ESPN paid Stephen A. Smith $100 million to not watch NBA Finals

USA Today

11 hours ago

ESPN paid Stephen A. Smith $100 million to not watch NBA Finals
Stephen A. Smith's cover-up may prove more telling than his crime of playing solitaire during Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Friday night.
After fans at Gainbridge Fieldhouse noticed ESPN's $100 million Shouter-In-Chief thumbing away on his phone, Smith first tried to excuse the embarrassing act by claiming he was just killing time during a timeout. Of course, this was quickly disproven when another fan replied with a video that showed Smith was playing games on his phone during the action.
Smith then posted a screenshot that showed he could play Solitaire and watch a stream of the game on his phone at the same time. Why he would need to do that when he could just lift is head and see the game being played in front of him is another question altogether.
But whether he's just trolling his haters, as they say, or laughing at himself, it's hard not to notice the incredibly clear subtext: Stephen A. Smith, the most prominent voice at the World Wide Leader in Sports, doesn't really care all that much about sports. He knows his bosses don't even need him to. Now, his audience knows it, too. The latter seems like the part bothering him here.
This is surely only shocking to those who haven't picked up on Smith's schtick. After all, you only need a mild understanding of the NBA landscape to fire off a take as ignorant as "Giannis Antetokounmpo is an underachiever if he only wins one ring" or to provide commentary as scintillating as "whoever wins Game 4 will win the series".
For someone like Smith, the games are secondary, if they even rank that high on the list of priorities. All Smith needs is a box score or a highlight to decide which clichéd argument he's going to recycle on any of his numerous shows and segments. Smith is not on television to educate sports fans. His job is to rile them up. And make no mistake, Smith is excellent at his job.
This is not to say Smith doesn't work hard. Between his ESPN obligations, a SiriusXM radio show and all his hits on cable news shows, Smith is constantly busy. If all of those tasks make you wonder how he can keep up with the action on the court, now, we have the answer: he doesn't.
It's just a damn shame that fans tuning into one of the best NBA Finals series in years — between two basketball-crazed, championship-starved cities! — have to listen to someone who can't be bothered to watch the game he's literally attending for his job. It also goes hand-in-hand with an overall Finals presentation so lackluster even the league's commissioner has to comment on it.
Then again, if anyone was tuning into ESPN expecting Stephen A. to explain how Rick Carlisle has coached circles around Mark Daigneault, or how referee Scott Foster once again became The Extender or anything at all about the rich history of basketball in Indiana and Oklahoma, they clearly missed the memo. ESPN decided it would rather pay Stephen A. to not watch basketball than employ someone who obsesses over every aspect of the sport.
So the next time Kendrick Perkins and Smith start firing off ludicrous opinions, just remember that the same people who want to tell you what's wrong with basketball today struggle to even pay attention to the NBA when they're at a Finals game.