Skip Bayless accusing Tyrese Haliburton of faking his calf injury prior to him tearing his Achilles tendon in Sunday\u2019s Game 7 matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder will go down as one of his worst takes in a career full of takes that have aged like milk.<\/p>\n
While some were surprised to see a media member outright accuse a player of faking an injury, Doug Gottlieb thought it was on par with his experience with Bayless over the years.<\/p>\n
Gottlieb, who hosts his radio show, The Doug Gottlieb Show, on Fox Sports radio, has plenty of experience with Bayless dating back to each of their tenures at ESPN and then later at Fox.<\/p>\n
Bayless has never been someone who impressed Gottlieb, which he made apparent when discussing how \u201cembarrassing\u201d it was to see his post on X about Haliburton<\/a> while watching Sunday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m watching the game and I see Tyrese Haliburton go down. Skip Bayless tweeted, \u2018The Pacers brilliantly took the big-game pressure off Haliburton, who routinely no-shows, by planting the injury excuse that the media swallowed whole.\u2019 So, it\u2019s on Twitter, and all of the sudden, Tyrese Halliburton goes down with a torn Achilles tendon. Obviously, shortly there after, Skip started to tweet his way out of it. But it\u2019s embarrassing. He basically said he wasn\u2019t hurt, he just wasn\u2019t playing well. And it was an injury excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n Gottlieb then shared a massive regret in his career in sports media that involved Bayless. In returning to FS1 in 2017, Gottlieb admitted how he had to \u201ckiss the ring\u201dof Skip Bayless to ultimately end up on FS1 programming given how much control Bayless had at the network at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, J-Stew, you worked in the same building (as Bayless). So you know this to be true. Skip Bayless ran his own shop. He was everything for his show, Undisputed. And when I got to take the job\u2026 I am forever upset with myself about this. So, I was under contract with CBS. I had six months left, and I wanted to get back out to California. I wanted to do Fox television at the time. A good friend of mine, Jamie Horowitz, was running the daily shows. And Jaime is responsible for bringing Colin (Cowherd) and Skip to Fox Sports 1. But in order to work at Fox Sports 1 at the time, I had to make nice and kiss the ring with Skip Bayless.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat does that look like? I had to send him couple of texts, set up a phone call. I didn\u2019t gravel, but I didn\u2019t feel good about it. That goes back to, Skip didn\u2019t like me. And he didn\u2019t like me because I was on, back when it was 1st and 10, and I would be on opposite of him. And he would say ridiculous sh*t. And I would called him on his ridiculous sh*t. Not to the point that Jalen Rose did. Or what Ryen Russillo did. But Ryen and Jalen didn\u2019t want to work at Fox Sports at the time. So they weren\u2019t going to grovel and kiss the ring. I kissed the ring. And I f*cking hate myself for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Interestingly, Gottlieb actually misremembered a key element of Bayless\u2019 post about Haliburton, which makes the post look even worse. Instead of Bayless publishing the post at 7:19 EST, 40 minutes before tip-off, like Gottlieb suggested, Bayless actually posted his comments at 8:19 EST<\/a>, just minutes before Haliburton actually went down with the Achilles tear.<\/p>\n