Tuesday 10 April 2012

ESPN host called out for lying about his past

ESPN host called out for lying about his past


ESPN host called out for lying about his past, Jalen Rose calls out Skip Bayless on air for his trumped up high school history (VIDEO), A TV segment becomes a little awkward when a former NBA player catches Skip Bayless by surprise. It's been well-established that ESPN's Skip Bayless is a workout fiend. He spends endless hours on the treadmill, and looks to be in fantastic shape for his age.

It's also been well-established that Bayless is a fame-hungry sellout that will say anything on air (and formerly, before he realized it wasn't making him famous enough, in print) just to draw a reaction, and more eyes, and more ratings. Recently, Bayless criticized Oklahoma City point guard Russell Westbrook without the slightest bit of basketball smarts, or hint of nuance, much less research. OKC All-Star Kevin Durant rightfully took his obsessive brand of ignorance to task, and Bayless responded by pumping up his own credits as a high school point guard who finally learned that PGs should think "pass" 12 times before they fire away, on Twitter.

Bayless' ESPN co-host Jalen Rose, after a bit of research of his own, took on Skip after Bayless claimed that he started as a shot-happy point guard for a high school team that made the state finals in Oklahoma. Bayless didn't start for his high school squad, it turns out, and didn't even play for the varsity until his senior season, when he averaged 1.4 points per game. Here's the video of Rose calling a clearly uncomfortable Bayless out:

Jalen didn't exactly do the digging himself. No, that was left to the fine folks at The Last Ogle, who found out that Bayless played only 15 of his teams 22 games during his senior year, and that no player on his squad scored fewer points than Bayless. Doesn't exactly sound like a shot-happy point guard that learned his lesson the hard way, as Bayless claimed. 

Even in trying to make himself look like a cautionary tale, he still lied to his half a million Twitter followers just to make a silly point to feed the daily gasbag that is his needless talk show.

Of course, Bayless also tweeted (you can find his handle at the links provided, we're not going to add to his follower count by directly linking to him) that he started at point guard for a team that made the state finals, and while he may get off here on a technicality (he didn't explicitly tweet that he started during the state finals, but we're right to assume this cynical liar wouldn't think twice about it if he were given more than 140 characters), Sports By Brooks discovered that Bayless probably didn't even play in that final game.

Much less start, as a shot-happy Pete Maravich-type that needed, like Russell Westbrook, to learn his lesson, in his team's finals showing. We can't be completely sure, because the minutes aren't listed in the box score Sports by Brooks found, but players who generally contribute a line of all zeroes typically don't play any during close, finals games.

Thanks to Jalen for going live with this, and thanks to The Last Ogle and Sports by Brooks for their discoveries; but have we really discovered anything? Skip Bayless will do and say anything to make a point that he probably doesn't really believe. This guy, like most polarizing talking heads on cable TV, probably doesn't care about the sides he's taking, much less the sides he's passionately debating for. He just wants to make it to the end of the hour, with plenty of show in place. He just wants to drag the talking points to another day, and find new ways to gain viewers or, most pathetically, Twitter followers.

We're feeding the troll, we know. But if this isn't the final reason you need to stop paying attention to someone who brags about not watching games, and blatantly lies to the people he's paid to inform, then we can't help you. If you want to contribute more to this buffoon's sad success, you deserve the misleading information he's going to toss your way.

via: yahoo

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