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Update (2/27): Dan Le Batard touched on the Michael Rapaport murder on his show Monday morning during the local hour, saying Mike Ryan and Roy Bellamy “buried him.”

“I don’t even know this but I’m guessing Rapaport did some stuff this weekend that’s actually going to harm his career at ESPN because what he did to Roy is incredibly stupid,” Le Batard said. “So I’m guessing the collateral damage on this is going to be nothing to me — Michael Rapaport is done at ESPN. I’m guessing. These things are all about value. How much value does he bring to the company? Not enough to be putting up racist stuff on Twitter… He doesn’t have enough value to the company I don’t think to withstand something like this.”

Rapaport, for whatever reason, appears occasionally on The Jump with Rachel Nichols on ESPN.

“I did not know that Mike Rapaport was such a dope,” Le Batard went on, “and so inevitably — and this isn’t going to surprise many of you  — I ended up feeling bad for him this weekend because he just took a bludgeoning from Mike Ryan and Roy and wouldn’t stay down. He does seem like the character in the movie who wouldn’t stay down. Like just stay down.”

From Friday: Michael Rapaport, alleged “actor” and “comedian,” went after Dan Le Batard and his beloved father on Twitter Friday evening, providing criticism of Dan’s Magic Johnson comments while questioning the qualifications of Gonzalo “Papi” Le Batard starring on ESPN’s Highly Questionable alongside his son.

Before we bring you the highlights — it did NOT go well for the guy whose face you’ve definitely seen before but can’t quite place which poopy movie it was in — here’s some quick backstory if you need it.

Le Batard was critical on-air all week of the Los Angeles Lakers’ decision to hire Magic Johnson to be their President of Basketball Operations, rightfully questioning his credentials to run the organization considering he has not a lick of front office experience and his talent evaluation tweets on Twitter have been explosively embarrassing over the years in hindsight — he once proclaimed Michael Carter-Williams as “the next Jason Kidd.”

Dan’s comments weren’t misguided, were far from a hot take, and anything but racist, an allegation made by fellow ESPN employees like Keyshawn Johnson, who hosts a sports radio show with Jorge Sedano in Los Angeles. Via The Big Lead:

“I’m going to read between the lines, I’m going to read between the lines on this one … To me, he saying because he’s a black dude, that’s the way I look at it …”

Props to Sedano for defending Le Batard.

While Le Batard often goes against the grain in terms of his sports analysis, his opinions are well thought out and backed up by facts. He’s merely unafraid to deliver takes that may prove to be unpopular.

It’s sad that so many in this bizarre world we live in are so quick to scream racism when a popular black man receives criticism. This had nothing to do with Johnson’s skin color.

Anyone who has followed Le Batard over the years would know that allegation is asinine and misinformed because it’s an ignorant challenge to the man’s character. Le Batard was also critical of Phil Jackson’s credentials after taking over the Knicks. Jackson — gulp — is a white man.

Anyways, Rapaport went after Papi’s qualifications to be on the unconventional ESPN show Highly Questionable, starring Dan, his father, and Bomani Jones.

Dan was amused:

Things began to get ugly when Le Batard Show executive producer Mike Ryan stepped into the ring, pummeling Rapaport with haymakers for the good part of late Friday evening.

Someone even messed with Rapaport’s Wikipedia, proclaiming his “career” to be destroyed and his Twitter to be deceased.

 

 

This is so true:

Great tweet, Smoot.

To test this theory I showed my wife a picture of Rapaport and asked her if she had seen him before.

Her response: “Hmmm… no, wait, yeah! He’s in that one movie. Umm… what’s it called?” This was my exact reaction upon googling him last night. I knew the face but couldn’t quite place it.

Rapaport’s career may be defined by casting directors asking for a pasty white dude with a New York accent, but I will say his resiliency is startling, and even impressive.

The man would not take the loss no matter how bloodied he would become.

But Rapaport would continue to engage because what else does a struggling actor turned Twitter Beefer have to do on a Friday night and Saturday morning?

Eventually Rapaport revealed his true colors when going back and forth with Roy Bellamy, a longtime Le Batard Show producer who happens to be black. While Le Batard’s Magic comments were certainly not racist, the same cannot be said for whatever this is.

While I think the “herpes” jokes may be going too far, there’s no debating Michael Rapaport comes off as a repulsive human being.

Rapaport’s “past work” includes publicly sparring with some big names in Hollywood, like Spike Lee and Aziz Ansari, the latter who he hammered for “sounding white.”