This Book Has Balls Page 15

  Michael: Yeah, who?

  Phife: I would compare myself to the Boogie Down Bronx’s Rod Strickland. He was an ill point guard, he had flavor, everybody respected him, plus he was a pass-first point guard but could get his points whenever he wanted and whenever the team needed it. I also compare myself to him because a lot of times people will overlook him when they talk about dope guards of his era.

  Michael: All right: Five favorite big dudes?

  Phife: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, and . . . I’m having a hard time with one more . . . Patrick Ewing.

  Michael: Damn, it took that long for you to give Pat some love, Phife? You been on the West Coast too long?

  Phife: Yeah, I’m bugging. Sorry, Mr. Ewing.

  Michael: Let me have your five running backs.

  Phife: My five favorite running backs: Barry Sanders, one, Tony Dorsett, two, Walter Payton, three, Eric Dickerson, four, and I’m having a hard time with one more.

  Michael: Earl Campbell?

  Phife: Earl Campbell’s a great one, but I’m going to pick one for right now—Marshall Faulk, matter of fact. Marshall Faulk. I had to put him in there. He’s one of my favorites. Absolutely. You gotta give me ten, Mike! Let me get ten, son? No, I’m just playing.

  Michael: Yankees or Mets, Phife Dawg?

  Phife: I’m from Queens, so I’m supposed to bleed Mets, but they piss me off every year, so I rock with the Yankees pretty much. Y’all see the hat. There’s no other team in baseball history that should ever wear pinstripes. The Phillies should get rid of the pinstripes, because when I think of the Phillies, I think of Mike Schmidt when they won the World Series in 1980 with the burgundy P and the powder-blue jerseys and stuff like that. They didn’t have pin—oh yeah, they did have pinstripes on their home jerseys, the burgundy pinstripes, but they should get rid of them. Only the Yankees should wear pinstripes; the Mets shouldn’t even have no goddamn pinstripes, you know what I’m saying? So, the Yankees are that team, straight up and down.

  Michael: Hoya Paranoia and the Big East of the Eighties.

  Phife: Oh, man, that has to be the greatest time in college basketball outside of Magic and Larry going at it in ’79. The Big East was the greatest. You, of course, had the Beasts of the East, Pat Ewing at Georgetown, along with Reggie Williams, who went to Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland. They had the squad; I’m just going to keep it at that. At Villanova you had Ed Pinckney and the McClain boys, nonrelated but they could both play. Dwayne McClain and Gary McLain. They were dope.

  Michael: Saint John’s.

  Phife: Queens representation. I loved that squad. Saint John’s, we had Mulley, you know what I’m saying? One of the baddest, slowest, but illest shooters in the history of the NBA. He’s done it all, Olympics, everything, you know what I’m saying? The Redmen also had Willie Glass, Mark Jackson, and Walter Berry, Shelton Jones—they had the crew back then.

  Michael: Syracuse had—

  Phife: Syracuse had the great Dwayne “Pearl” Washington from out of Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn; later on they had Sherman Douglas, they had Lawrence Moten, they had Adrian Autry from New York, and they also had Derrick Coleman, Detroit’s finest. High-jumping Steve Thompson. Jim Boeheim had a crew, Ronny Seikaly. Syracuse was the bomb back in the Big East. Who else was there? Pitt had Charles Smith and Jerome Lane. Remember when he shattered the glass? So, Big East basketball was top-notch. I used to keep my eye on the ACC, too, because I can’t forget my Carolina Tar Heels and James Worthy. James Worthy is the reason why I became a fan of the Tar Heels and I still am till this day, you know what I’m saying? I can’t talk about anything ACC basketball–related without talking about Lenny Bias, God bless him. He was really that dude representing University of Maryland. I was actually hyped that the Celtics drafted Lenny Bias. But Big East basketball was really it. I enjoyed growing up in the Tri-State area; that was the bomb. Oh, and then Providence, shout-out to my man Abdul Shamsid-Deen; Rick Pitino was coach, the coach of Florida, Billy Donovan, Billy the Kid, he was a point guard, and he was killing everyone the year Providence made it to the Final Four. I think that was 1987, right? He was getting busy.

  Michael: Good shit, Phife!

  Phife: I can keep on going if you want.

  Michael: Ha-ha, I know, I know, but let’s talk about the Midnight Marauders record now.

  Phife: Bet!

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

  I love Mike Tyson. Straight up. I’ve been a fan since he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when they called him Kid Dynamite. They talked about Mike knocking out twenty-five-year-old men when he was twelve. He was five-foot-eleven and 190 pounds with lightning speed in middle school. The article said every punch he threw was thrown with bad intentions, and they were right. Everything Mike was doing as a kid had bad intentions. He had it rough, no doubt. In and out of juvenile prisons his entire childhood, he couldn’t see the light from the Brownsville streets where he was raised, or where he raised himself, I should say. Mike grew to be loved, hated, feared, and respected during his career. He lived the dark and the light like no fighter we’ve ever seen.

  On top of the world one moment, then sent to prison in his prime. Number one fighter in the world, rich beyond his wildest dreams, then lost it all. Mike was a true product of Brownsville, Brooklyn. I personally thought I knew Mike’s full story until I saw his one-man show on Broadway. The show not only blew me away but also clarified a connection I had felt with Mike Tyson all these years.

  Mike was raw, honest, and ripped wide open on that stage telling his life story. He was present and didn’t hold shit back. I was blown away. He was so relaxed, he even shouted me out during the middle of the show like a seasoned comic living in the moment. He was midway through his story about going to prison, looked right at me, and said, “Oh shit, Michael Rapaport. I know you know about this shit, Rapaport.” What the fuck? He was talking to me during the middle of his sold-out performance. I didn’t know what to say. I was stunned. I didn’t know Mike Tyson even knew who I was, and now he was shouting me out in front of two hundred people. I was also thinking, What the hell do I know about prison, hookers, or beautiful pageant girls? But then I thought about it for a minute and realized Mike was just relating. He was saying Rapaport, you know about pain, you know about life’s ups and downs, you know what the fuck is real. I was back in.

  I didn’t come from where Mike came from, I didn’t live his life, I didn’t win and lose millions, but that wasn’t it. I was a flawed human being who made a shit ton of mistakes in relationships, in marriage, and with my kids, just like Mike did. I wanted second chances the same way Mike did. That night, Iron Mike got my respect on a whole new level. I could feel him up there. His anger, his erratic behavior, his inability to articulate when emotionally heated, I felt all that. Mike was all of us, and he articulated that beautifully. Iron Mike Tyson was doing a one-man show, and I was having an emotional experience watching it. It blew my mind.

  Mike talked about wanting to be a good father and how he fell short. That shit gut-punched me. I know how that feels at times. I haven’t always made great dad decisions. Mike was up there talking about losing his cool. I’ve lost my cool more than a few times. I’ve got that Mike Tyson ready-to-blow shit in me all the time. Similar fucked-up thoughts are in my head. I’d love to punch someone in the face, I just don’t have a place to do it; and for the record, I don’t like getting punched back. I heavily related to Tyson’s difficulty articulating his feelings and emotions.

  Mike Tyson has said some wild shit during his time in front of the camera. I remember a spectator once yelled to Mike during a prefight press conference, “Put him in a straitjacket,” and Mike told the guy he was going to fuck him until he made the guy fall in love with him. Mike lost it, and I fully understood. Mike had that mental-warrior shit going on. I got the same thing in a nice-Jewish-boy kind of way. The way I used to go into my auditions when I fir
st started acting was 100 percent inspired by Mike Tyson. I swear to God, I walked into auditions like Mike Tyson walked into the ring. I was nuts. I was definitely trying to make up for the fact that I was probably under-skilled, but it worked.

  When I went in to audition for the movie Zebrahead, I looked through Adrien Brody and said, “No, motherfucker, this is my shit right here. Sorry, my man, take your skinny ass home and work on your piano playing, because this one is for me. Don’t even fucking think about it.” He looked at me like I was nuts. I took that Tyson shit, ran with it, and got my first part. I did the same damn thing with Beautiful Girls. You think every other actor my age wasn’t up for that part? Every one of them was in there. I was prowling the hallway like Mike Tyson then, with no socks and a ripped towel for a shirt. I told these motherfuckers, “Go home, get the fuck out of my way, this is me, this is my day and my movie—plus I think I have a man crush on Matt Dillon and need to be around him for as long as possible.”

  Did Mike’s attitude get in his way occasionally? Sure, it did. Did he scare off a few journalists when he told them they had to leave or very bad things were going to happen to them? Yes. Have I said things to people in my life that I shouldn’t have? Have I snapped on a motherfucker who asks some stupid question that I didn’t feel like answering because I was in a bad mood? Of course I have. But that was the shit I needed to work on. That’s what I was relating to most in Mike’s story—trying to be a better human being. Mike’s honesty was what I most respected. He was unapologetic and honest to a fault at times.

  Mike spoke to Matt Lauer in an interview and told him, “If I’m drinking, I think about suicide.” Tyson was talking about having suicidal thoughts like I talk about wanting an egg salad sandwich.

  They brought Mike to a sober living conference, and the first thing out of his mouth was, “I’ve been lying to everyone here about being sober. I’m a vicious alcoholic, and I haven’t stopped drinking.” They brought him in to talk about the benefits of being sober, and he told them he was drunk. Honesty—flawed motherfucking honesty! I wish I could be that raw. I want to be that raw. I want to admit to my demons way more than I do.

  Mike told Lauer in that same interview, “I hate myself. I’m trying to kill myself every day.” Here’s the former Heavyweight Champion of the World saying he wants to kill himself every day. Mike put a finger to his temple and said, “It’s hard to live up here. No one’s seen what I’ve seen. None of these fighters, none of these athletes; I’m the king of the barbarians. I’m a monster.”

  Mike Tyson: You’re not a monster; you’re a flawed motherfucker like the rest of us. Yo, Mike, thank you for that brave and ballsy one-man show and for letting me know that if the former baddest man on the planet can start humbling himself and trying to find inner peace, a loudmouth punk like me can start trying, too.

  Great in the Ring, Shitty in Life

  Floyd Mayweather is amazing in boxing and a prick in life. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. Floyd, you’re a jackass. I don’t care that your footwork is second to none and that you made Canelo Álvarez look like an amateur when you fought him. I don’t care that you took Manny Pacquiao apart like he was thinking about being president of the Philippines for the entire fight. It doesn’t bother me that your counterpunching might be the best in the game and that no one can touch you with your peekaboo style. I get it. You mastered boxing, Floyd. But you act like a clown. You throw money in the air at strip clubs and you hit women. Kids everywhere are watching you saying, “If I make Floyd’s money, I can buy a Bentley, throw money on a thick, fat-ass stripper, and beat up a girl!”

  Wake the fuck up, Floyd! It’s not too late. I know you don’t want to be a role model. But you are. Yeah, man, that’s the way the world works. You play a sport, you become the best, you make millions, and people look up to you. I don’t make the rules, Assweather.

  So, stop riding around your house on a Segway, chasing 50 Cent around like a girl trying to get an autograph, and get your life straight.

  I want to talk to you one-on-one. Just me and you. We get in a room, we sit down like gentlemen, and we get into that fucked-up head of yours. Give me ten minutes. I know life wasn’t easy for you growing up. The abuse, the poor upbringing, a family full of fighters—I get it. Life isn’t fair, Floyd, but we can talk it out. The problem is I just know how that conversation would go:

  Me: Yo, man, thanks for sitting down with me.

  You: You see my Instagram where I took a shit on a pile of money?

  Me: No, I didn’t see that.

  You: Shit on two million in cash.

  Me: What’s with the woman-beating? Floyd, where did all that come from? I mean, I know you said you came from a tough background, but come on, man.

  You: This watch is worth half a million. I push a button and shit calls a helicopter.

  Me: Yo, you’re avoiding everything.

  You: What do you want to know?

  Me: How one of the greatest fighters to ever get in the ring can be so fucked up in life.

  You: Yo, I bought two hundred pairs of red Yeezys.

  Me: Fuck this.

  I don’t like you, Floyd, and I really wanna like you. I was sitting on the edge of my seat watching you and Manny go toe-to-toe, and I was praying Manny was going to take your head off. I was yelling, “Come on, Manny, where’s that footwork, those angles, and those heavy hands? Come on, Manny, kill the body and the head will fall! Manny, what the hell, man, you can’t be that into running for political office!” And I got nothing.

  Then I had to go back and rewatch your first fight with Marcos Maidana because I just knew I was seeing a guy coming at you like a tank and landing blows. So, I went back and watched the fight, and you know what, Floyd, you little bling-bling, beat-a-girl, fake, drinking, club-lovin’ degenerate gambler hoe? He didn’t land one blow on you! This motherfucker had the entire world thinking there was a way to beat Floyd Mayweather, and the guy didn’t touch you. You leaned back with that half flat-footed defense, hiding in your clavicle, and you moved a centimeter left and a centimeter right, and Maidana didn’t do a thing. You got my head all fucked up. But I still had hope that someone was gonna get you.

  So here comes Canelo Álvarez. He’s going to come in and show you what the youth of America looks like. You want to play with Instagram, Floyd? Here’s a kid who grew up on this shit. He knows Snapchat, too, and he’s coming in like a redheaded fire engine ready to put out your bitch-made fire!

  And then you did it again. I’m yelling, “Come on, Canelo, do something! You’re twice his size, you’re eight years younger, plus you’re a redhead!” Everyone knows redheads got that anger shit in their DNA. I never met a calm redhead. Even the redheaded women I know are angry. It’s something in the orange. I don’t know; I’m not a scientist, Floyd. Here comes Canelo looking like a ripped version of Malachi from Children of the Corn (who, by the way, I was in acting class with in ’89). Every scene Courtney Gains did was about torture. I wanted Canelo to whoop your ass. Then the opening bell rang, and Canelo second-guessed his entire career.

  This was supposed to be the “Super Kid”? This was the kid who was going to prove to the world that Floyd Mayweather was beatable? You stood back, pawed the jab, snapped it when you had to, and then smiled and landed a left hook to the ribs as if it was a punchline to a joke. Fuck you, Floyd. Canelo telegraphed the right hand so badly that you got a haircut before it landed. Kiss my ass, Floyd. Fuck you for being so great in the ring and so shitty in life. Just sit with me for a minute. I can help:

  Me: Floyd, you think you would have walked through guys like Marvin Hagler?

  You: You ever seen sunglasses with diamond-encrusted rims?

  Me: If you fought Tommy Hearns, who was six-three, one hundred forty-seven pounds with that reach and the best right hand in the game, you think you’d win?

  You: You see that new iPhone eleven? Shit makes you a pizza just by asking. I got two hundred of ’em.

  Me: Fuck
it.

  Floyd, I know I’m not going to get a chance to talk to you, but I am going to give you some unwarranted, unwanted, unheeded advice: Clean up your life game, Floyd. Clean it up. No reason to throw money in the air on social media when motherfuckers are out there starving. No reason to post pictures of your gold Bentley when kids looking up to you might never have the means to get that car—not to mention seven out of ten people who drive that shit are assholes. You flaunt shit in people’s faces so badly that your own people robbed you and you ended up catching a case for kidnapping! Your own people, Floyd!

  You did sixty out of ninety days for domestic abuse, and this wasn’t your first offense. Floyd, get into therapy, man. I don’t care if you take a note from Russell Wilson’s “I quit pussy” playbook. Give yourself a time-out, Floyd. There’s still time. Make it happen. I’m here for you. Get at me!

  The Great White Hype of Ronda Rousey

  Now, let it be known that I don’t hate Ronda Rousey. I like Ronda Rousey. I love what she did, and I respect the hell out of the hard work she put into her sport. She’s a high-level, well-trained, first-rate, disciplined athlete. She won a bronze at the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing, and that shit is very real. However, you people at Business Insider fucked up when you gave her the title “The Most Dominant Athlete Alive.” I don’t know Business Insider, and they seem like some clickbait bullshit, but what business are they actually inside of ? Not the sports business. You put Ronda Rousey ahead of Serena Williams, LeBron James, Tom Brady, Usain Bolt, and a gang of other athletes who are still dominating to this day; where the hell was your head? To me, this is a black eye for journalism. “The Most Dominant Athlete Alive”? She wouldn’t be the most dominant athlete in my neighborhood. Maceeba Jonas was. I saw Maceeba beat up two burnouts during lunchtime and walk back to class like nothing had happened while smoking the cigarettes she jacked from them. She was dominant regardless of her age advantage due to her being held back twice. Ronda was knocked out by Holly Holm weeks after the article came out. The Most Dominate Athlete Alive was punched in the face and was not looking very dominant. It was upsetting, but not an upset.