Stephen A Smith v LeBron James turns NBA’s narrator into a main character

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LeBron James and Stephen A Smith greet each other before a game in 2022.Photograph: MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News/Getty Images

Who would win in a fight between LeBron James and Stephen A Smith is a question only Stephen A Smith would think to ask. There has been little avoiding the question since the Los Angeles Lakers superstar confronted ESPN’s No 1 personality during a recent game against the New York Knicks. The player was venting his displeasure at Smith for his pointed comments about James’s eldest son, and Lakers teammate, Bronny – the 55th pick in last year’s NBA draft.

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James approached Smith, a courtside spectator for the game, and appeared to tell him to “keep my son out of this shit” – a callback to Smith questioning whether Bronny deserved to be on a league roster. Smith went on TV the next day to make clear that he wasn’t actually picking on Bronny, the player; he was really calling out LeBron as a bad father for setting a high bar for his son’s pro career. Smith would come back to this point often while making the media rounds after signing a $100m ESPN extension. That should have been the end of the argument – but then last week LeBron sat down with Pat McAfee, whose show follows Smith’s on ESPN, and dismissed Smith as an ice cream-bingeing, couch-bound fanboy.

That set the stage last Thursday for Smith to make his most unhinged ESPN appearance yet. Among other things, he bashed James for skipping the hall of fame induction ceremony for his friend and former teammate Dwyane Wade and for skipping Kobe Bryant’s funeral – claims that were made in bad faith, as it turned out. Viewers were quick to remind Smith that James had indeed attended Bryant’s funeral, and had a pretty good excuse for missing Wade’s ceremony: Bronny had just suffered a cardiac arrest at the time. But the wildest shot by far was the 6ft 1in, 57-year-old Smith saying he “would have immediately swung on” James if the 6ft 9in, 250lb NBA forward had “put hands on me.” That was the moment when the sports world realized its narrator had made himself a main character – although…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/stephen-smith-v-lebron-james-090050537.html

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Publish date : 2025-04-03 09:00:00

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