the interview and the decision, but while all this is happening, probably during the time where he did that interview with Larry King, they were figuring out details on how to produce the decision on ESPN. We talked to John Skipper, who was president of ESPN at the time, and how he dealt with Jim Gray for the interview.

I think that the first time that I heard about the idea of potentially having LeBron announce his decision on the air was from a query in Bill Simmons' mailbag. However, it was not a query that we really pursued in any significant way. The trail to the decision really started through a phone call from Ari Emanuel, who said, "I was at the Laker game. I was sitting talking to Jim Gray, and we have a great idea for you, and that is LeBron should announce his decision as to which club he's gonna go play for on ABC. First thing I said to Ari was, "Yes, I'd be interested. If you have LeBron, and he says he will do it, we'll talk about doing it. But if we do it, it's gonna be on ESPN." And I have never actually understood why there was so much aghastness. I don't think that's actually a word, but you know what it means. There was so much aghastness at ESPN about what a bad idea it was because we were basically letting a player dictate to us the news. I remember exactly my response, and it never got a good answer, which was, would you be happy if you cut your television on one night and saw LeBron James announce on TNT or Fox or somewhere else where he was going.

We were the worldwide leader in sports.

Journalistically speaking, Dan, I didn't think that this was anything to complain about journalistically. I thought it was just more eyes on it. If they did this in a private room, it would just be the same way a professional journalist would do it. So I'm curious if you thought the hour special was just sort of a blight on journalism.

I legitimately remember this as one of the times I most immediately had my mind changed by something or someone that I had conviction about before arriving at the conversation, because I'm looking at what John Skipper says there, and I understand him shrugging and saying, why is everybody being so precious? While ESPN's empire is built around us being so precious about sports, we care about this thing and we care about it unreasonably. So unreasonably that me, a logical person who fancies himself on the side of the athlete, especially the Black athlete, and at the time of this decision, my reaction should have immediately been some form of how cool and fun and entertaining is that, given what my whole career has been about, like, let's be fun and entertaining about this. But my initial reaction was, who the hell does he think he is? And it was innate and it was a reflex. And not until Erik Reidholm, the producer of pardon the interruption, just said to me, but isn't it fun that I just sort of had to be like, well, what was I doing there? What did I just do that my visceral reaction to change was to object to it when I don't fancy myself that in many other ways in sports?

But Izzy's question was, what was the lack of journalism integrity in this? Because as I see it, and this goes back to my longstanding theory that the things that we call news are not actually news. Him telling us where he's going to play was not news. I get it was newsworthy, but it's not news in the sense of this: had he not had a decision, had he not sat down with Jim Gray, had he not leaked to Michael Wilbon, had nobody leaked it to the media, had there never been a press release, had there never been a parade, the "Yes We Did" and all that stuff, how would we have known LeBron James was a Miami Heat player? Game 1 when he's wearing a Heat jersey, you would have found out one way or another. So all he did was reveal something we were gonna find out. As such, there isn't a journalism aspect to this. There has to be a journalism integrity to it. It is a fact that was going to happen regardless.

And here's the other part: if he were a winner at this point, if he had won multiple championships and he announces this, would people have said, does he think he's bigger than the game? Because at the time, I was laughing at people when they said that. I think Jackie McMullen was on ESPN saying, who does he think he is? And I'm like, He's LeBron bleeping James. He's the biggest name in the game. Just look at how everybody else is waiting to make their free agency decision based on him. He is the game right now. So what's the problem with celebrating this decision?

Generally speaking, the journalist is taught you report on the story or the side of the story. You're not in bed with your partner on the making of the story.

But what's the difference? What's the difference if you set up an interview with LeBron and you do it quietly, or you set up an interview with LeBron and he sets up the surroundings? Okay, look.

Look, I'm arguing on behalf of journalism here, but a different time and newspapers. These old things that they used to throw yesterday.

They should actually get you a real newspaper.

In your bushes, right?

We couldn't find one.

Couldn't find one. That's correct. My wife needed some to clean up some throw-up with some pets the other day, and I could not find a Miami Herald anywhere around.

They got paper towels.

They don't want to waste the good stuff.

But I'm a journalist. I should have some newspapers somewhere around where it is that I clean up.

Yes, it should be more valuable than to pick up poop.

You're not supposed to be in a business partnership. I understand that there are televised sponsorships throughout sports, but back when newspapers did this stuff, there was a separation between the capitalism and the editorial. Like, I'm— maybe it's irrelevant in sports, maybe we shouldn't be so serious around the toy department on this, but if you keep going higher and higher up, you're supposed to keep the business of this and the news of it apart from each other. You're not supposed to go into partnership in the telling of the story.

We've talked about this on the Dan Levitart Show a lot when we talk about documentaries, and documentaries particularly where the subject of the documentary is listed as an executive producer. And so you're telling a story, but because they are in bed in the way that you're describing right now, it impacts the way the story is told, right? Was Michael Jordan really perfect, or was this a lot of stuff made to make everyone else denigrated and to lift him up? This isn't a story being told, it is literally a transaction being revealed. There's no story, there's no narrative, there's no framing. He's going to Miami. And so for me, there's no part of this where ESPN or Jim Gray or anyone else involved in this is compromising in any way because they're not telling a story. They are merely allowing themselves to be the vessel through which he announces. Not unlike, had they gotten a leak from someone close to the camp or a press release Or, as I said, they saw him walk out on the court in the white and red and say, "Oh, I guess he's a Miami Heat player." It's funny you should mention that because Jon Skipper actually said that Jim Gray was kind of the biggest controversy in all of this.

They wanted a primetime special. They had as a bit of a rationale the, "We're gonna raise money. We're gonna raise money for the Boys and Girls Clubs." So they controlled the timing. The other thing they controlled was Jim Gray. Jim Gray had been standing apparently with Ari at the game. They were talking about it. They at some point ran it by LeBron. He said, yeah, I would maybe do that. Call Skipper and see what he says. I did ask Ari about Jim Gray. I said, we'd rather have Bob Lee do it, or we'd rather have Jeremy Shapp do it. We'd rather have an ESPN person do it. And they said, nope, if you're gonna do it, we're with Jim Gray when the idea came up. He was there when LeBron agreed to do it. So Jim Gray's your host if you want to do it. That probably was the most controversial thing I said yes to. And it wasn't my preference either. However, despite that, he is getting unfairly blamed. And then people criticize Jim Gray. It was clear nobody at ESPN wanted him to do it. They insisted on it.

I didn't think there could be more of a professional than Jim Gray, but when Skip mentioned Bob Lee there, I was like, ooh, maybe he actually had an option there. Here's the thing that gets me about that. Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade announced their decisions live on ESPN as well. It just happened to be something that they were controlling. Mike Wilbon did the interview. It lasted about 15 minutes. It was the day before, maybe 2 days before the decision. I can't imagine what the fans in Toronto thought at the time, but nobody was discussing them when Chris Bosh made his decision.

It's not the crime, it's the criminal. How famous is the criminal? No one remembers Bosh and Wade doing that. No one cares. They're not as famous, not as important.

Had LeBron made a decision to go to a team, not Cleveland, but also not with two other Hall of Famers, do you think the reception would have been milder?

No, didn't matter that it was with Wade and Bosh. It did matter a little bit that Dwyane had won a championship though, because then it felt like riding the coattails of somebody who had already done this, and I'm just going to learn from this guy. They're not going to follow me.

There were a lot of blind spots by everyone around what sports does to people here. John Skipper, corporate, a man overseeing media empire business, would not understand, as LeBron didn't. Maverick Carter didn't. The emotion of sports and how things can go wrong around optics, around mythology, around race, around the freedom of an athlete that would leave, and then the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers would send a racist missive to everybody as if a slave had run off of a plantation.

And who the hell does LeBron James think he is that he can just run out of what I own I don't know if Skipper had a blind spot or needed to recognize a blind spot, because at the end of the day, for ESPN, it was a massive coup. He said it best. Would you feel better if you watched him do it on TNT? And the answer is resoundingly no. The only regret I would have if I'm John Skipper is, "Shit, we should have put it on ABC." The numbers would have been bigger. It would have been a much bigger deal than it was on cable TV. But as far as the blind spots of all the other parties involved, not the least of which Dan Gilbert, who did, as you said, came across like an owner, not an NBA owner, but an owner of another time in terms of how much obligation he desired from LeBron James. And you could read it in his Comic Sans manifesto. It is dripping with, "I own you, boy." That was unmistakable. And for me, and I know I'm skipping ahead, it is to this day why I don't understand why LeBron ever went back.

I'm not saying he should have stayed in Miami. I'm saying—

I said—

I said—

To go back there to that man without that man doing a very public and very groveling apology, to this day I don't understand it.

LeBron James is better at forgiveness than he is at basketball.

That's— yeah, that's saying a lot right there.

His career is ridiculous. What we are presently doing in interviewing this man is asinine. Like the amount of things that he has accomplished in his role in terms of excellence where sideline reporters go, you're the Tom Brady of the game. Is he not? Is he like you're—

Absolutely.

I mean, there's no question about it. He's a Hall of Famer in both basketball and boxing, a 12-time Emmy Award winner, covered 22 Super Bowls. To me, the most important detail is he interviewed Mike Tyson several times, including that one interview where Mike Tyson claimed he broke his back. He's also the author of a memoir.

I know.

Author of the memoir Talking to Goats: The Moments You Remember and the Stories You've Never Heard. It's Jim Gray. Jim, thanks for joining us here.

Good to be with you guys. How you doing, Izzy?

I'm doing great.

Hey, Dan, how you guys doing?

I think my favorite Jim Gray story is how he met a young Snoop Dogg when he was just a kid at a— going to Dodgers World Series, was it?

No, he was in the parking lot when the Raiders moved to Los Angeles in El Segundo, and he would take the bus up from Long Beach. And he was just a young kid, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old, and I saw him in the parking lot 8 or 10 times. I finally said, why are you always out here? And he said, you know, I'm just kind of hanging out, just want to meet a few of the guys, maybe become a ball boy, do something. So I took him inside one day, introduced him to Al Davis, introduced him to Frank Hawkins and Mike Haynes and Howie Long. And he didn't ask for anything. When Al met him, he says, we got to get that, that yellow and black off of you. We're silver and black around here. And he gave him a hat, gave him a jersey, you know, didn't think much of it. About, I don't know, 18 years later, I was broadcasting on NBC one of the Finals games for the Lakers. 2002 or 2003 with Kobe and Shaq, and I went over and introduced myself to Snoop Dogg. I said, Snoop, it's nice to meet you, happy for all your success.

He said, oh no, you've been meeting me a long time ago. I'm that kid, Calvin Broadus. I was out in the parking lot and you took me inside in El Segundo to meet the Raiders. And I said, oh my God, you never know who you're talking to, guys. You never know. I remember, Dan, when we used to do the Sports Reporters too, right when you were starting with Jack Ford And that whole gang over at ESPN, uh, we had a lot of laughs back at the beginning of your broadcasting career.

Well, Jim, he wasn't very good on that show anyway.

Uh, so true.

You were also in Los Angeles around 2010 when LeBron James was in free agency. But before that, you had gone to, uh, Maverick Carter and discussed the possibility of getting an interview with LeBron after he makes his decision. Can you tell me where you were, how that came about, and— how the decision came about afterward.

Maverick Carter was at the game with Ari Emanuel, who's the head of WME, and they were sitting courtside. And it was one of the early rounds, and I knew that LeBron was going to be a free agent. I had interviewed him when he was in high school, and I had done his first game on ESPN against the Sacramento Kings. So I just went over to Maverick and Ari and said, you know, I'd like to be the first guy to be able to interview LeBron after he decides where he's going to go. And we started talking. I You know, why don't we just do a TV show, call it The Decision? And Ari Emanuel turned to Maverick and said, that's a great idea. That's brilliant. And Maverick said, okay, let's do that. So I didn't hear from them for a few weeks or whatever the passage of time was. They called back and said, we're going to do it. Where do you want to do it? I said, I think NBC, because I had been on NBC for quite a long time and had left ESPN. And Maverick said, no, it probably should be on one of the NBA carriers, which was Turner or ESPN.

He then contacted John Skipper. And the powers that be over at ESPN. And that's how it all came about.

Jim, I'm curious because, like you said, you weren't at ESPN, but LeBron's team was adamant that you did the interview. How did that work out? And what were the details, sort of the ground rules, if there were any?

There were no ground rules. But the reason they were adamant is because it was, you know, I had given them the idea. So I can't speak to any of the other inner workings because I wasn't privy to it.

Did you know though that you were doing something groundbreaking, controversial? Like, how'd you come up with the idea? It's fairly audacious to have the ego of, hey, let's do something totally different. Let's do it with me.

Well, I just kind of threw it out there. This was back in the day when guys were going on podiums and putting on hats when they were going to college, and that's how they would reveal where they went. That's what I was kind of thinking is you're going to have a press conference anyway. Why not control it and do your own?

But it's audacious. But everyone reacted like before it was even aired. Everyone reacted with, what? Who does this person think he is? Not you. Although I thought that LeBron—

well, that's because it had never been done before. And if you look back at it now, you know, David Stern was adamant against this. I believe David Stern called John Skipper and tried to get the whole show killed and may have even gone beyond him to the powers that be. I believe it was Bob Iger at the time at Disney. And tried to have this not done because he didn't think that this would be good for the NBA. He didn't think it would be good for LeBron. But it was LeBron taking control. It was player empowerment. I mean, it was the Curt Flood moment, really, for the NBA. He was going to control his own destiny on his time and do what he wanted to do, how he wanted to do it, with Dwyane Wade and Miami Heat and with Bosh, that threesome. And, you know, super teams had been formed before, but not in this fashion. And the thing that was overlooked, and part of it's my fault, you know, we never pointed out that we gave millions upon millions of dollars to the Boys and Girls Clubs and changed the trajectory of tens of thousands of kids because it's the biggest donation that's ever been made.

And it just kind of looked like we were at the Boys and Girls Club. I didn't mention it when they threw it to us at about 28 minutes after the hour. I don't believe that any of them had mentioned it in the studio. So, you know, it was a charitable endeavor. Nobody profiteered off of it. Except for the Boys and Girls Club, because John Skipper turned over all the time to LeBron and Maverick and those guys, and it all went to charity. So it was groundbreaking and changed the whole paradigm of free agency and how guys control their own destiny.

Jim, to that end, I'm curious, 'cause I do remember the press release ahead of it saying that, "Hey, and the proceeds are gonna go to the Boys and Girls Club." But obviously, the decision itself, inherently was going to anger at least 4 markets, right? Because what if he had said, I'm staying in Cleveland, New York, Chicago, Miami, and whoever else was gonna be— LA was gonna be upset. Said, I'm going to LA. So there's always gonna be the majority of the markets that were in the sweepstakes going to be upset with the decision regardless of the money goes to charity or not. Was that ever discussed, or how top of mind was that? Like, guys, there are gonna be a lot of angry people today because of whatever answer comes out of LeBron's mouth?

Well, I didn't have any discussions with them about it, and, and I didn't know. I didn't know the results. I intentionally did not want to know because I didn't want to be somebody who might slip on SportsCenter or in an interview before. So I did not know what the decision was until LeBron said it to me on the air. You could feel the tension in the air when Leon Rose and everybody walked in. We met at a house in Greenwich, Connecticut, And then we all drove over together to the Boys and Girls Club. Nobody really said anything during the ride. And then when we got out, you could just tell there was pensive anticipation. It wasn't uncomfortable, but nobody was jumping up and down. So I had a feeling that he wasn't staying in Cleveland, but I did not know where he was going, and I didn't know for sure.

Jim, there's this idea that LeBron did wrong by the fans of Cleveland by this because he sort of needed to give them a heads up, which is impossible to do, right? Whether you do this in a small press conference or a, a live television show, you're going to break the news to the fans live at that time. But I'm wondering what you saw from LeBron. You mentioned there was a pensive sort of air to it, but he himself, did he seem like somebody who was, as he said, making a difficult decision and potentially hurting a large fan base?

Well, I'm sure it was a very difficult decision, and he was pensive. And again, this wasn't a whole big celebration, but I can't tell you exactly what he was thinking. You'd have to talk to him about it, and he's done a few interviews and a show about it since. Look, he was taking control of his own circumstance. And whenever anybody in a circumstance like this— it doesn't matter when Joe Namath leaves the Jets, when Joe Montana leaves the 49ers, none of these things— when Tom Brady left the Patriots. People are upset. They have a romantic feeling about what these guys are doing and the cities they're doing it for and the community. They painted LeBron as a bad guy and as a villain. For what? For giving away a ton of money? For switching teams? I mean, you know, he didn't do anything that caused the reaction. Now, could it have been handled better? Might there have been some other steps that could have been taken to have made things easier for the folks in Cleveland? And not to have upset the other cities, New York and the other places that he had visited and didn't end up going.

Yeah, perhaps, sure. But hindsight is always 20/20. But there was no malicious intent, you know. Then Dan Gilbert released a statement that was, you know, good God, come on, you own a professional sports team, you're a multi-multi-billionaire, and you're that hurt? That had no grace and no dignity. That was quite atrocious, quite frankly. And he set the tone for LeBron to be booed and to be treated poorly for a long time. And I don't think it's right. I don't think it's right to this day. Now, obviously, cooler heads have prevailed. LeBron went back, he won a championship, paid in full, not unlike the '76ers, you know, we owe you one. LeBron paid that up, and everybody's happily ever after. And LeBron has gone on to, you know, become the scoring champion and win all these other championships and so on and so forth and been a great player. So I guess everybody probably right now isn't anywhere near with the passage of time where they were with the emotion of the moment.

But Jim, I don't blame you at all for having a great idea and executing it and groundbreaking and pioneering and stepping off to the side of it. But if you don't think that that was all made worse, the reaction from Dan Gilbert, not merely from LeBron leaving, but him having to watch him tell you before he told him. You absolutely made that worse by doing it that way, but it's not your job to make it better. You're not responsible for that, but you're absolutely complicit, sir.

Well, to the degree that Dan Gilbert didn't know, I think that's been refuted as well. I believe that Rich Paul has stated that he called Dan Gilbert before the television program went on the air. So he may not have heard from LeBron, but he heard from his representation.

Bingo! You got a call from his agent and he's telling Jim Gray on television before he tells me?

Well, you'd have to ask LeBron and Rich and Maverick and Randy Mims, how often did Dan Gilbert talk to LeBron when he was playing for him on the team? What was the relationship then?

Well, Dan, that's true, and I love what he and LeBron did. I love that he pioneered and shook the system up. I love that he did something journalistically pioneering. And while he says there were no profiteers here, oh no, I'm going to have to correct you on that. ESPN got an awful lot of eyes that night that don't result in direct money. And you guys changed the sports paradigm together and you did it without working at ESPN. I'm just saying that you're a partner in everything that happened here and you get out scot-free, which is beautiful.

Well, I don't know what scot-free is. There was an avalanche of criticism toward me, but that's okay. It's all right. What are they mad at, that they didn't have the opportunity to do it? What are all of the other journalists mad at? What question wasn't asked? What wasn't answered?

I'm curious, what was the backlash specifically? What were the things that you were hearing and not necessarily from fans, but from other journalists or from media pundits?

Well, they didn't like it and that's okay. You know, they're all entitled to their say. They can say what they want. They have their opinions and that's what they're paid to do. And they felt that they probably should have had their opportunity to ask the questions or that, you know, that this wasn't conforming with what had gone on. All the time up until that time. But Mike Ditka said something to me: if you have no successes, you have no critics. So that's okay. That show was a huge success. It's the highest-rated show to this day, and you can ask Mr. Skipper, it's the highest-rated show in their history. Not game, not live event, the highest-rated show in their history to this day, and it's not even close. So people were interested in this, and so let the critics have their say. It's okay. I'll take the success of it, and the success is huge because it changed everything.

Jim, I'm curious, did you give LeBron or anybody a heads up on how or when you were going to ask the question of where he was going?

No, none of this was rehearsed. We had a brief meeting at that home, very brief— Maverick, LeBron, and I. They didn't ask me to submit the questions. They didn't want to know what the questions were. I said, I'm going to do a little background and then we'll get to it, and then we'll discuss your decision. And they said fine.

I have a couple of questions that are specific that may be difficult to answer on the fly, but you said it— its success was huge, it changed everything. There is no disputing that. If you had to rank it, where does it rank in your career on things or moments that you're proud of because it changed everything?

Well, I don't know that I have a ranking order, But the Tyson ear biting was the best interview I ever did. You bit him. Was that a retaliation for the eye when you bit him in his ear?

Regardless of what I did, he bit me for 2 fights.

But you got to address it, Mike. And that's because nothing like that had ever happened before. Why did you do that though, Mike? I mean, was that the proper response?

Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. I gotta go home, my kids are gonna be scared of me.

Look at me, man.

What are you gonna do now in terms of your career? Nothing like that has ever happened since. There's the heavyweight championship of the world. I better not screw that one up because even though we were in the early days of the internet, you know, that this would be played and replayed forever and ever. And having done tens of thousands of interviews, it's probably the only time I walked away where I said, you know what, I couldn't have done better. I didn't stumble. I wasn't interrupted by the director. I didn't think of a question that I shouldn't have asked. I walked away thinking, you know, that's about as good as I can do. And thank God, because I wouldn't want to have lived with not getting that one right.

Well, I've got one better here than the one that you're saying is the best one you've ever done. I don't think it's even the best one you've done in boxing.

You're really sick this week.

What was the problem?

I broke my back.

What do you mean by that? You broke—

back is broken.

What, a vertebrae, or what portion?

Spinal.

Did that in sparring?

No, I did it, um, by a motorcycle accident. The doctor discovered— I was doing my sit-ups, 2,500 a day, with my 20-pound weight, and one day I couldn't move anymore. And I asked the doctor, what's wrong? He said, um, believe it or not, it's when your back is broken slightly.

You can't disagree with me.

That was unbelievable. You know, we did another— we did several of these things where he wanted to eat Lennox Lewis's children.

My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart, I want to eat his children.

Praise be to Allah.

I mean, there's, there's a whole bunch of them. We're doing the life story on Mike Tyson on Netflix, the documentary, a 3-part series on Netflix, and I'm the producer on that. So we look forward to that. But Mike Tyson one time, guys, threatened to kill me. Said, I'll kill you and I'll kill Don King. And then 20 seconds later, he kissed me on my cheek, and I'm still trying to figure out what's more disturbing.

Jim, I'm curious, if I had a time machine and went back in time to right before the decision airs, and I talked to Jim Gray and I said, "Hey, what do you think the long-lasting legacy of this event is going to be?" Would you have said, "Oh, it's gonna be big. It's gonna be a huge thing." Or would you have correctly foretold that this is gonna change the way we look at free agency forever?

I think I would've said it would've changed free agency forever, but not in the way that it has, and not to the degree and to the dynamic that it did. So, I thought it was unique and different, and I thought it would change things, but I didn't think it would live this life or have this legacy. I would not have predicted anything like that, no.

How did it rank in terms of times you've had nerves before doing something? Because you've mentioned being in front of the world with the heavyweight championship, But your idea coming to fruition and you were walking into a room, you kind of knew that all the eyes were on you because of something you specifically had just conjured.

I wasn't nervous. I was apprehensive, kind of like every time you go on the air until the first word comes out. But I've been nervous. I've interviewed the last 11 presidents of the United States and Nelson Mandela. I'm nervous then because when you have the attention of people of this stature, of the free world, and you're taking their time, that's nerve-wracking. I don't recall Dan being nervous for this. You know, I was anxious because, A, I wanted to know where he was going, and B, it was a big thing, so I knew a lot of people were watching. But, you know, I've done several Olympics and NBA Finals and Super Bowls, and if you start thinking about all the people that are watching, you know, no one would ever speak a word when you're just talking to the cameraman and just talking to whoever it is you're interviewing. It's a lot easier. So I don't recall being nervous. There was a little, you know, I was anxious in the car because you could see the apprehension that everybody had. So I don't want to downplay it and say there was no anxiety or tension or nerves, but it wasn't overwhelming.

It wasn't like that kind of a situation because I didn't know what was going to happen. So I was still just curious. But by the other aspect of it, didn't affect me afterwards, you know. It was his life where he was going.

Jim, I'm, I'm enthralled with my time machine. I want to go back again to Jim Gray right before the decision. You didn't know where he was going, but in your heart, in your gut, where did you think?

That's a good question.

What'd you think he was going to go?

That's a good question.

I kind of thought New York because we were just outside of New York. I kind of thought maybe that's why we're here in Greenwich, but I wasn't sure and I wouldn't You know, right? I don't gamble, but I wouldn't have bet on it. But I kind of thought maybe the Knicks.

Were you rooting against Cleveland just because you're like, that's, that's less interesting, it's just less interesting?

I used to do the play-by-play for the Cleveland Cavaliers, so I was not rooting against Cleveland. I was for Cleveland. And I loved Gordon Gund, their former owner, who was a blind man who I'd done a feature with on NBC, and he hired me to do the play-by-play and I was very fond of the city of Cleveland and my time there, so I was not rooting against Cleveland. I felt bad for Cleveland.

Tens of thousands of interviews is crazy to think about, but it's even crazier that Jim has not aged throughout all of this. It's the same voice. It sounds exactly the same.

He came out of the womb that way, looking exactly like that, glasses and all.

As someone who's heard my voice age over the years, I'm amazed, Jim. Your voice sounds exactly the same.

Well, thank you. It's too bad I don't work for you guys. You know, if I had bosses like you guys, that would be great.

Jim, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it.

Thank you guys. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Jim. Uh, you're to blame. You're entirely to blame. It's all your fault.

I'll take the blame.

Put it on me.

Thank you.

Finally, an admission. Finally, I badgered him into— you're complicit, sir. You're complicit. Absolutely.

You got it.

Talked him down.

Thank you, Jim.

Thank you, guys. Take care. Be well.

All right, so let's do this. It's Thursday night, 2010, about 9:15. Stuart Scott.

Let's now send it to Jim Gray in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Naturally.

With the King.

So what's new? What's been going on with you this summer?

Uh, man, this whole free agent experience. I'm looking forward to it.

What have you thought about this process?

Um, this process has been everything I've thought and more. You know, and that's what I did a few years ago. I put myself in a position to have this, this, this process where I can hear teams' pitches and figure out what was the best possible chance for me to ultimately win and to ultimately be happy.

A couple of wild details there. There was a 13-year-old Donovan Mitchell outside there witnessing this. Apparently LeBron had dinner with Kanye West the night before, which made me wonder He had to know, right? Like, Kanye had to find out the answer to this. And if he did, how the hell did he keep it quiet?

You have Kanye asking questions to LeBron as opposed to just talking about himself the whole time.

Mm, I mean, that's a good point. Did he even know LeBron was making this decision the next day? I'm not sure.

I don't think he's a sports guy.

Dan, I'm curious. This was an hour-long special. Did you think to yourself at all, how are they gonna fill that time because people just wanna know two words?

No, I was dreaming of scenarios that anyone would want in the world of programming that would keep people around for hours before those two words. Like, you could have milked that for a telethon that would have grown from 10 million people to 100 million people if you just kept stringing out those two words for about 24 hours. They couldn't go long enough teasing that.

I don't think I talked to you guys about this. I know, Izzy, I did talk to you about this earlier. But where were you when the decision happened?

I was so scared. I was legitimately—

not mentally, like physically.

I was like, where were you physically? Like, where did you—

I was in a dark mental space. I remember where I was physically because I was in Boog Shambi's apartment. When I say it was a dark place, I don't know why this was, but I do remember that Boog Shambi was not home for some reason. I was at his apartment for reasons I cannot remember, and I was physically in an an actually dark place because I was scared. I had reported locally that it was going to happen on the radio. LeBron was coming to Miami, that I was hearing it from restaurant owners. And so I needed to see it happen. But I, after talking to Dwyane Wade and a whole bunch of people afterward, none of us were actually sure, Wade included, that it was going to happen. Everybody was kind of worried that LeBron would get to the moment and not be able to execute the thing that he was executing. And so I was scared that I had reported something that was going to be wrong.

Well, let me set up everything that had happened already, because we already had the Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh announcement, right, the day before. You had Stephen A reporting that LeBron James is heading to South Beach. You had Allan Hahn of Newsday scooping the world apparently and reporting it the night before or overnight. And Greg Cody tweeted that the Heat are canceling a full-page welcome ad in the Herald. So you're getting mixed signals all over the place.

By the way, there's your separation of business and editorial. How does he know that?

Well, he didn't. He got it wrong, didn't he? Greg Cody's reporting is about an editorial page that would suggest that LeBron wasn't coming to Miami. Greg Cody famously got it wrong.

Or he just reported a panicky organization that said, ah, let's get this out of there because it's going to look stupid if he says New York.

So we know that the Heat knew, but they weren't sure. We know that Dan Gilbert was alerted by Rich Paul that LeBron was leaving.

Minutes before though, like sec— it was literally seconds before. Dan Gilbert got mad that way not just because LeBron left, it's because he had to watch it on television. The indignity and emotion of that letter was a billionaire scorned.

Okay, so Rich Paul knew, Randy Mims knew, Maverick Carter knew.

Savannah knew.

Savannah knew. Gloria James knew, right? The moral of the story is, you want to keep a secret, just don't have everyone knowing the secret. So really it comes down to the Miami Heat and Dwyane Wade and all those people. But you guys are telling me they knew, but they were like, I'm not sure though, I wouldn't bet my mortgage on it.

He made it ridiculously awkward for everybody involved. No more awkward than those actually at the Boys and Girls Club Let's listen to Jim Gray cut the silence here and have LeBron make his announcement.

You still a nail-biter?

Uh, I have a little bit. Not, not of late.

Well, you've had everybody else biting their nails, so I guess it's time for them to stop chewing. The answer to the question everybody wants to know: LeBron, what's your decision?

Um, in this fall, man, this is very tough. Um, in this fall, I'm going to take my talents to South Beach and, um, join I'm going to Miami Heat.

Miami Heat.

That was the conclusion you woke up with this morning?

That was the conclusion I woke up with this morning.

Dan, do you remember what your actual emotion was immediately after hearing those words from LeBron?

Relief.

Relief.

I got it right.

Relief.

He's selfish.

And never mind the next, whatever, 4 to 7 years that would happen. You want relief because you wanted to be right.

Not surprising that I would want to be right.

That's true.

Not surprising that my narcissism would grab me in this moment to want me to be extra right. But the reason that I'm telling you that I was afraid, and perhaps I'll shock you in saying this, Stephen A. Smith has admitted that, like me, after he reported that, he's never been so scared because being credible on these things is important. And LeBron had a power to sway his mind. You don't want your credibility in front of people to not be trusted. Or at least I didn't want that. And so the first thing was just okay because I'd been scared. And then after that, it was just real happiness on behalf of a city I care about because I knew that an economy was headed to town on— I mean, shit, we built those studios at the Clevelander. ESPN hurried up and built those studios at the Clevelander because that was coming down here. And I knew what that meant for local business.

I mean, look, it's the Cleveland Studios. It's the heat index. You got Brian Winhorst and Kevin Arnovitz and Tom Havestrom. None of these guys are local to the area. And now they're all assigned just one beat. That's never happened before. And I don't think it'll ever happen again. There won't ever be a team— even as I could sit here and say the Warriors are a better dynasty than the Heat was. it will never rival what happened when LeBron came here with Wade and Bosh because it signaled an arrival of, "Hey, it's okay to be hyper-focused on just one thing." It was all right for a massive percentage of ESPN's NBA reporting budget to be devoted to just one team. And I don't think I've ever seen that in any sport on any level in this country.

Not in American sports. In Japan, they'll follow a player around. Giant contingents will. And internationally in soccer, they will do it. But it's hard to imagine that ever happening again in American sports.

You know my favorite part about that sound?

The two claps.

The two claps because they thought he was going to say New York.

Hmm.

It was like, "Ah!" And then it was like, "Wait a second, he didn't say New York." And you could hear the gasp. Of the people in attendance, some of them kids, some of them adults, realizing, oh, he didn't do it in Greenwich, Connecticut because he's staying here. This actually had nothing to do with it.

The other part that was interesting is the phrasing, right? I'm taking my talents to South Beach. Some people thought it was just poor English, but other people recognized, oh, Kobe Bryant used those exact same words when he announced he was entering the NBA.

I, Kobe Bryant, have decided to take my talents To, uh— No, I have decided to skip college and take my talent to the NBA.

Not as scared.

Even the "uh" was something that you could argue LeBron probably borrowed because he gave you the drama with the "uh" there. But it is interesting, like, you could tell how nervous he was. You could tell when Jim Gray made that statement, that's what you woke up— he just repeated the exact same thing because he wasn't ready to say anything. But there was a question later that when people talk about, oh, he didn't really think about the fans in Cleveland, he didn't give them the proper answers, I say to myself, they didn't listen or watch the entire interview because later he gave a great answer when Jim asked him if you ever want to go through this again.

Ever want to go through this again?

Oh, this is, this is tough. It's very tough because you feel like you let a lot of people down. You've, you've Raised a lot of people's expectations also. It was a tough decision because I know how loyal I am. And one thing my mother told me when I was going through this process and what ultimately helped me make my decision is, um, you have to do what's best for you and what's going to make you happy at the end of the day, because no one can live with the consequences or anything that comes with your decision besides you. And once I heard that from my mother, the person that I always look to for guidance, it was easy.

That should have been the speech he practiced and answered when Jim Gray asked him the initial question and then said, "Hey, I'm going to Miami." Having said that, yeah.

It's crazy because first of all, I look at him and I see Bronny. He's so young, he looks like his son. And in that, there's a little bit of that innocence of, of, oh man, I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing, like a little kid, as opposed to a grown man. I'll do whatever the hell I want, right? Even though that's essentially what he was— he was a grown man, a free agent, announcing, I can do whatever I want, it's my right— there still seems to be a level of like, I'm in dangerous ground here. The other thing, and I want you to, as Miami people, to react to this— I remember so many people in Miami after celebrating Like maybe a week later, like, well, actually the arena's not in South Beach, it's on Biscayne. Like you guys were so hung up on that. And I'm like, nobody cares about your geography. It was a cool way to say I'm going to Miami.

He wasn't going to South Beach. You've gotta get those details right. It's such an interesting appraisal to both see Bronny in his face and to have Amin say out loud, man, he looked like such of a kid there. Well, yeah, 'cause he was, and he grew into the adult voice. We all watched it. Like, I know I don't want to infantilize a 25-year-old, but for that moment, anybody would be a kid. Like, you're walking into everything— freedom, adulthood. Like, I know we think of him as mature beyond his years because 16 years old exceeded every expectation, but that'd be scary for anyone. So interesting to me in that answer though, and in the symbolism of everything that we're talking about here, because we started with those articles that embarrassed us and the idea of team. What is team? So he goes from one kind of team in Cleveland to a different kind of team that he builds in Miami. The team goes from I'm responsible for the whole organization to a team of 3. And then once I do that, you know what I'm gonna choose? A team of 1. My team. The people I told that secret and they didn't tell anybody.

It's gonna be 1. It's not gonna be 12, it's not gonna be 3, it's gonna be me and my team. Holy fuck, dude, that guy did it. He told us he was going to do it and he did it.

Okay, you want to laugh at me now?

I have an article from you in here that I've been reading while he talks, and I am—

you didn't read it when it came out.

I'm embarrassed on your behalf reading some of this.

I'm not.

Oh, you're not?

No, no. Because I'm honest with myself and where I was in the stage of my career. I had been a columnist for 3 years at the time and never really dreamt of being like a voice of my hometown in the sports section. It's absolutely insane. And in this part of my career, I was protecting the reader, protecting my people, if you will. So that part doesn't make me cringe anymore. I just, you know, it's like Amin said, it's a time capsule that just puts me back there.

Oh, but when I say cringe, and maybe I'm doing too much ego in this, because yes, of course you're going to be proud that you get your name in a byline and you get to give your opinion on the big sports story of the day. And it's nice that you have gratitude about that, but holy shit, were you wrong.

Well, no, no, no, I cannot be proven wrong.

Izzy, if you'll allow me, because we did it for Dan, I got to do it for you too, right? And so we'll start with the headline: NBA better off if LeBron plays elsewhere.

Still cannot be proven wrong.

All right, well, he's defensive fast.

He didn't even write that one. That was the editor who wrote that headline. All right, so like Dan's article, it starts with a bunch of questions, which—

okay, yes, just bad writing by us.

If I may, if I'm just— I'm looking right now at Izzy. If Izzy's saying he's not embarrassed by this—

don't, no, don't jump ahead. Don't jump, don't jump ahead.

I've just got one funny phrase.

No, no, you'll get, you'll get your funny phrase in. Let me, let me— all right, let me just start with What's better for a league? Singular dominance or legitimate rivalries with unpredictable results? What's better for an organization? Nightly chaos or precise focus? What's better for a city? A foreign king commandeering the hearts and minds of its people or continuing a healthy relationship with a familiar leader who has put in time and work to win over those people?

Hard questions.

If you choose the first option to all 3 of those questions, then you should use every last available prayer you have. That LeBron James announces Thursday night that he will join Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh in Miami next season. If you prefer the second options, then you probably have the right idea. And then this is the kicker. This team, this league, this city doesn't need LeBron James wearing a Heat uniform.

I've got worse than that. I've got something that echoes more embarrassingly than that. It's also a question that he's asking. What's better for everyone involved? A team around Wade and Bosh that might include— What?

What?

What?

What?

A Brendan Haywood.

No, no, no, no, no. You didn't say that.

I wrote it.

You didn't write that.

I wrote it.

The tier of free agents, Brendan Haywood was right there. Right there.

No, he wasn't.

Shut up, man.

I know we had money that summer. Bradley Haywood wasn't on our board.

Well, he did find the one sentence in there that embarrassed me a little bit.

Here's your favorite part. It's the homework. The next episode, we're talking about loyalty and more propaganda. We're going back to Sports Illustrated with the article I'm Coming Home from 2014, and maybe we'll read an actual book, which I don't think LeBron really does.