The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - South Beach Sessions - Jay Bilas

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Jay Bilas knows excellence. From his time on the court to his time in the courtroom and broadcast booth, Jay has one hell of a work ethic and fought for what’s right without ever seeking recognition in return. If he did, his wife and kids would be the first to call him out on it… Jay and Dan recognize a fellow workaholic when they see one and explore their parents’ influence on their drive. Jay reflects on the challenge of living in the moment and the “gut punch” of learning to say no to opportunities in order to prioritize his family, and what he learned from his high school acting teacher that no coach could ever teach him. They also connect on the profound role their wives have had in shaping their lives and getting them out of their own heads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm excited to do this at least in part because I love talking to people who are top of the food chain. Excellent what they do. This guy has been doing it for a lot of years. As a great deal of craftsmanship in his work, I don't think people understand how hard it is to have your level of expertise and your stamina for what it is that you're doing at this age. And I don't say that as insult. I know you're a former athlete, but you turned 60 recently and I can't believe you're still taking two flights to get to middle of America so that you can be the expert on guard play come March because you've been watching the

game since January. I would think that the ESPN ethos, and thank you Jay Billis for joining us, would have over time made you work slightly less hard, but nothing is evident in your work that would suggest you're working any less hard. Well, thank you. That's way too nice. I think as I've gotten older, I'm more efficient, but this job isn't nearly as hard

as the job I had before this. I was a lawyer and did both broadcasting and practice law at the same time. And so this seems like a layup relative to what I needed. Well, tell us about that time because I don't think people know the entirety of the story. You were working for ESPN part time

for how long law is obviously a full time job. You're a bit maniacal about your work ethic. I would say I did that for about eight or nine years. So I was an assistant coach at Duke after I finished. I played pro basketball overseas for a few years and Coach K offered me a job as an assistant coach. I was a graduate assistant and about the time I was deciding whether to take it I got admitted to law school and it was Coach K's idea that I do both. So I went to law school while I was a graduate assistant. And after three years on his staff and in law school, I just, I thought I'd be going to coaching and be a basketball coach. But about that time, my girlfriend, fiance,

we got married. And when we were deciding what was the best thing for us, it didn't seem like coaching was going to be the best thing for our family. So I said, How so just the rigors of it, the stress of it, the lifestyle? Yeah, I think in talking about it, you know, if I did well, we'd probably have to move every five years for the first 15 years. And, and both my wife and I grew up in the same, we didn't grow up in the same area, but we grew up in one place. She grew up in Maryland.

I grew up in Los Angeles and we had stable family lives. You know, our parents weren't moving all over the place and, and that's what we wanted. We wanted to pick a place and, and live there. And obviously if things didn't go well, we'd move, or if it was necessitated by employment or something else, we would do what it took. But basketball wasn't going to give us that kind of life, we didn't think. So I had a law degree. So I went with a big law firm in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I thought, okay, this, I'm going to be a lawyer. And I started practicing as a first year associate and I got a phone call from a

guy named George Habel who was the president of something called the Capital Sports Network is a radio network. And he wanted me to do games for the radio. And I thought, I don't, I don't know if I can do this. I can't carry a law practice and run around doing basketball games. But I thought about it and I thought, you know what? If I can't handle it, I'll quit. And, uh, law is my job, but I'd like to pursue this and see what happens. The games were more fun, a lot more fun, way more fun.

Yeah. But it was, you know, this was back in the, uh, the nineties. So, uh, you didn't have the technology you do now. I'd, I'd be able to carry it off with more ease with the technology now, because now my desk is everywhere I go. Before I'd come back from a road trip and I'd have to go straight into the office from the airport and get work done. So I was either in the office or on the road all the time.

Well, I want to talk about how this affects family and I want to talk about a couple of different pieces of the journey because you mentioned gratisys and I don't think people understand that if you're a gratisys and for coach K, I'm guessing you're an intern working maniacal hours outside of your law practice. You're working two full-time jobs now. You don't have time for any kind of life other than work, correct? I thought I did, but I probably didn't because I was doing things I wanted to do. So you had to make sacrifices. When it came to being a lawyer and doing the broadcasting and then family life, I probably wasn't as acutely aware of the sacrifices I was placing on my family

because I was focused on doing what I felt I should be doing. And so I definitely shirked responsibilities there. And luckily my wife, Wendy, kind of sat me down and straightened me out on that. Well, tell me about that because I've got a number of questions. First of all, the guy who's playing in Spain in Italy, my guess is, is having his dreams die, right? He wanted to play in the NBA, right?

And so you're chasing your dreams and Wendy's supporting your dreams and she's got her own dreams as an artist, but we're living in service of what Jay is chasing, right? Yeah, we were married at the time, so we were dating, but we had decided when I went overseas, we had kind of said, look, let's not put any rules on ourselves here. If we decide we're going to have, you know, exclusive relationship from that long a distance, we're going to create nothing but problems. So we know where each of us are and we'll get together when we're supposed to get together,

but let's not put any rules. And to this day, neither one of us has ever asked each other what happened during that period when we weren't together, which is probably smart for her. But when... Who's more afraid to ask her? Oh, I'm more afraid smart for her. But when... Who's more afraid to ask her? Oh, I'm more afraid to ask her. I don't want to know.

But when we got married and I started running around doing games and I was in the office and all that stuff and working, during the summer or off season, I would get phone calls from friends of mine and say, hey, can you come host our charity gala? Can you come appear at this, speak at this camp and all that. And she came to me one time and said, you know, she was very kind. She said, you know, I'm really proud that your first instinct is to say yes to people.

But she said, you need to understand something. When you say yes to someone else, you're saying no to your family And that was crushing to me, you know, it was really It was a gut punch in a way But it also helped me realize I gotta start saying no to things because I used to think mistakenly that I was I was missing something, you know, so, you know, I'm on the road, I'm making the sacrifice, I'm missing this family thing. And I was really missing from it. You know, I was the one causing the problem.

It wasn't a problem for me. It was me causing a problem. And, you know, I wised up a little bit after that, I wasn't perfect, but I've gotten better. And I kind of realized that no, because she said, if you say no to them, they're not going to cry. They're going to pick up the phone and call somebody else. Like it's not a problem for them.

And you know, you think a request now all of a sudden is your responsibility, it's not your responsibility. And my responsibilities were more at home. And so I think I've done a better job, I'd have to ask her, but I think I've done a better job of balancing that. But that was an important moment for me, sort of to realize that I wasn't paying as close attention to what was really important. And when our kids were little, when they were babies,

she told me one time, she goes, you need to pay attention to this. She said, babies are temporary. Like this is gonna be over soon. And that was helpful to me. They're wiser than we are. I have found at an earlier age, and forgive me if I'm misreading this,

but it feels like I can almost see the shame in your eyes as you talk about your wife having to explain this to you. Not shame, just illumination, you know, that I don't know that my priorities were as set as hers were. Like, she knows what's important. And that was really helpful to me, because I don't, you know,

my priorities were all over the place. And, you know, I think Pat Riley probably said it But I heard it most from Jeff Van Gundy said your decisions reveal your priorities and my decisions Revealed that and look this wasn't like I was out drinking all night or running around Well, you were concentrating on you though. You weren't your yes, it's self-involved almost man You had to be maniacal to get to the top of excellence about making sure it took all your bandwidth to make sure you could get ahead. And obviously, there's going to be neglect and love for others somewhere in there, whether you realize it or not.

Yeah. And I think I was probably raised that in a way or came up at a time when it was a little more selfish, like, you know, sort of the idea that men were expected to go out and accomplish and do this and that's for the touchy-feely stuff is for the women. And even though that's not true, Wendy helped me realize, you know, kind of what I was missing. I know that with love, and I don't know if you want to tackle sort of how to articulate, you're one of the great eloquent spokesmen anywhere in sports, you're considered one of the brilliant minds in sports, what you've learned about love with your family and with

a union that now goes back 40 years old. And as I'm guessing, if it's anything like me, I am being taught how to be a man in some ways, in ways I'd never considered before because the woman's perspective allows me to see where my blind spots have been and how silly I was in being resolute about some things that I had conviction about because I thought work was the most important thing because how could I not continue to achieve? Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing? Isn't that what Coach K and everyone else has given me great many rewards

for being all of my life? Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, I keep going back to the priorities thing of like my wife and my daughter especially, they deal in beauty. Like, they're both artists. So my wife's probably of all the people I've ever met, she's the most comfortable in her own skin of everyone I've ever known. And she's also, she's really in tune with her environment. Like every morning she makes cup coffee and she walks out onto the back porch

and just looks out over the yard She knows every bird she has all these bird houses out there and She's in tune with her environment. I'm not you know, I'm one of the guys that that I go What's the what's the guy's name across the street that puts the Christmas lights up? Like I'm I don't know my neighbor's names like she knows everything about our neighborhood. I know very little. And every once in a while she'll say, you know, you know exactly what club you hit on the sixth hole six months ago, but you don't know what trash day is. And she's right. I don't because it's not it's not something I see more present than you are because my

wife has a connection to right now that I envy in COVID. It's someplace I want to spend more time in because I'm always off to the next task, the next thing to be accomplished. It sounds like your wife stops with her coffee in the morning and allows all of life to wash over her and the present moment is just about all that matters. That's really perceptive because I think that's exactly what it is. Like, I'm more focused on what's next and what I need to do and my task list and all this stuff.

And, you know, she gets more done than I do. She has the same task list in her world, which should be my, I should say our world, but she is more present. You know, she experiences the day to day better than I do. And I'm, I'm, when I get on a plane, my first instinct, like all I'm focused on is getting off the plane. You know, she's going to enjoy the flight and talk to the person next to her and, you know, get to know people. Do you envy it? Because it sounds like life can pass you by that way.

I know it's happened to me. It's the only reason... I recognize it is the only reason I ask you the question. If you're that task-oriented, if you're always off to the next thing, you're not as present as you need to be in the thing that is where you are. I've gotten better at that. I wasn't good at it years ago, but I've gotten better at it. And I think that's part of getting older, as you realize kind of what's important. So my world has been shrinking over the years. I'm more likely to stay away from things that don't do me any good. And people that don't do me any good. It's not like I give everybody the Heisman if they, you know, if they're toxic or stuff like that. But I just kind of remove myself from stuff like that. And she's always been good at that.

Um, her world is smaller than mine in that regard. Like, and that's a good way to put it. Like she's present about everything. So she's taught me a lot and I've learned a lot about, you know, how to do things from her and how, you know, you're supposed to, you're supposed to experience this. That's the whole reason we're doing it. We're not going, you know, we're not doing this to get, to get to the end of it. We're doing it to enjoy it while we're doing it. And so I've gotten better at that because of her.

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When you think of the reasons that you admire Wendy, because I don't know if you went from law to something that was more creative, at least in part, because you have a creative part of you that was stuck in the architecture of whatever your parents wanted for you, because you had to go to law school. There wasn't, you didn't have an option, right? You had to, that was your parents' choice for you and basically that's what you had to do. I could have said no, but it would have caused some problems. My parents grew up in an area

called San Pedro near the Port of Los Angeles and my dad, his parents emigrated from Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia. So my dad didn't speak English till he went to school. And he was born here, but didn't speak English till he went to school. And neither one of my parents had the opportunity to go to college. So school was a big deal for them. And they were concerned that at that time,

you know, my friends that I grew up with never, we never asked each other, where are you gonna go to college? The question was, are you going to college? Are you going to go to college? And I think my parents were a little concerned that what if he doesn't go? So college was a big deal and then after I got through college my dad really wanted me to go to law school. He didn't care whether I was a lawyer he just wanted me to have that in my back pocket and he used to tell me you know

you don't have to be a lawyer when you go to college, but you'll be able to handle your own affairs. And if things ever get bad for you, you can just hang out a shingle and make a really good living. And I didn't want any part of being a lawyer. I didn't want to go in the first place, but it worked out and I went and I'm really glad I did. They were right. But I thought law school was going to be this broadening experience. And in a lot of ways it was, I learned a lot. But I thought law school was going to be this broadening experience. And a lot of ways it was, I learned a lot and I was around some amazing people that are great friends of mine to this day. But law school is also a narrowing experience in that law schools spit you out into big corporate law firms, you know, the law firms will come interview. And if you want to use your

law degree in a way that's non traditional, you have to be really proactive and do it yourself. Because otherwise, you're going to get spit out into a law firm. And those law firms can be like, I bet you I would have been voted of my law class least likely to stay with a law firm for a long time. And I've been with my firm for close to 31 years now. But if I'd had to practice those 31 years as a full-time lawyer, I never would have made it that long. I don't think I could have taken it. I didn't realize, Dan, how stressful it was until I quit. When ESPN made the offer to me and I took it, I gave my firm notice that I was going to leave. And they asked me, I had a couple cases going to trial, and they asked me would I stay and see

these cases through and said that I would. And I had a case going to trial and they asked me would I stay and see these cases through and uh and said that I would and I had a case I had a case going to trial and I was getting up in the morning and I was putting my my little suit on and getting ready and back uh back in our house we had a little TV on a an armoire in our bedroom and and Charlton Heston was on like the today show with an NRA thing and he was saying something and I'm arguing back at the TV set because what he was saying was total BS. And I was, I was going back at the TV set and my wife, Wendy says, you need to quit. Like you need to stop, you need to stop this job. And then when I quit and went into basketball with the SPN,

all of a sudden all this stress went away. You know, I didn't have time sheets. I didn't have to worry about some client calling stuff that, you know, when people say, oh, you work really hard, you're so prepared. It's not close to what I did as a lawyer. And so to me, it was, it was a layup relatively. Oh, but it's also, it's not just the work.

It's that you love this. And I'm not saying you don't love law But I don't think I don't think you love law the way that you love college basketball still still the way that you love college basketball, but is there a creative person who was stuck in the labyrinth of I've got to do basketball discipline I've got to do law discipline. I've got to be tough Like what is your imprinting from your parents when you talk about both work ethic and you wrote a book 10 years ago about toughness? Like where does that,

where do both of those things come from? Well, it evolved. I think law taught me a lot about, a lot of what I am now, I think came from having gone to law school and been a lawyer. There was always a part of me when I was in law school that, you know, do I belong here? Because there were so many amazing minds there that I could not keep up with. I think I, well, I shouldn't say I couldn't keep up with.

I knew I wasn't in the ballpark with them. It was kind of like as a player when you realize, you know, I'm in high school and I'm a, you know, I was one of the, considered one of the best high school players in the country. And then I get to college and I played against Michael Jordan and Lynn Bias and Ralph Sampson. I go, okay, there's a different level here. Like I'm never going to be able to do this. Like I, when I was in high school, the more I worked, the better I got and I didn't see a ceiling. And then you got to college and you played against those guys going,

all right, they don't have a ceiling. I have a ceiling. I can't, I'm not gonna be. You know then that you're not gonna make it as a pro or you're still trying in Italy and Spain, right? You still think you're pretty close. Well, I was a good player, but I wasn't that good. I mean, there's a difference between,

it's like being a golfer and playing on the corn fairy tour. You're, you're really good. You're just not as good as Tiger and Jack and that stuff. You know, and Michael Jordan was the tiger of basketball. So you're, you're seeing. It's a crushing realization though, isn't it? Not really. It's just, it was, it was, it was, it was a realization. It was, it wasn't crushing

because I knew I could still play and I felt like I could still play in the NBA. But, and I think I could have, but back then you get drafted, you're going where you get drafted. So I was a fifth round draft pick. I'm going to Dallas, whether I wanted to or not. And you know, they had 13 guaranteed contracts. They were Pacific division champions. So I went over to Italy. That was my level. and I made more money in Italy than I could have made if I made the Mavericks back then, which is really kind of bizarre. But it was a, it was a really fun period because I went from being a high school star to a college kind of role player on a great team to being a star in Europe again. So, you know, being a load carrying star was fun for me again. And, but after three

years of it, and then when I got the offer from Coach K, I realized like, okay, how long do I want to stay over here and do this? I've kind of proven to myself when I want to prove, um, I don't, and there's other things out there for me. And if I turn this down, I'm turning down something that can set me up for the rest of my life. I thought it would be coaching, but the law degree was a setup for the rest of my life that I thought it would be coaching, but the law degree was a set up for the rest of my life that I just didn't realize how valuable it would be.

How much do your parents have to do with the both toughness and work ethic? Like where it seems like you couldn't have arrived at the things that you are unless you were a bit maniacal about how you work. I don't know that I was that. I think when I was in high school, there were certain things that came easy to me. I don't know that I was a big, big-time worker. I worked hard, but I don't know that I was as intelligent a worker as I should have been, both athletically and academically.

Like, I got really good grades, but I didn't really bust it. I could have done way better. In college, I realized pretty early that you want to get an A at Duke. You're going to have to work your ass off. B is not that hard. And I was going, I'm okay with Bs because I, I basketball was more important to me than school. And, and it wasn't, the school wasn't important, but basketball was more important. You know, I kind of figured early on, nobody, 10 years from now,

nobody's going to ask me how I did on the test the night before the game. They were going to ask me how I did in the game. So I felt like that was more important. But when I grew up, my dad was a really hard worker and he was gone a lot. And you know, he'd be at his shop working. He did go, he didn't go to all my games when I was a kid, but in high school, he didn't miss a game. Went to every game. And, you know, he had gotten to a point

where he could leave work to come to the game, but, you know, watching him work, I couldn't keep up with him. And I don't think my work ethic even compares to his. And I kind of thought he was the toughest dude that ever lived when I was a kid. You know, how do I measure up to that? Um, but he never got the chance to play.

He worked from the time he was a teenager. You know, he was a commercial fisherman as my grandfather was. And then he started this TV. He went to technical school and became, you know, learned electronics and started his TV business. And that was, that was his thing. He was, he was a TV sales and service guy and, and did very well. So I had no wants as a kid.

Tough, toughest how though? How was he tough? How did you see that in childhood? The way he worked, he did not, outside of our family, I didn't realize how much he took at home. Like my mom ran the house. I didn't realize my dad he took at home. Like my mom ran the house. I didn't realize my dad was kind of afraid of my mom. But outside of the house, he didn't take any BS from anybody. He was very nice, but his thing was like when I, when I was in high school, I had a girlfriend in high school and my mom did not like her at all. And she gave me the what for about it.

And I kind of asked my dad, like, what do you think? And he said, why do you care what I think? I don't have to go out, whether you do. And I was like, okay. That was the kind of guy he was. And if I ever had a problem with a teacher, like I had a teacher at my high school who was, who gave me a hard time.

I missed, I was sick the day of one of the playoff games that we had in the California state playoffs. And so I didn't go to, I didn't go to school that day because I wanted to be prepared for the game. I was, I was in pretty bad shape with a sort of flu or illness or something. So this teacher decided that, wait a minute, there's a rule that if you don't go to school, you can't play in the game. So he tried to keep me from playing in the game. And it didn't work.

I played, but my dad said, stay away from that guy. Like he's trouble. And you don't need to cause a problem. You don't need to talk to him. Just stay away from him. Like avoid him. And he could handle things in a way that I never thought of. And so he was pretty tough in that regard.

And he didn't, like he never yelled at me. My, my dad was never, never criticized me about my play. After a game, he would just say, Hey, you know, he wanted to know what happened in the huddle that was funny. Um, but every, you know, but he didn't compliment me much either. It was more, you know, Hey, you played good. Yeah. I had 40 points in a game.

He says, he says, Hey, you played good. You know, he, he didn't, but he, he meant it, but he wasn't throwing compliments around like pedals, rose petals at my feet. You're better at that with your kids, right? Way better. Yeah, way better. Because you learn you don't like how that feels, right? To always be. Well, I don't know. I mean, you could, you can have the respect, love and admiration of your father. You could do the translations on his behalf, but you probably also would have liked to have felt his pride slightly stronger. I felt it, but it wasn't like now where you talk about everything. So I stayed totally out of my son's basketball career or baseball, whatever it was. I didn't want him thinking that how he played mattered any more than him just enjoying it

and being prideful in his own play. So I tried to stay out of that stuff, but when he played well, I let him know that I enjoyed watching him play. Man, you really bust it. That was great. Stuff like that. I was a little more outgoing in that regard.

How was your mother or how was your family life able to conceal from you that your father was a little bit afraid of your mother? Because I know in my household, a traditionally Cuban household, I can only see this now in retrospect. I didn't see when it was happening that my mother was running the household, but making it seem like my father was in charge and they presented such an important United Front that I got to 30 years old. I'm not even kidding.

Being in the backseat of a car before I saw them argue and I was reduced to sort of a toddler like confused by it because my mother was sort of concealing my father's limits for me. How is it that they were able to conceal from you that your father was afraid of your mother? Same way. The exact same way that they were very united conceal from you that your father was afraid of your mother. Same way, the exact same way, that they were very united front in front of me. I never saw my parents argue in front of me.

I heard it maybe once or twice in another room, but it became clear when I became an adult that there was one person running in the house, it was my mom, and my dad would have make sometimes make excuses to get out of the house And do something he wanted to do but you know, I don't know that that at that time was that horribly unusual You know, I think now at least with with my relationship with my wife, you know, we have a This sounds corny, but it really is a beyond love. It's a partnership you know

And one thing we've done well is we don't keep score and If I go on a golf trip, she's not saying well, wait a minute that entitles me to do this You know, she wants me to go do what I want to do When I can and I want her to do what she wants to do when she can what a great freedom to have in a relationship That if no one's counting there's not a lot of room for resentment there. Yeah, I mean, and that's because of her. Like we've never, but we have talked about it. Like let's not keep score on stuff and we've never done that. And it's because of her and how sort of easy-going she is about things, but

there's a we first thing about our relationship. It's whatever decision is made. I'm not making the decision. Well, I take that back. She makes all the decisions on decor in the house. We actually had to talk about that. I made a suggestion, it got shot down right away. She's in charge of the decor.

But outside of that, every decision we make is what's best for us. What do we think? What do we wanna do? So it's very we-oriented. Why do you think it's corny to say we have beyond love, we have a partnership? But I mean, romantic love is lovely,

but I would think that your definition of love at 60 is a hell of a lot different than it was at 25. Oh yeah, it's deeper and more appreciation for what she is and how little I bring. All I've really brought, I provide as best I can, but she's the emotional center of everything. You feel it sounds like, as I do, almost inadequate in the size of its light, right? You sound like you're deeply admiring of your wife for making you a better husband, father, son. I know my wife has helped me a great deal there because I just didn't have... I didn't know what I didn't know until I loved so much that I

couldn't help but learn it. Darrell Bock When did you... When did you hit you? David Kroger Oh, because I had... Early in my relationship, I had been making the same mistakes that I had made all of my life of just sort of succumbing to what I thought were the patterns that were the right way to live. And then I just had my perspective changed by someone gently, ever so gently showing me stuff.

It wasn't with reprimand. It was always with understanding and acceptance so that I would see things myself and then just sort of be horrified at what was looking at me in the mirrors. Things that I couldn't unsee because I was just, I was succumbing to the same patterns that had always made me unhappy in relationships until I realized that there would be great light and looseness in following instead of feeling like I had to lead because I thought that I knew things and I didn't seem like in retrospect it's clear I didn't know shit. I thought I knew everything and I didn't know anything but I'm arriving

like this you're arriving at a 40-year relationship with that understanding. I'm arriving with it at 50. I'm getting too deep into adulthood and just having things stripped away that it they caused me great shame that I didn't see them before now, but as my therapist says, well, be glad that you saw them at all. You can still rectify things. Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point.

Like I don't know that at least for me, I hear what you're saying. I'm not sure shame is the right word. I mean, I'm grateful that these things were illuminated to me through her, that she saw these things and she would say, oh, I didn't do this or I didn't do, she did. But when you are with that every day, like I've probably been a project of hers, she's accepted and tolerated a lot of my shortcomings and worked

on them with probably a longer view than I've had. It's not just, hey, you don't do this well and you need to stop doing this or whatever. It's come over time. So she's been accepting of things, but she's nudged me in the right direction. And so when, and all these different things we're talking about when I've come to the realization that, hey, I screwed up there.

I've not done this right. Like I was grateful that I've had that in my life to help me. And it's been, that's kind of been a partnership too of making me a more feeling person, caring about things I never cared about before. You know, I've gotten better. I'm still a, you know, I've gotten better. I'm, I'm still a, um, you know, I, well, who's the comedian, Bill Burr that, uh, you know, we're this, we're

this unfinished building that's got scaffolding around it. And, you know, my wife is, is museum quality under glass all finished. And, but I tend to think that's, that's more of the truth. Well, and I don't know if it's true of you in some ways, my wife married a gorilla and only because I am feeling so accepted and so understood at every turn, am I not defensive or don't let my ego get in the way of where

it is that I have to be a better person because to be a better person is to live in better service of her, which then allows me to love myself better because I'm happier in general. And when I tell you, I'm unforgiving with myself. So I do assign shame there, but she's inherited that. Like your wife has known you for 40 years. So she basically, my guessing, she knows you in some ways better than you know yourself. No question. And she would probably say that I don't need any help in loving myself.

But... I think most people would say that about you. But she's really helped me in kind of realizing that, look, I'm falling short here and I'm not paying attention to this. I think she knows that it's inside me, like I feel the same way other people feel, but I haven't allowed myself to in certain instances

or I shut off this because of something that happened years ago or whatever. I've had situations like that, but she's- Are we talking about repressions there, coping mechanisms? We're talking about you being scarred somewhere and just not wanting to show people more of yourself? Sure, yeah. Like, you know, I don't know anybody

who doesn't carry scars from things that have happened, but, you know, she's been really helpful with that. And especially as we've gotten older and our lives have changed, like we were talking recently that, you know, we're, we're both 60 now and we were saying, you know, this is going to end pretty soon. Like we've had a run of each stage of our lives. We've enjoyed more than the one before and we're going, that's not going to, that's not going to be the case all that much longer.

You know, there'll be health issues. You know, something's going to happen where the next stage not going to be as good as the last one. We're gonna hit that stage at some point. What a magic carpet ride though, to feel like it's always getting better at Jesus. It's always gotten better. Like when the kids went to, we got two kids, they're 29 and 27, and we, you know, especially her,

but we really enjoyed them when they were little. Like we had a blast with them. And when they got to high school, we were starting to dread. My wife, more than me, we were starting to dread, you know, they're going to leave soon. They're going to be in college. And but it seemed like our kids exhibited, you know, their readiness to go. And that made it way easier on us because they're ready. And we might not have been ready to let them go. But when they left and went to college, we had this whole new world open up. And we're like, we don't have any obligations now.

Like we can say yes to anything. Somebody calls, says you want to go to dinner. We're like, yes. And we didn't have to guard the liquor cabinet anymore or take kids to this thing or that thing or worry about, you know, where the you know, so you transitioned well into emptiness because you can get right back into the relationship. Not that you weren't in it before, but the relationship could be yours again, as opposed to just living in service of the kids all the time. We started dating again, kind of, and, and it became incredible amount of fun. It was different. So we're still chasing the kids around, but we're not,

we're not obligated. We don't feel obligated to. We're doing it because we want to. It'll be fun. Let's go see them or let's see what they're doing. Let's go to our daughter's horse show or let's go visit. And it's been really fun. And, you know, everything now, like when I was a kid, you know, there was a lot of have to in my life for all of us. Um, I have to do this. I have to do that. I have to go to school. I have to go to work. I have to, and now we're at a stage of life where because we, we feel like we've

handled the have to pretty well. Most of what we're doing now is want to. I still have some have to, but not as much. And that's a, that's been a fun way to live where you feel like, you know, most of my life is want to. And, uh, and at some point, you know, we're going to quit our jobs and move on. And I'm kind of, there's a part of me that's not lamenting that. Like I'm not lamenting retirement at some point,

because I think it'll open up yet another as long as we're physically and emotionally and mentally healthy, there's a, going to be a fun there that I'm really looking forward to. Well, you have part of the pie chart on happiness figured out if you're walking most steps with gratitude. Like if you're taking inventory of your life as you're living it, it's pretty present to be like right now is the best time. This is the happiest we've ever been because our life keeps getting better. I mean, you can fear the other, you know, the doom on the horizon. You could fear the mortality or you could spend all your time in the happiness of knowing

that your now is better than it's ever been. And that's another influence of Wendy is, you know, I know there's going to be a problem at some point, but I'm not worried about it because the now is so good. So I want to enjoy the now. We've got, Winnie and I have these really close friends, buddy of mine from high, from college. So I've known him for 40, whatever it is, 41 years. I met him in 1983. And he, he married a girl that he met in law school, and they were married for up until four years. She passed away about four years ago. And he was hopelessly devoted to her,

kind of like me and Wendy. That was his whole life. So she passed away. We've got another friend that was a neighbor of ours, woman who lost her husband 12 years ago, and she was devastated and took her a long time to feel normal again. My wife decided that she wanted to introduce those two and I was totally against it.

I'm like, don't do this. This is not an area for us to get involved in and I'm thinking like, let's not lose two friends over this. But she said, no, I think they would really appreciate each other. So she introduces them at our house and they would really appreciate each other. So she introduces them at our house and they got married a couple years ago. So they're happier than they've been in a long, long time. And my thing was, you know, my friend, the man, long time friend, I thought that when his wife passed, it was going to be this long period of him.

And she said, no, he's going to be okay. Like, this has been devastating, but it's he's going to be okay because he's social. He's a social animal. He you're not reading this the right way. If, if I were in his position, I wouldn't have been able to function in the same way he does. He's a different personality than I am. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don't think Wendy will wear a red dress to my funeral. She might, but she'll be fine. Like she'll handle it. I won't, I would not do as well. I'm so reliant on her for every bit of emotional happiness. I don't, I think I'd

have a problem. Like I never thought I could, I would be this reliant on someone. I never, that never occurred to me. Because you're so self-sufficient, because you're proud of your self-sufficiency. I guess. I mean, I don't know, but it never, when I dated before I met Wendy and even in the time we were kind of separated by distance, I never felt that way about anybody else. So I never had to think about it. And now when you've had all this and you've seen your friends go through it You know you think about how would I do and I know I wouldn't do well I'd figured out. I mean, I wouldn't you know, hopefully wouldn't be a complete blob that couldn't leave the house

But I don't know I don't know how I do but I know I wouldn't do as well as she would do You would have been an unhappy lawyer after how many years if it's all you had done, because it sounded like you were already getting to a place where you couldn't abide that that was going to be the next 30 or 40 years of your life, and only that. I don't know, Dan. Like, I don't know that that's the case. One of the things that was really illuminating for me after I quit was I didn't know that I was stressed. I was handling it and I didn't, I- You only saw it all in retrospect.

Yeah, I was really happy. Look, my job was hard. There were aspects of it that I didn't love every day. I love what I'm doing now. I don't love the travel. There are times I wake up and I'm thinking, God, I gotta get to, you know, like you were saying, I got to get to Lubbock, Texas.

I can't believe you're still doing that. Like two flights and a two hour drive to Lubbock, Texas for a February game. It's not that bad. I mean, I enjoy it more now because I don't have, I think my wife gets on me about, I take the first flight out after every game. So sometimes I'm waking up at, at o dark 30 to get a six o'clock flight to get home.

I was doing it years ago because the kids were little and I wanted to get back. Um, now I just want to get out of where I am. I feel better when I get home, even if I'm tired or even if Wendy's, I get home and Wendy's out of the house running around with her art career or something. And I get back to an empty house I'd rather be at home than be in a hotel somewhere So I the travel wears me out a little bit and the older I get the more I have to pay attention to You know making sure I sleep and all that stuff

But I don't sleep during the season and I can't sleep if I've got a flight the next morning It doesn't matter what time the flight is. I'm not gonna sleep At least not sleep like I do at home. So the travel kind of wears you out. But I'm lucky it's seasonal. So, you know, I bust it from travel wise from basically October until April and then I got a little bit of time off. But I think you have an unusual sort of pain threshold. I believe you're writing a book about toughness 10 years ago because you can endure a whole lot of stress without acknowledging that it's stress. Maybe.

I wrote that book because I wrote an article on it. I was watching a game and some announcer like me had praised a player that was nothing but a big bully. And he said, oh, it's a tough guy. He's a tough player and all that. I'm like, he's not a tough player. He doesn't do anything tough. He's, he's a bully is what he is.

And for some reason it motivated me to write an article of what toughness means in basketball. So I wrote this article and I sent it in. This might be 15 years ago. I sent it into my editor at ESPN.com and basically said, you didn't ask for this. Nobody asked me to write this. I just felt moved to do it. Use it if you want. Don't basically said, you didn't ask for this. Nobody asked me to write this. I just felt moved to do it. Use it if you want.

Don't use it if you don't want. And they used it. They put it up on the free site. You know, some of my stuff was on a paywall back then, but behind a paywall. So they put it up and I couldn't believe the response. I, you've had this, but I've never had this. I've never had, uh had something I've done or said get reactions from literally all over the world. I had coaches, teachers, military

leaders reach out to me because of that article. And I was floored by that. And it was Wendy's idea that I write the book. She said, you need to write a book about this. And it needs to go beyond basketball. And so I did. And had no idea how to do it, but learned about it and figured it out. Explain to me how she helped you write it or where it is that she knows you in these places that you don't even know yourself.

She's an English or was an English major and started her career as a writer, essentially, not a writer like you, but she worked for companies and did writing for companies, annual reports, all these different things. And so when I started writing the book, I had no experience in that. So I had no idea how to do it.

I had no idea to order things. So I did months of research and gathering the information I needed and interviews and all that stuff. And then when I sat down to write it, I wrote it. I can't remember how many months it took me, but I just went into my law office and I just treated it like a job. I wrote for like eight hours a day or whatever it was. I don't think you realize how disciplined you are.

I think you're used to being so disciplined that you shrug your shoulders when I say you're a hard worker because you cannot be this excellent at this number of things, not applying yourself. Well, but I was boxed into that. You know, it was kind of one of those things where, so when the book idea was being sold, when the book idea was being sold, I was asked to go up to New York and meet with publishers. And so I had my agent got me a publishing agent, and this publishing agent had three or four, maybe five different publishers come in

to sit down with me for meetings, kind of back to back to back. And I mistakenly thought I needed to go in there and sell them on the idea of this book. So they might be interested enough to go forward with it. And I sat down for the first one, they were pitching me. And I'm like, what? You know, they're making offers. And by the time after I did the four or five, whatever it was, different things, I hop in the car to go back to the airport and my phone rings and said, all right, here are the, here are the offers you need to choose which one.

And I'm like, you're kidding me. I had no clue. But once I accepted the offer from Penguin, it came down to Penguin and Amazon. Amazon was paying more money, but it wasn't going to be a book I could hold in my hands. It was going to be an e-book type deal. And I was like, all right, what's more important money or, you know, the book? And I went with, for some reason, I wanted to hold in my hand. Old school.

I don't know why. You're 60, that's why. Yeah, it took less money. So, when, then when I, when I was locked into it, I was like, I have to do this. Like this isn't an idea anymore. This is an obligation. Because of the feedback you were getting or just because the deal is now signed? Because I signed a contract.

Like I'm obligated to do this. You don't sign a contract without being obligated to do it. There's no backing out now. And what I didn't realize, this was really, this is where Wendy's way of doing things was really illuminated to me. So my wife's an artist and she's very thoughtful in what she paints and from time to time,

she would have an unfinished painting. She just put it on the wall in the house. And to me, I'm like, what are you doing? You know, that's not done. And so I'd say, when are you gonna finish that? And she'd say, I'll get around to it. She just wanted to leave it alone and she'd walk by and take a look at it. And then she'd go back to it later on and she'd have a different perspective on it.

You don't even understand that. No clue. You've got to complete. You have to complete the task. No clue. Whatever the task is, it must be completed. Right. So this one, I think you'll understand better than almost anybody.

So I, not knowing the book process, I finished the manuscript, I send it in, right, to the publisher. And I thought, this is great, I'm done. And the weights lifted, I'm done. And I've moved on with my life. Like they'll edit it, I'm done. Then 45, 50 days later, they send it back to me. Redlined. All the notes. They hadn't accepted it yet. And I finally realized, wait a minute. So I dug back into it and the whole thing was new.

And I thought, wait a minute, this is better over here. And all of a sudden I've got a completely different new perspective on it. And I was so into the weeds on it when I, when I was working on it that I couldn't really see what it should be. Then I leave it alone for 45, 50 days, whatever it was before I get it back, and it was a completely new project to me. And so not only did I do some of the things they suggested, but I did a whole bunch of other stuff. They made it better. They made you make it better. Well, yeah, like just putting it away in sort of my wife's way of like, this doesn't, there's no time limit on this.

Like I'm going to do it when I feel like doing it. And you can't do that with everything, obviously, but that was really helpful. And it caused me to take a, you know, since then I'm taking a step back a little bit more and not as focused on, all right, let's get this done now. Let's get this done. You know, take a step back and kind of think about it a little bit more and it'll be better if I do it that way.

That's been helpful. And that's sort of her way of seeing the bigger picture. What did you learn about toughness when you started doing reporting and research? It goes from an article to now becoming a life project, right? Like, I mean, it's not... Writing a book is hard and it takes a lot of time. So what did you learn that you didn't know from the time that you wrote the article that the feedback helped you learn? The perspective of others on what toughness meant, that I think when I was a

kid and coming up, you know, you heard it from coaches, but it was never really defined. It was sort of what I learned kind of through osmosis. Okay. This is getting rewarded for being tough, but it was really more about your everyday life and what it means that I remember Bob Knight saying something to me about, and it, it resonated with me about what I said before when my wife said, you know, when you say yes to somebody else, you're saying no to your family. And Knight said something.

He says, you know, no is a word that's used by tough people. And, you know, I really thought about that, that I don't say no very often. Uh, my first instinct is to say yes. Somebody says, Hey, will you do this? Sure. And then I have to go and fix all the things that saying yes to that person caused issues for me, instead of just saying, no, my priorities over here,

that's not my priority. So no. So that was helpful. And so that was helpful. Um, I, the project helped me, uh, kind of define what it was for me in my life. And to the extent it may have been helpful to somebody else, the best part of the book for me wasn't, you know, it was really weird for me having a book with your picture on it with the word toughness over it. Cause I don't, I don't think I was the toughest player or anything like that.

It, that should have been done by a military person or a nurse or doctor. Somebody who does really tough things. But, you know, it was the best part of it was hearing from, uh, coaches, teachers that use the book with their, their team or their class. And it started a conversation about what was important to them. Like I got all these letters, these letters from teams and all that. Like we use this or get a letter from a kid who couldn't make his high school team, uh, tried two or three times, read the book and then did all these things

and made his high school team. That was pretty cool. Um, I really enjoyed that, but, but you know, like, look, you, this has been your life. Like, and you, you know, this one better than I do. You have a successful book and I was lucky that book was successful. At least they thought it was. They wanted me to write another one right away. And I'm like, I don't, I don't want to go through that again.

And one, I didn't have anything that I felt that deeply to dive into that again. But writing a book sucks. It's hard. And like, I don't know, how do you do that? Well, I haven't done it well. It's my greatest demon. Like, I write, the idea of writing, writing an article is lonely enough. A book is 150 articles strung together.

So like it's not that you did it in your spare time or that you did it off to the side suggests to me that you enjoy things that have a degree of difficulty, especially if you're working from a place of inspiration. If it's you yelling at your television about something, that's a decent place to start on any creative endeavor. But I don't know what you've learned from your wife and your daughter who are artists

about creativity because you work very creatively within our space, but I don't know. A book seems to be the toughest creative challenge I can imagine you partaking in, although ballroom dancing might have been one of them once upon a time. That was brutal. Were you good at it? I was pretty good. My mom wanted to be me to be a cultured person. You know, she was worried that because of somehow because of our background that I wouldn't be cultured. And so I, she, I say she encouraged me to be kind. She forced me to do a lot of things. One of them was I had to take ballroom dance when I was a kid.

And so there was an instructor. She was a former like, you know, high level ballroom dance or older lady named Margaret Michael. And so I went to, I didn't tell any of my friends I was doing this. Like I wanted nobody to know. And so I went to this thing and I would take these classes and then we went to competitions. There was, there were ballroom dancing competitions and I,

my partner was an older girl and that was kind of fun. But we won some of these competitions. So I got trophies for it. I never put them out with, you know, my other trophies. I kept them in a closet somewhere because I didn't want anybody to know. And then, but the best thing, it turns out that my mom had me do was she sort of made, encouraged me. She made me take speech and debate courses when I was, you know, in junior high school. Why do you keep doing encourage?

It doesn't sound like it was encouraged. It was forced. Yeah, she forced me to do it. You're just being, you're just being nice. I'm being nice. Yeah. But, but, you know, encourage, it, you know, it's probably the same thing, but I'm being nice, yeah. But, you know, in Curry, it, you know, it's probably the same thing, but I felt like I was forced.

And so when I started doing that, I met a teacher at my school named Billy Cramer. And, you know, he was a drama, drama type teacher and taught speech and debate and drama. And very effeminate gentleman, couldn't have been, and he's probably the most influential person teacher and taught speech and debate and drama and very feminine gentlemen Couldn't have been in he's probably the most influential person in my life outside of family or my coaches like coach K something like that it would be it would be mr. Kramer and Lucky for me he when I went to high school He got a job at my high school and so I wound up having him for like six straight years and

I at my high school. And so I wound up having him for like six straight years. And I, he got me into, we went to forensics competitions. So I had to do like these impromptu competitions, extemporaneous speaking competitions, all these speech and debate things where I had to stand in front, by myself in front of a panel of judges, sometimes they would give you a topic and you have five minutes to get your thoughts together. Other times they'd give it to you and you had to start there. And nothing that I've ever done in my life has been that frightening. And if I could handle that, you know, little red light going on on a TV camera is no big deal.

And in fact, arguing in front of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals or going up in front of a judge in a motion hearing was nowhere near as frightening as that was. So that was really helpful to me. And it made me more confident, more secure in my ability to handle myself. It's probably the first time you've felt confidence,

real confidence about your intellect, right? Getting good at that or overcoming that fear because you're somebody who comes off as very confident about how smart he is. When I started, it wasn't necessarily about me. It was more like, I wanted to do well and I wanted to rise up just like anybody else would. But I always remembered the idea that, you know, when I was in college and our games were on TV, my parents kept the tapes of those games. So they would, you know, record them back then it was VCR days. So they record them out of VCR and God forbid the announcer made a mistake about me.

You know, my mom was like, how could he say that? You know, so I remembered that. And I thought, you know, when I first started, there were some games I was doing where that, that game might have been the only time that team was on TV that year, or at least on ESPN. So I felt obligated to know everything I could know and be able to present it like it was the NCAA Championship game, because that was meaningful to those players and to their families. And, you know, I wanted to make it important. And if it's important to them, it better be important to me.

And that was, I think that was helpful to me in rising up. And, you know, I got lucky too. Like the first game I had, there was a situation at the end of the game. And last second play and the play by play guy says, Jay, what's going to happen? And I'm like, I don't know. But I said, I said, I said, this guy is in all likelihood, this guy is going to get the

shot, but it's not the shot that can beat UNC Greensboro. It's going to be the offensive rebound. So your first shot defense has to be really good, but you'd better pay attention to that. It happened exactly like that. He missed the shot and somebody tipped it in. And so my bosses, I think, well, this guy's not an idiot. But I got lucky.

Like it could have been a 20 point blowout and nobody would have ever, that never would have been a resonating moment. So there's luck involved in this. I wanted to circle back around on Mr. Kramer, but before I do that, does this inform the way that you cover, this kindness you speak of, and the fact that you're putting out history that a family will remember about in the way that you're announcing it? I cannot imagine that Jay Billis, who is taking that kind of kindness to his approach or care

with that approach, loves the way sports are covered these days everywhere, where it's criticism, it's blame, it's scathing, it's hot takes. I can't imagine that the modern media sort of aligns with where you are philosophically. Modern sports media coverage. That's a good question. I know it's substantially different because games, there weren't as many games on television back then. And there's so much more data now. You know, 30 years ago, we didn't have all these analytics to tell the average Joe exactly how good this team is defensively. People still might not know why, but they can say, okay, Miami's ranked 110th in defense.

They can't guard anybody. They don't know why. So you're trying to help them with the why, but you try to maintain a balance of, you know, in basketball, I think football, the football culture has really affected basketball. That, you know, you lose a game and everything's dissected. You know, college football team lose a game. Are they out of the playoff? They're done. Why, you know, you lose a game and everything's dissected. You know, college football team lose a game.

Are they out of the playoff? They're done. Why, you know, who's like, you're, who's to blame? Basketball now, teams lose basketball games. There hasn't been an undefeated champion since 1976. It, there, there are basketball games. You know, you play one game on, on Saturday, you got another one on Monday, and you got to make that turnaround.

Football has the luxury of a week in between to prepare basketball and get that. So you're going to have losses and some things that seem inexplicable, but that's part of the game. So I, I try to stay away from that, you know, hair on fire, you know, what do we do now? You know, you can't- But how often when you're watching television or you discuss, and I'm not talking about ESPN, I'm talking about all coverage. I'm talking about social media being pervasive. I'm talking about what seems to me like a re- And the coverage to me feels generally crueller, more dehumanizing, and less about celebrating sports, which is what covering

your Duke basketball team felt like the celebration of sports to now something that's more poisoned, more contaminated. I think I don't know that it's changed all that much except for the volume of it, so in the amount of it. So you know 30, 40 years ago there was still the same questions being asked but they were asked the next day in the newspaper, which got folded up and thrown away or lining the bottom of a cage or whatever you want. And there was talk radio, but that floated off into the ether.

Now you got the social media. Every, there's way more coverage. So the coverage is what? From the 80s till now, a multiple of 10, maybe more. So you can't get away from the amounts till now, a multiple of 10, maybe more. So you can't get away from the amount of it. Even though they're kind of saying the same things, there is some more sensationalism maybe than there used to be. I guess I'm attaching something to you

that you're not doing though. You're not looking, you're not generally disgusted by how much coarser coverage in general have become. And maybe in college basketball, it's not entirely so. I was talking about the more overarching thing of all of sports. I'm talking about argument television. I'm talking about the things that get fed daily to just blame instead of celebration. We have to argue about something and talking about how excellent people are is harder to

do. It's harder to do. And there isn't the celebratory nature of it that there used to be. I'm not disgusted by it as much as I am. This is the way it is. And my disgust is not gonna change it. Like I had a really interesting experience

over the last couple of years. I was on the NCAA's competition committee for about almost 10 years. Jim Delaney, the commissioner of the Big 10 at the time, asked me to be on it. And it was about rules of play and basically officiating. So the first it was called the men's basketball officiating committee. And then it morphed into competition committee because it sounded better. And so I, I got into the weeds on how the rules should, should be,

how the game should be officiated, things like that. So we made recommendations to the rules committee, all that stuff. And I was going to games and now I'm watching officiating in addition to the game. And I cycled off the committee two years ago and give or take. And when I did, it was kind of like

when I stopped me in a lawyer. All of a sudden, it just like responsibility for officiating was off my table. And now I go to games and there's a bad call here and like, so what? I don't care. Two years ago, I was like, that's a bad call. That shouldn't have been called, you know, this, that, the other, I'm a pining on officiating.

And the reason was because I felt responsibility for it. And I don't feel responsibility for it anymore. And I don't feel responsibility for it anymore. And I don't feel responsibility for anything my colleagues say. And by that, I don't mean my colleagues at ESPN, but I mean my colleagues in the media. I don't feel any responsibility for it. I may like it or not like it,

but I'm not bothered by it anymore. I was at first. You seem super responsible. I don't know that about you. I can't know that about you, but you seem like someone who has been largely responsible his entire adult life. I hope so.

You know, I make stupid mistakes like everybody else, but I don't, I'm trying not to internalize stuff that I can't do anything about, and I'm getting better at it. That's been a challenge, because I would go to say this isn't right. You know, I've railed on... Unfairness seems to bother you a great deal. And Justice, in fact, when you speak out critically, it matters more because you don't do it that often and you seem to be righteous about your rage when you do. I hope so, but I hope I'm thoughtful and prepared when I do.

Like the NCAA stuff has been a difficult balance because I've felt since I was in college, and I was on the NCAA committee in college. So I was talking about this when I was in my early 20s. So I feel like I understand the system, both the way it works and the legal side of it. So on the athlete compensation side, I've been on this topic for a long time.

I don't go to games. I don't go to a game and walk in the building and say, how horribly unfair is, I go to enjoy the game. And I'm able to separate the two. So when it's time to talk about basketball, I talk about basketball. When it's time to talk about policy, I talk about policy. And I feel like I'm informed and I'm using my good judgment as best I can.

I've tried to make it about policy and not people because not everybody at the NCAA is stroking a hairless cat trying to control the world. Just many of them. Yeah, just some. There are by and large good people who are trying to do the right thing but aren't doing the right thing. And there are a lot of bad rules and all that stuff. And I think you can see it changing now. A couple of questions to finish up with you. I wanted to circle back on Mr. Kramer. Why

was he such an inspiration to you? The value of teachers and role models have been pretty important in your life. Why was Mr. Kramer so influential? He was so different and in such a different realm than I saw myself in. I didn't see myself as a drama type, you know. And I think back then especially kids in high school are stereotyped. So, you know, you had the drama nerds and the jocks and where I went to high school, you know, anybody that had any association with the wacky weed or all that, we called them gels, you know, so everybody was in their clique. And that, he got me out of my jock clique. He gave you permission?

A little bit, but I was still, I still kept it at a distance. So, I did the speech and debate thing, but that was off campus. So my friends didn't see me do it. Just the people I was with that were on the forensics team or whatever, I feel like mean girls and I was on the math leaps, but that's kind of what it was. And we had a thing, my senior year,

he came to me and said, you're gonna be the lead in the school play. And I'm like, no, I'm not. And he's like, yes, you are. I'm the director. You're going to be in the lead and play. And it was Lillian Hellman's watch on the Rhine, kind of a, a heady thing for a bunch of 17 year olds to do.

So we had these intense rehearsals for months before the play and I and college coaches came to see the play. Uh, one of coach K's assistants came to see it. And, uh, so we're in rehearsal one day and I missed a cue. Like I was probably screwing around backstage or something, not paying attention and he jumped my ass like no coach, you know, to that point it ever done. And he said, and he basically said, when you play in a basketball game, you've got somebody guarding you. You've got some guy as big as you trying to stop you from doing what you're trying to do.

He says, nobody stopped you. He said, you have an opponent. He says, nobody stopped you from hitting your cue. Nobody stopped you from being engaged in what you're doing right now. And he said something I've never forgotten. He said, don't be your own opponent. And I didn't get that all the time in class. I got that from him and he was really supportive, uh, had really high standards.

So this, this play does well, right? Um, I don't, I don't remember how long it ran for four or five nights. And I won an award for it. I was named the I won the Bank of America Best Actor Award. I don't know from how far and wide it was. But I got this thing and it kind of embarrassed me. And I didn't feel right about it. So I told them, uh, I'm not, I, I know, I don't want this. I don't want to accept this. Cause so many of the other kids that they'd spent their whole lives doing that.

That's what they wanted to be. And this basketball player just jumps in there and now all of a sudden, you know, and maybe I was getting the award because people knew who I was from basketball. So I told him I wasn't going to take it, right? So he says, you will accept this award and you will accept it with appropriate pride. Because I told him I'm not an actor. And he says, you're correct. You're not an actor. You're an award-winning actor. That was pretty cool. He, uh, he, yeah, he sort of taught you how to respect what you were doing, right? Yeah.

Can you tell me where those ballroom trophies are now, where the Bank of America actor of the year is? Like where are these trophies now? Do you know where they are? I still have the Bank of America thing, but it was a certificate, so I have a... It's digitized, so I have a digital photo of it all my trophies My brother was a really talented athlete when he was younger seven years older than me So I grew up in a room that had all of his trophies in it Which made me like yo, okay, I want to have that many so when I started when him he had well over a hundred and I think I got even with him by the time I was a senior

in high school. So I had gotten just as many. And it used to really piss me off. Like I had my little league stuff when I was a kid and my mom, one of my mom's friends would walk by and they would marvel at my brother's side of the room. And then my side is like, you know, nothing. So I did that. But my mom, when I, when Wendy and I moved to Charlotte, my mom boxed all that crap up and she sent it to me. And so it was boxes and boxes and boxes, these old trophies. Like, what do we do with that crap? So we just kind of tossed them.

And, uh, what, there's nothing we could do with it. We're, you know, we're young. All of your childhood prides are gone. All of them. But even if I had them now, family heirlooms, the ballroom dancing trophies. I probably should have saved one of those. I think I saved like one or two of them that were good looking trophies,

but on that I got rid of all that stuff. And maybe I shouldn't have. I should have just taken a picture of all of them together, but what would that have, that would have been weird. What can you tell me about what you have done with your children that is either the same or different than what your parents did as it relates specifically to them now having what sounds like friendships with you where they call you on your birthday cake, old, fat, bald guy or whatever it is that they do to make sure that you know that J.

Billis isn't quite as up here as J. Billis might be perceived as on television. We had fun. So we're very irreverent. Like I've got an irreverent sense of humor. I'm more likely to make fun of some. The people I'm closest with, we make fun of each other. If we're not making fun of you, you just join the group and we don't know well you enough to make fun of you.

There's nothing sacred in our family. If you make a mistake, it's gonna be fodder for fun down the road. So my kids have really good senses of humor and they're really good at giving it back. Like my wife and my daughter, when I'm doing a game, their favorite thing is to get on Twitter and look at the mean tweets about me.

And they love it. And they'll even text me during a game going, look at this one, dad, like this guy's, you know, and I'm like, I'm busy. So the meanest, the meanest things that they can find on the internet. They love it. Yeah, they love that stuff.

Cause we don't, you know, we don't take ourselves too seriously. So if anything happens, like we're, we love that stuff. But, you know, they're really supportive. Like my daughter and my son are really supportive of one another and they don't, you know, it's not like they talk every day, but they're, they're friends in addition

to brother or sister. And my daughter, I think my wife and daughter would probably say they're closer. And then they would say, well, you and Anthony, they tell me you and Anthony are closer. And I don't know why it shakes out that way or why people feel that way. But, you know, like our daughter is very forthcoming. Like she tells us kind of every detail, not every detail, but things that are going on with her, there's meat on the bone. My son's still a little more, you know, how you doing?

Good. Yeah. How about you? Like he, he's not, but you get into it with them and then he'll tell you, he'll tell you most everything. But never more united than they are in Mockingden. Yeah. That's, that's everybody's united there. It's three against one all the time.

You're the, held in the lowest esteem in your family by a lot? Yeah, oh yeah. And if they, and my flaws are pointed out constantly. Like I've got a lot of flaws, but one of the worst ones is, when I talk on the telephone or my cell phone, I get louder than when I talk normally. And they go, dad, there's a microphone in that phone. You don't have to yell into the phone.

And I do it all the time. I can't stop it. And I don't know, like I should be smarter than that, but I've never figured it out. It's like, it's like, I feel like, like I'm talking into a, into a soup can with a string attached to it. And I got to talk louder. So the string vibrates. It's so stupid.

And I've got a lot of those things where, where they call me out all the time. But the birthday greetings have what? Old, bald, fat, fuck? Yeah. So my, my birthday is December 24th. So most of my birthday stuff is just the family, which is great. And I like my favorite birthday cake is just the grocery store birthday cake.

Like we got a place called Harris Teeter, and I would rather have it from there than have some high-end, you know, kind of fancy cake. So my wife brings home one of those cakes, and I can't remember what I was doing, but she also bought these, like, kind of candy letters to write, Happy Birthday Dad or Happy Birthday Jay or whatever. And as soon as the kids saw that, they were both like, oh, we can do better than Happy Birthday.

So they laid all these things out and it came up with happy birthday. You fat fuck. And then it's a, and they, they, they only had like, it said fuck. And then they had Y O O. And that was the end of it. And, uh, and I, that was my, that's a favorite cake I've ever gotten. Cause all I did was laugh. Uh, and then my son got me a bottle of wine, a really nice bottle of wine, but he had it,

he had the wine bottle done up. I don't know where he got it, but the name of the wine was Bald Fuck. And apparently the company had it done by, I actually called him and said, are you sure this is what you want? He goes, yep, that's it. That sounds like a cool relationship

to having adulthood with your kids though, where your friends and you've lived an entire life of love and wisdom where you can just appreciate the most for who they are. Oh yeah, like, and we're really proud of them, but they're fun, you know, whatever they're going through and doing, hopefully we're supportive of them.

I think we are, Wendy definitely is, but hopefully we're there all the time if they need it. But, you know- Wendy definitely is. She definitely is. But whatever their path is, whatever their dream is, we want them to go get it. You know, go do whatever you wanna do.

Like, I don't, I'm not living your life. You are. So whatever you wanna do, you don't, I'm not living your life. You are. So whatever you want to do, you don't have to look behind you and wonder if we approve. We approve. And when, you know, it's funny, like Wendy and I have talked about this, when we kind of dropped them off at school, I think I wrote a letter to my daughter and told her a couple things, but told her, daughter told her a couple of things, but told her your safety is now your business. Like it's always been ours and we're still there to help, but I can't make your safety decisions for you if you decide something while you're at school. That's, that's on you.

You're going to have to make those decisions for yourself. But we've always felt like, okay, they're adults now and their decisions are theirs. We can help. So if they ever need help or guidance, whatever, we'll tell them what we think, but it's your decision. And if they, you know, if they were to make a decision we didn't agree with, we may, we may tell them what we think. I don't think we would hold back there. But Wendy and I have talked about this. My perspective is if we have a problem with the decision they make, we're the ones that raised them. So then we need to look at, how did they make that decision?

We gave them the foundation. There wasn't that freedom with your parents though, right? It wasn't, you made it in courage, but you were forced into certain things. Well, when I was a kid. Yeah, they were forced into stuff too. There were certain things they didn't have any choice in when they were growing up. But yeah, I think I felt more of an obligation. I can't speak to what my how obligated my kids feel to what we think. I don't know that. I don't feel like they, I don't believe they think that we're, you know, kind of trying

to pull strings on them. I hope they don't. I felt a little bit of obligation to do what my parents felt was the right thing. I don't think I would have gone to law school had they not been so adamant that I go. I'm really glad that I did. I would have regretted it knowing what I know now if I didn't follow sort of that obligation. But it was different. At least it felt different. I think I was capable. I think they allowed me to make my own decisions, but they were they pulled more strings than we pulled. You are awed by the mother Wendy is, yes? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's...

I couldn't have imagined that, you know, that every decision she made, every... She was engaged in everything, and they would not have had the opportunities they had if I were in charge. She was on top of everything and not in a negative way, in a positive way. She wanted to know what does this take? What is it going to take to get it? You know, she was so dialed into the college thing and I would not want to be a kid right now. The college decision is awful for these young people. Awful. Um, I would not want to deal with that, but she helped them navigate it. She directed them in the right places and made sure that they, they had what they needed to, to be where they wanted to be. But at the same time, we were trying to let them know that do this, try to go where you want,

but don't worry about this. Like, I think I even showed my son at one point, like these are where the CEOs, some of the top companies want to college, like show me the pattern. It doesn't matter, you know, like chase after what you want. But if it falls short or this place doesn't want you or whatever, who cares?

It's not that big of a deal. And so my role was to kind of say, it's not that big of a deal, don't worry about it. Like everything's gonna be fine. But your life wasn't like that. Your childhood had pressures in it, right? You had to be, you had to strive, succeed. There has to be something inside you

that makes you experience law stress as not law stress when eight years of ambition and getting ahead is stressful. And to only see it in retrospect suggests that you weren't very aware while you were doing it. I definitely wasn't aware. So what, my life was way easier than my kids' lives when it came to those kind of things. Like I got good at basketball. By the time I was a sophomore in high school,

I knew I was gonna go to college on a scholarship. So I wasn't pining to go somewhere. I was being, I was being begged to come play at this school or that school. So I felt like I get to choose. That was not the experience of my kids. They were, you know, They felt like, well, I need to hustle to get here. I need to do this to get there. I never felt that.

And it was a, what a privilege for me to have that in my back pocket. And my mom wanted me to go to Stanford. And I think part of it was she just wanted to have a kid that went to Stanford. Growing up in California, Stanford was like this unattainable thing. And I didn't want to go to Stanford. Back then, Stanford wasn't very good in basketball. I wanted no part of that.

But she made me visit there. I visited Stanford. I had no interest in going there. And then my daughter applied to Stanford. I was not, and I got admitted to Stanford. I wasn't the student my daughter was. And then Stanford's gotten even harder to get into. And she's like 10 times the student I was

and she got weight listed at Stanford. And I'm looking at that going, I mean, my life was a I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it.

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I appreciate your time. I appreciate that you spent so much time with us and I also, if I haven't said it enough, deep admiration for what a shining light you are and how thorough you are and how long you have been a very strong voice on behalf of a sport that is both advocacy and eloquent. So thank you for spending this time with us. Well, you're way too kind and I feel the same way about you. You know, you've been the standard for me as to how to handle a career and I've been a big fan of yours for a long time.

Oh, thank you. I did not know that. Of course you knew that. I keep coming on your show. Well, you do keep coming on your show. I didn't realize on the show, I didn't realize that was the highest compliment that the highest compliment you give is return visit. No, it's not.

I don't want to make it sound like that, but I enjoy the authenticity of your show and always had from the time you're on ESPN. It's not only entertaining, it's informative, and you can tell. Like when I go on your show, when I go on other shows, I know what's coming. You know, you're going to be asked about this, asked about that, same as anything else. For me, it was like you and Tony Kornheiser were the shows that I would go on and I didn't know what was going to happen.

And it was like, I enjoyed going on because it was going to be fun for me. And I was going to, I was going to get to experience you. And, uh, and same thing with Tony. Maybe it's your, you know, the fact that you guys are real journalists, like now people who get on TV get to call themselves journalists. You guys are journalists, you know, like you, you, you hoofed it back in the day where you had to, you had to go in anonymity and write something. And whenever I see on 30 for 30, like on the University of Miami, you know, you hear all this stuff and then you get your perspective and you go, that's, that's what happened. Like that's, that nailed it. And I always remember you saying about the NCAA bill, like they're mole cops.

And I was like, God, I wish I had said that. He's right. That was perfect. OK, it was good seeing you. Great seeing you.