Stephen A. Smith has been in the news recently amid his ongoing feud with Jaylen Brown, from several days before he was traded to the 76ers. Amid the rumors of Brown’s trade, several reports quoted ‘anonymous’ sources to smear Brown’s name and value in the league.
This came to the attention of several NBA players like LeBron James and Austin Rivers, who called out the reports for lacking journalistic integrity. Draymond Green, the new free agent, sat down with Jemele Hill for an episode of his podcast and spoke about how all of this circles back to Stephen A. Smith.
Jemele Hill argued that Stephen A. Smith is a TV analyst who gets paid to entertain people and is not a conventional journalist. Green feels that it is because of TV analysts like Stephen A. Smith that several players around the league have stopped respecting journalists.
“I’ve had my words with Stephen A. Listen, he’s great at what he does. I think, you know, he’s arguably the best at what he does, right? And that’s your lane. Respect, cool.”
“But I also think where the line gets blurred in a negative way for journalists is that he throws out the journalist tag all the time, ‘I am actually a journalist,’ this, that, another. But to your point, he isn’t going to the locker room,” said Green as he began explaining how Stephen A. Smith is not a conventional journalist.
“There isn’t the, you know, he comes into the arena. You really don’t get close to him. You know, you don’t see him. You say all of these things on television. Jaylen Brown has been very outspoken about it, the anonymous sources, and all of these things, right”
“Like you say all of these things on television, and then you throw out the word journalists, which almost makes people, especially athletes, not respect journalists because you’re throwing out the journalist tag, and then you’re doing that and it and and and people don’t respect it, and there’s no accountability,” explained Green.
“Right, so to your first thing you just said,” said Green while talking to Hill, “was, I write a column, I show up the next day to stand in your face to see what you’re going to say. If you want, if you need to say something, if you feel like we should, but when that term is thrown out now, no one’s given that same opportunity.”
“People spew all these things out there. They and you’re not allowed to go face to face. And when you do, as he did with LeBron James, then it’s this whole thing of like, ‘oh my god, I had an opinion, and now they’re not happy about my opinion.”
“And so I don’t think it’s approached with that same integrity that you’re speaking about, which ultimately I think it leaves all journalists in a bad spot because you’re not technically viewed as what you just said a journalist is,” Green concluded.
In essence, Draymond Green feels that the league-wide lack of respect for journalists and questions raised on their integrity are partly due to Stephen A. Smith. It was Jaylen Brown who first raised this point, and Green seems to agree.
Smith will probably respond to these comments from Green, but I must say that Green said nothing wrong in terms of how the world’s perception of NBA journalists is heavily influenced by Stephen A. Smith’s conduct on national television.
It will be interesting to see how Stephen A. Smith responds to these accusations hurled at him for ruining the integrity of sports journalism in the NBA.
