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  CONTENTS

  An Imperative Note from the Editor

  Disruptive Behavior 101

  An Open Apology to Larry Legend

  Ain’t No Fact Checkin’

  Why Lawrence Taylor Is the Greatest Football Player Ever

  An Open Letter to Tiger Woods

  My Gold Medal Sweetheart, Mary Lou Retton

  Good Men in Bad Pieces

  Bill Russell Is Overrated, Deal with It

  Dolph Schayes and the Athletic Jews of Yesteryear

  Allen Iverson and the Weeping Woman

  The Michael Rapaport Celebrity Scouting Report, Volume 1

  #MadShaming

  Question Time for Bill Belichick

  Hookers, Pills, Dwarfs, and the Las Vegas Raiders

  Fa Fa Fantasy Football

  Twenty-Second Time-Out: Hamilton, the Musical That’s Not Hip-Hop

  Catching Punts

  LaVar Can’t Ball!!!

  The Magic of Magic

  The Beautiful Audacity of Muggsy Bogues

  Geno, Go Get Your Shine Box, Geno

  Fuck Spin Class

  Even When We Suck, New York City Is Still the Mecca

  The Irony of Charles Oakley

  The Eviction of Phil Jackson: An Absurd One-Act Play

  Halftime!: My Spiritual Connection with the Housewives of Bravo TV

  Rapaport’s Real Housewife Top Twenty Power Rankings, Volume 1

  23 Reasons Why LeBron Will Never Be Like Mike

  Venus and Serena Kicked All the Ass, but Richard Williams Is the MVP

  Phife Dawg: Words from the Five-Foot Assassin

  If Iron Mike Tyson Can Find Inner Peace, So Can I

  Great in the Ring, Shitty in Life

  The Great White Hype of Ronda Rousey

  Why Boxers Make More Money Than MMA Fighters

  Rocky Is Great, but Not the Greatest

  The Bronx Bull, the Raging Bull

  Caitlyn, Caitlyn, Caitlyn

  Stickmen: The Ultimate List of Great Stickmen, Part 1

  These Sneakers Are Made for Walking

  Me and Ali

  The Champ

  The Skinny-Jeanification of Sports

  The Bachelor of Montana

  The Greatest Ever Eva!!!!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Index

  Mom and Dad: Thank you for never squashing my dreams of being a professional athlete, although I’m sure you were well aware that it was far out of my reach from inception. I never think in limits because of you both.

  Kebe: My love. Nobody would really understand or grasp how many snorts, smells, and quirks you put up with being my wife, best friend, and biggest supporter. You’re everything to me, and I’m lucky to call you Wifey.

  Hip-Hop: Anything I do, say, or create is inspired by hip-hop. I didn’t talk much about you specifically in this book, but without you, hip-hop, and your influence on me, I’m just a plain-Jane cornball. Thank you for inspiring me, teaching me, and keeping me safe since 1979.

  An Imperative Note from the Editor

  My first meeting with Michael Rapaport was offensive, disruptive, and honestly felt dangerous. He started telling me his thoughts about the book but then sneezed repeatedly and got up from the table without saying a word. He then came back a half hour later acting as if he had never left. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he was allergic to my cologne and would I please leave immediately. I told him I didn’t wear cologne, and he called me a liar and then he left the restaurant himself, leaving me both stunned and more than slightly concerned. I didn’t know if I had just been fired, but apparently not, since Michael set up our next meeting at a local coffee shop. Within minutes of sitting down, Michael was tossed out and banned from the shop for insulting a guy who kept talking loudly with a British accent. Michael claimed the guy was faking the accent and there was no reason he had to talk that loud, then he threw a used napkin at him. I told him some people just speak that way, and then he shunned me and asked me to pay for his Uber home. I paid for the Uber, but when I received my Uber receipt, I realized he had taken an extra thirteen-mile trip to see a friend in Malibu. I was having serious doubts about whether we could work together.

  Finally, I regrouped, and we met up at a new restaurant to work, and he seemed fine, but when I asked him about growing up in New York, he thought I was accusing him of lying about his upbringing and he left once again, this time leaving me with the entire bill. It wasn’t until two weeks into the writing process that Michael and I actually sat down and got to work. By this time, we were getting along, but he had an issue with the chef at the place we were meeting. Michael said he was an anti-Semite because he kept sending out his toasted bagel cold. I told him it was an honest mistake, but Michael stormed out again, but not before yelling loudly into the kitchen something about the Nazi party. We were one chapter into the book at this time, so I was extremely worried. Finally, I figured it would be a much better working relationship if we did things through email and phone calls, and he agreed.

  The first phone call did not go as planned. He said we were going to discuss his point of view on the new breed of basketball players, and by the time I had my notebook out, I heard sirens in the background and Michael was being told by the police that he had to stop letting his dog loose in the neighborhood without a leash or he would be placed under arrest. I knew then that this entire book would never get done if we tried the traditional writer/editor route of meeting, discussing, and reworking the material that I was used to. I had a volatile situation on my hands.

  I tried calling his manager and couldn’t get through for three days. When I got through, his manager told me this was “part of Michael’s charm” and then he hung up the phone. I was beside myself for a month. Once again, we attempted to find a rhythm and actually dove into these chapters, and I felt we might be home free, until Michael told a waiter in skinny jeans that he had no business wearing that style of jeans, and if he brought him his soup wearing the same jeans, we were leaving without paying the bill. Again, the police were called.

  I kept thinking to myself, how the hell does this respected working actor continue to thrive in society and function as an adult behaving this way? During one breakfast I asked him a question about his supposed athletic prowess on the court, and he took his shirt off in the middle of the restaurant and accused me of fat shaming. I’d never been through something like this before, but I’m a professional and love to challenge myself, so we met the following Monday at a well-known lunch spot in Hollywood.

  When I got there, Michael was fighting with the manager because the manager had accused him of stealing panini sandwiches while standing in line. Michael said he planned to pay but was sick of waiting while Hollywood types took too long to order. The manager said he was three paninis in before he got to the register, and then ordered and never mentioned the paninis to the cashier. When I told Michael that it sounded like he was actually stealing, he left me at the restaurant alone and sent me an email telling me we would go back to communicating without seeing each other and chastised me for not using a proper facial cleaning astringent. He said my eyebrows were flaking and it disturb his thought process.

  This kind o
f collaboration was certainly new to me, but we eventually found a system that worked for both of us. He would write alone and send me the material, then I would edit it and send it back, and he would complement me, offend me, and then hang up abruptly. This experience raised my already high blood pressure to a semi-dangerous level, but I realized that his disruptive behavior was part of his art and I had to adapt. I’d been working for too many years with professional adults and would have to readjust my style. I had to start thinking like a first-grade teacher trying to wrangle a class of unruly kids.

  I must say I am incredibly proud of the end result. The book you are now holding captures Michael’s point of view on a multitude of topics in a way that only he could. It’s been anything but smooth sailing, and I’ve since been put on blood-pressure meds, but the end result I can live with. Michael offered to pay for my second executive physical at the Cleveland Clinic, which I took him up on, and I’m doing great. All my numbers are good, and I’m looking forward to my next assignment with preferably either a soft-spoken woman or a sedated man with human communication skills.

  That’s me in 1970. The calming bath before the storm.

  Disruptive Behavior 101

  Nine schools in twelve years. I was expelled or politely asked to leave nine schools in twelve years. That’s some sort of record. Even in preschool, I was labeled disruptive and out of control. In fucking preschool. When I was four, they put me with the five-year-olds to reel me in after an incident involving looking up a teacher’s skirt and knocking down a bookcase all in the same day.

  That’s a true story, and you can look up my records at Multimedia Preschool in Manhattan in 1974 if you don’t buy it. For my first expulsion, I was kicked out of New York’s PS 158 in the third grade for being belligerent, unruly, an overall pain in the ass, and shockingly unfocused. Getting kicked out of a New York City public school in the 1970s in the third grade was not an easy task. It took effort and drive. I wasn’t just suspended, I was kicked out of the entire fucking school. One and done. When I think about it now, that’s some real Rookie of the Year–type shit. Disruption was in my blood. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was battling my DNA from jump street. DNA stood for Disruptive, Nuisance, Always.

  There are no great stories of me beating up kids, setting fires, or flipping tables because it wasn’t about that for me—although I did punch the principal during my last great stand when I was eight. Mr. Flanagan had a sad glass jaw. How an uncoordinated, flailing left hook from an eight-year-old gained so much attention I’ll never know.

  My mother would lovingly tell me, “Michael, you were born a pain in the ass.” She was right. I was the king of the class clowns. I was a class clown on steroids, the Lance Armstrong of disruptive behavior and the Barry Bonds of ball breaking. You could say I was the Ben Johnson of pains in the ass. And it was all day every day, 24/7, for as long as I can remember.

  Aside from being a Top Five Dead or Alive Ball Breaker, the only other thing that mattered to me at the time was sports. Playing sports was a part of my life as soon as I could walk. I played some sort of sport all day every day for as long as I can remember. It didn’t matter what it was, I was down for any action. I loved it all. I played baseball, tackle football, and basketball. Starting at the age of six, I went to sleep-away camp for two months every summer and learned to play everything: tennis, soccer, track and field, archery, all of it. I couldn’t get enough. I loved the competition. I loved the camaraderie. I loved winning, and I hated losing.

  I would go through phases of wanting to be a professional football player after watching the Pittsburgh Steelers win games and seeing Lynn Swann make acrobatic catches. I’d want to be a pro baseball player because of Reggie Jackson’s three-home-run World Series game, and even had a short spurt of wanting to be an NHL hockey player because of the 1979 New York Rangers, after watching Phil Esposito and Nick Fotiu fight. When I was ten years old I started going to a real boxing gym near Madison Square Garden because I decided I was going to be a pro fighter.

  I would take the bus to the gym alone after school, train with a trainer, and then take the bus back home. When I imagined what I was gonna do with my life when I grew up, I only imagined myself being a professional athlete. The sport changed, but the idea was to become a pro of some kind.

  This is my fifth-grade report card. At this point I had attended four different schools. Shit was real.

  That all changed in the spring of 1979. Basketball kept resurfacing as my favorite sport. I loved playing it at the park and at school. I played for hours with my friends and would shoot around alone for hours more. I was hooked.

  Now, let’s be real here—kids have access to every player on the planet these days. With video games, ESPN, and computers, kids literally know every player on every team by the time they’re in the first grade. But back then I only knew about NBA stars like Kareem and Tiny Archibald and my New York Knick players like Walt “Clyde” Frazier and my main man, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe. I don’t remember seeing them play that much, but we were always talking about them. My older brother, Eric, and I would play one on one, and I would be the Pearl and he would be Clyde and then we would switch off. I actually met the Pearl in 1980 at this diner in Manhattan on Seventy-Seventh Street and First Avenue called the Green Kitchen. My grandparents, father, brother, and I were walking into the diner and the Pearl was walking out, and I bumped right into him. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I said these exact words: “Earl the Pearl, give me some skin.” The Pearl smiled, slapped me five, and said, “Have a good time.” True story. The Pearl and Clyde were my guys until I found out about Doctor J, and then he became my new basketball obsession for real.

  My first and only superhero, the Good Doctor Julius Erving. Doc was my idol. Even as a kid growing up in Manhattan, the Philadelphia 76er Doctor J was everything to me. I have no idea how I first found out about him or when I saw him play on TV, but he was it for me. I didn’t give a shit about Superman, Batman, or even Bruce Lee at the time. Doctor J was all I cared about. And as much as I loved the Pearl, Clyde, and the Doc, my life took a dramatic turn as a nine-year-old when I watched Magic Johnson against Larry Bird in the NCAA Finals. That day my life goals changed forever. I was on a mission.

  I was going to be in the NBA. That was it. I was going to be in the NBA and live my life accordingly and do whatever it took to make it to the League. There was no more flip-flopping sports anymore. I still loved and played baseball and football here and there, but now I was on a true mission to play pro basketball.

  I watched Magic and Larry in that NCAA Finals game and saw every piece of TV coverage on both of them and went straight to the park with my basketball and started practicing. I lived a block away from John Jay Park on Seventy-Seventh Street and Cherokee Place on the Upper East Side. In the ’70s, kids could go to the park alone and play all day, and parents didn’t think twice about it. That’s exactly what I did. All day every day I was there.

  I remember seeing a clip of Bird making a baseline jump shot for Indiana State, and something about it resonated. So, I started practicing baseline jump shots over and over that day. I didn’t move spots. It was all baseline all day. I was gonna be a pro basketball player, and this was where it was going to start. Fucking weird how kids’ minds think. I told my mom and dad what I was going to do with the rest of my life and how they would reap the benefits. I was gonna buy them mansions and cars, and I was gonna do whatever I needed to do to play in the NBA. And the craziest shit was that, as much as I loved Magic Johnson—and, believe me, I loved Magic—seeing blond-headed Larry Bird play was what really sparked this dream for me.

  Ironically, as soon as I saw him in a Celtics uniform, things were never the same for Larry and me. It wasn’t like I grew up in a home that programmed me to hate all things Boston sports. God just blessed me that way.

  My family, full of pure-bred New Yorkers, never taught me or influenced me to feel the disdain I felt for the Celtics, Pat
riots, and Red Sox growing up. I just took to it like a fish to water. Once again my DNA was taking over. As soon as the man who single-handedly influenced me to make one of the most important decisions of my life got drafted by the Boston Celtics, I couldn’t stand him. I hated him as a Boston Celtic from day one. I was nine years old when Larry Joe Bird made his Celtic debut, and intuitively I found the whole thing repulsive. It’s tough to express, but as I got older and started understanding the NBA better, somehow I hated Larry even more. It was like a virus that kept spreading. The green uniforms, that shithole arena they called the Boston Garden, I couldn’t stand any of it. I detested it like a sickness. I never even took a moment to appreciate Bird’s greatness as an NBA player. As a matter of fact, I wanna take a moment to publicly apologize to you, Larry Joe Bird. We didn’t get off to a good start, and before I go any further, I would like to clear the air once and for all.

  An Open Apology to Larry Legend

  Dear Larry Bird,

  You don’t know me, but I know you. I once had a dream of being an NBA player, and at forty-seven years old I still have actual dreams of playing in the league. These are not like aspirations, my friend, these are real-life motherfucking dreams I have when I’m sleeping and shit. I actually had one a few nights ago that I was playing for the Seattle Supersonics during the Nineties, and Shawn Kemp and I were having an extensive conversation on the layup line about getting vasectomies. He got offended that I was bringing this up on the layup line, but I thought I was doing him a favor. Anyway, this isn’t about the Reign Man, it’s about us, Larry.

  First, you are single-handedly my favorite white person with no lips. I mean that sincerely. I wanna tell you that even though I have spent a great portion of my life hating you as a basketball player, it was never personal. I’m here to admit that when I watched your Celtics play, I would refer to you as a Big-Nosed, Flat-Footed Fuck, and sometimes I’d even excitedly refer to you as a Mullet-Having Hillbilly Cocksucker. I didn’t mean these things. I never did. I also didn’t mean it when I would scream at the TV while watching you destroy my New York Knicks and kill my favorite adopted team from the Eighties, the Los Angeles Lakers. At that point, I was referring to you as “the No-Lip-Having, Non-Jumping Inbred Larry Fuck Face.” I have no idea where I got those terrible ideas from, and I do now realize that words are powerful, Larry. And words can hurt. I get it, but I was young, and, Larry Bird, they were just words. I swear I did not mean what I was saying. After some real soul-searching, I realize today that it was your once-in-a-lifetime greatness I was screaming at. It was not your nose or even your lips. The funny thing was that as a twelve-year-old, I was actually nicknamed “Bird” by my friends, and to this day there’s a bunch of people who still call me Bird when they see me. Isn’t that funny, Larry Legend? I too had wavy blond hair, and to this day I still have a prominent nose. Most people would probably consider me a lot better looking than you, but who’s counting? The point is, I got the nickname because I looked very similar to you, Larry Bird. Do you think I was just screaming at myself ? Was I projecting my own frustrations for lacking foot speed and jumping ability and for having extremely pale skin onto you? Was I screaming at the fact that although we looked alike, I couldn’t hit a jump shot to save my life? Was I just jealous of you because you were what I wanted to be and you made it look so easy, but for me it was impossible? Shit, Larry, shit!!!