Noted character Stephen A. Smith takes issue with Michael Carter-Williams calling him a character
ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith’s vociferously articulated diatribes have become a part of pop culture, even being lampooned on “Saturday Night Live,” and once we enter the wormhole of his rants it’s tough to tell where the Smith we see on “First Take” begins and Jay Pharoah’s impression ends.
So, it wasn’t all that surprising when young Philadelphia 76ers point guard Michael Carter-Williams used Smith as an example in his Players’ Tribune piece of the circus atmosphere that surrounded his team during its 26-game losing streak last season. At least, not to those of us who aren’t Stephen A. Smith.
Before we get into Smith’s somewhat bizarre reaction to Carter-Williams’ rather benign criticism of him, here is a condensed version of the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year’s comments about the talking head.
We knew it was going to be a circus when ESPN flew in Stephen A. Smith to Philadelphia for the 27th game against Detroit. In the locker room before shootaround, we got swarmed by reporters. You could barely move around the room. Somebody actually asked, “So how does it feel to be a part of the most losing team in NBA history?” Which was really funny because we hadn’t even played the game yet. Everybody just expected us to lose and set the record.
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The media creates this narrative and repeats it over and over. That’s how Stephen A. Smith ends up in our locker room with a big smile on his face. I’m not picking on him. I know he’s playing a character. He knows he’s playing a character. But what happens when we break the streak by going out and beating Detroit that night? Now it’s another story. After the game, a lot of the reporters didn’t even stick around. The ones that did weren’t prepared. They didn’t ask us about the specifics of the game. They made up questions on the spot, like, “Uh, hey, you guys won … so how do you feel?”
We weren’t the story anymore. They were on to the next thing. Stephen A. didn’t really stick around. I guess he had a plane to catch. Believe me, I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure he doesn’t come back for the same reason.
In a four-minute interview on SiriusXM NBA Radio, as brought to our attention by The Big Lead, Smith addressed those statements, calling them “uncalled for” and dismissing Carter-Williams as just another hypersensitive NBA millenial manipulated by his entourage. We could debate who’s more hypersensitive in this instance, since Carter-Williams didn’t say anything all that wild, but for the sake of brevity we’ll get to the good stuff.
While the first three-plus minutes of Smith’s commentary was defensible — a large part even mirroring Ball Don’t Lie colleague Eric Freeman’s eloquent summation of tanking as a front office issue rather than a player’s problem — the wormhole opened around the 3:28 mark.
“They’re going to learn something quick, fast and in a hurry if they haven’t learned it already. You’re never going to have the last word over us. And you damn sure ain’t going to have the last word over me. I’m not going to start problems, but I can damn sure finish them. If these guys want to come at me, let them do it at their own peril. It will be a mistake.”
The media’s role in sports should be the same as it is elsewhere, addressing the subjects they cover as objectively as possible, but Smith’s suggestion here flies in the face of the journalism ESPN is trying to uphold, only serving to reinforce Carter-Williams’ larger point about the media creating narratives. Then again, it’s also an awful good jumping off point for the next SNL skit about Smith.
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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
