Jason Whitlock reignited his feud with Stephen A. Smith recently, and the ESPN star has now responded with an astonishing rant. Whitlock had called Smith a fraud who lied about his basketball career on the 4th&1 with Cam Newton podcast, and it was inevitable that a war of words was about to erupt after that.
Smith, who has ignored a lot of jabs over the years, went off on Whitlock on Straight Shooter with Stephen A. Smith on Monday.
“If you know anything about Jason Whitlock’s background, you would understand, there’s a reason you see his fat a** sitting in some cubicle somewhere,” Smith said. “Scared to come out in public because he knows cats waiting for him. But he ain’t worth it to me. He ain’t worth it. Now, you would say, ‘Well, then why are you addressing him?’
“Here’s why, because of what he has systematically tried to do to Black people in this industry,” Smith continued. “It’s personal on a whole multitude of levels.”
Smith had declared during his infamous rant about Whitlock in 2024 that he wouldn’t be speaking about him again. The 58-year-old has now gotten to the point, though, where he feels compelled to. Smith then mocked Whitlock’s appearance and proceeded to call him a pathological liar.
“Let me go back to what he was saying about my basketball career,” Smith stated. “Ladies and gentlemen, how many times have I said, ‘I tried.’ Somebody sat up there say, ‘He played at Winston-Salem State.’ I said, ‘I tried to. I tried to.’ I grew up poor. I can assure you my parents couldn’t afford to pay for my college education. How did I graduate from Winston-Salem State? How did I go there without having to pay a dime? How’d that happen?
“It happened because I had a basketball scholarship,” Smith added. “How did I get the basketball scholarship? Oh, I showed up for a workout.”
Smith had claimed that Winston-Salem State head coach Clarence Gaines had given him a scholarship after seeing him make 17 three-pointers in a row during a scrimmage. He stated that it was the first and last time he pulled that off.
Whitlock wasn’t buying this, though. He claimed an HBCU like Winston-Salem State wasn’t handing out scholarships on the spot to anybody. Whitlock is certain that Smith is lying about his career and added that he had done his homework on this subject.
Smith is standing by all that he has said. He claims it was Harold “Funny” Kitt, who played under Gaines at Winston-Salem, who had told the coach about him. Kitt then drove Smith from Queens, New York, to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the workout.
Smith says God was watching over him during that workout and can’t get why someone like Whitlock, who constantly speaks about his connection to the man above, has a hard time believing him. He then wondered out loud whether he should share all he knows about his former colleague with his current employers, Blaze Media.
“Isn’t Glenn Beck running Blaze Media?” Smith said. “Maybe I should give him a call and remind him of the things that Jason Whitlock has done. Maybe I should point to some of the demonic, evil, vicious stuff that he has done to me, Chris Broussard, Scoop Jackson, Jemele Hill, Michael Smith, list goes on and on. Maybe I should tell the people that he works with how people at PTI, Pardon The Interruption, when he used to sub there, they looked at him, and they said, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you doing these kind of things to people all the time?'”
Smith says it is all about the money when it comes to Whitlock. He also says he came to a realization about the man after watching him on Cam Newton’s podcast.
“Before, I just thought you were evil, bro,” Smith stated. “I just thought you were evil, but you’re jealous. Because you see the career that you say that I have that’s fraudulent, no wonder you keep going back to s*** from 40 years ago when I was playing basketball in high school, and I tried to play in college.
“I’ve been the first to tell anybody, please, I couldn’t shine these players’ shoes,” Smith continued. “How does it feel to know, Jason, that you’re still not better than me? You have never heard me say what I’m about to say about anybody in this business because I don’t talk about my colleagues and my contemporaries that way. I want everybody to get theirs. But I have whipped your a**.
“You’re a columnist, I’m a columnist,” Smith added. “You’re a New York Times bestseller. No, you’re not, but I am. Television ratings on ESPN, we’re approaching 14 consecutive years of being No. 1 in the mornings. You don’t have a job. Fox don’t want you. ESPN don’t want you. None of the networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, they don’t want you.”
Smith also claimed that Whitlock has tried to undermine people to their bosses to prevent them from getting paid. He also accused him of trying to squash careers. Smith believes Whitlock’s animosity towards him stems from his being upset about someone outshining him the way he has.
That was brutal. We have seen some nasty wars of words over the years, and this has the potential of being the worst of the bunch.
