Friday was a turn back the clock moment for First Take, ESPN’s popular sports debate show. Skip Bayless returned to the set and sat across from his longtime debate partner, Stephen A. Smith, for the first time since leaving the network for Fox ten years ago.
Speculation arose that Bayless’s return was a ratings grab for ESPN, but Smith shot down any such notion.
“Instead of just celebrating Skip Bayless coming back to First Take for the day, I’m seeing articles here on Fox News, Awful Announcing, along with others…one article actually said, ‘Why is Skip Bayless coming back?’ And it’s talking about ratings slip.
“He’s coming back because I wanted him to come back for a day. Because I haven’t been with my guy in 10 years. Ratings slip? We’re still number one. We’ve had record ratings over the last five years. At some point in time, that’s not going to happen, because how many records can you break? I had Cam’ron from It Is What It Is podcast and a native New Yorker on today. I’m gonna have others on in the future because I’m always looking for young talent out there.”
Regardless of what the reason for his return is, the dynamic duo hardly missed a beat, managing to touch on all of their most famous talking points, including Bayless’s Cowboys fandom, Smith’s Knicks fandom, and of course, LeBron James. True to form, Bayless was incredulous at how high Smith ranked James on his list of the NBA’s all-time great basketball players.
“You’ve already elevated LeBron James up to number two on your all-time list?” Bayless asked incredulously. “I have him at nine!”
““LeBron James, to me, has proven over many, many years to be the most mentally fragile superstar I have ever closely observed. I mean, the poor man, as gifted as he is, was born without a clutch gene. So he’s lucky to be in the top 10 because he’s a liability and always has been at the late-game free-throw line,” Bayless explained. You can just look it up. By superstar standards, he is a poor free-throw shooter for his career at 74%, and an even poorer three-point shooter at 35% for his career. And you wanna talk about launching LeBricks? He’s launched a lot of LeBricks in his day.”
“Yeah, that is one of the most asinine things that have ever come out of your mouth in your illustrious career in television,” Smith told his old co-host. “It’s almost so blasphemous, I don’t know if you should be banned from television. I mean, I can’t believe what the hell you just said. It’s unbelievable that you would say some of this stuff.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Bayless winds up rejoining the Worldwide Leader in a more permanent role.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.