The NBA world is still trying to unpack LeBron James’ explosive interview with Pat McAfee. Speaking on his Road Trippin’ podcast, Channing Frye suggested that LeBron James chose to do his interview with Pat McAfee due to the latter’s issues with Stephen A. Smith. Jefferson seemingly confirmed as such, noting that LeBron James was being strategic and choosing to prioritize the beef over anything else.
Channing Frye: “Are we not going to say why I thought he did it? I didn’t ask him. I thought he did it because Stephen A. hates Pat McAfee. So he was just sniping him.”
Richard Jefferson: “Anywhere he goes would have been an opportunity to elevate that platform. That’s agreed. We know it… He was most likely calculated in what he was doing. So he put that over anything else. We know him.”
“The minute people start telling him what they expect him to do and what he should do, he gonna do the opposite. Love him, hate him, support him, or don’t support him – whatever your opinions of him are, people don’t get to choose what he should do because it was XYZ.”
“He had a message he wanted to send… If he was choosing to send a certain message on a certain platform and to be petty, that supercedes everything else. The beef supercedes everything else. That’s something that athletes should respect.
Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith have been butting heads ever since the former Indianapolis Colts punter was offered a massive five-year, $85 million contract to make his show an ESPN program, along with being the flagship analyst on their College GameDay series. Seeing McAfee as somewhat of a political rival in the hierarchy at ESPN, things between them quickly went sour.
LeBron James is certainly not a dumb man. One of the most intelligent players on and off the court, it is very likely that LeBron knew of Smith’s issues with McAfee and allowed that to play a massive part in his decision to host the interview there. Not only because he is allowing Smith’s workplace rival platform his vendetta, but also by giving Pat to interview him, he is bolstering his profile in the eyes of ESPN executives.
Of course, in the long run, this is unlikely to upset Stephen A. Smith too much, as he recently signed a $100 million contract with ESPN, making him the highest-paid sports analyst in history. But giving the interview where LeBron basically verbally slaughters Smith to the analyst’s biggest professional rival is a genius chess move to get a rise out of him.
It clearly worked, as ESPN and Smith dedicated over half of their First Take program to address LeBron James. During the segment, Smith erroneously claimed that James did not attend Kobe Bryant’s memorial service. He would later retract his statement, admitting he got things wrong.
In the same Road Trippin’ episode, Channing Frye called out Smith for lying about James at the Kobe memorial service, along with not being fully forthcoming about why LeBron James didn’t attend Dwyane Wade’s memorial service. For his part, LeBron has stayed quiet since the First Take episode but could respond, given how many lines Smith and Kendrick Perkins crossed.
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