Stephen A. Smith On Becoming The Face Of ESPN, Skip Bayless, His Relationships w/ NBA Players & More

as always the old man of the three is brought to you by our friends at cash app cash app is the payment app it is the most versatile payment app there is on the market you can invest you can save you can send money you can buy crypto whatever you want to do i guarantee you can do it on cash app all right let's welcome in steven a what's up man how you doing man i'm good this is a real treat because uh for the last uh six or seven months i've been going on your show yeah and now it's time for you to come on my show you haven't done bad you haven't done bad jj you've done you've done pretty good for yourself what was your first tv impression of jj um it's interesting because jj automatically puts you on your heels i've long admired j.j redick as a player from his days at duke but especially when he came into the nba because he was no nonsense and if you were a reporter and you walked up to him and you asked him a question he would be respectful and professional but you also know just by looking his eye if he looked at you like do you have any idea what you're talking about you know he was one of those guys and so you know i always respect the fact that whether it's with his body language or his actual words he always came across as a straight shooter and that's and i always respect that with guys um we we all read twitter comments after our segments yeah we try to get it's an interesting way to get feedback and and i remember uh early on a first few uh hits i did on your show there would be a com like steven a's not gonna let jj back on the show was i ever in danger of not being invited back that was never true it's amazing what people don't get about about first take it's a two-hour debate show and obviously i'm the face of the franchise now and you know they come to me and the bosses come to me and they put a lot of responsibility on my shoulders and so for me all i care about is that you're honest and true and authentic with your perspectives obviously being respectful of everybody that's on it that's all i care about you know and to me what what folks don't realize i want people to disagree with me people keep forgetting i've been a journalist for 28 years i've been covering the nba for a quarter century i'm an antagonist and it's by nature it's not like i'm not doing it for ratings i'm not i've always been this way when i go and i talk to a player i talk to a team i talk to a coach or talk to a general manager or owner or president of basketball operations i'm literally looking at them okay what's your definition of success tell me what your expectations are whether it's about the team it's an individual tell me why whatever and then i'm in your face all year long reminding you of what you said because that's the standard that i'm holding you i'm not looking at you and i'm jumping to this conclusion i'm letting you tell the story and i think that i i have a very unique approach compared to most journalists i played basketball certainly not on these guys level but i played for clarence big house games who was a legend his mentor was john mcclendon who helped integrate the sport of basketball these are the guys that tutored me and then my first job in the business i was covering john chaney and then after that i covered larry brown so i've been surrounded by the game or involved with the game of basketball pretty much my entire life and they taught me how to look at the game from the standpoint of understanding what you don't know i don't challenge i don't go to a player challenging their knowledge i go to play as challenging their willingness to be honest about their knowledge i don't go to a j.j reddick thinking for one second i know more than him what i'll say is i'm a reporter and i happen to know this and there's more to what you're telling me so give it to me that's entirely different which is why you'll see jj redick smiling and laughing and all of this other stuff whereas if you got on with another pundit you might be a bit offended because they're trying to act like they know what you know and i never do that i am a guy who chronicles what i see and what you say and what you show us i never think for one second that i know what actual participants know i we're going to get into uh your background and i want to talk about your um playing career as well and and in the early the early grind because i think it is fascinating i think it i think it it it i think portrays you uh with a sense of credibility that maybe some of your critics don't give you enough credit for and i want to get into that but i want to stay on first take for a second because um you know we both read this article in the new yorker just about the changing landscape of how uh media works across the board and it it's not so much about telling you the news when i was a kid you i would watch sportscenter would come on the first episode at 6am then they'd rerun it through basically noon and then strongman competition would come off and now we're very much a 24 7 discussion debate show uh the debate network the the origins of first take the origins of this embrace the the debate notion where did that come from where was that sort of driving force behind as it pertains to first take what happened was skip bayless was doing first take um and they were doing it based out of new york um it was called cold pizza and they had just a regular conventional sports talk show and they had incorporated debates for a segment here and there with skip bayless and woody page well years later they moved a couple years later they moved it to bristol connecticut to the headquarters of espn called the first take changed the name from copies of the first take and then one of these days a guy by the name of jamie horowitz was an executive here and he took over first take for a short period of time he did a focus group and the focus group said we don't want all that other stuff we want debate and so he made he took first take from a conventional show and changed it into an all debate format featuring skip bayless and that's when it really took off of course part of the interruption was already in play around the horn and stuff like that but as it pertained the first take that's where its real origin came from skit was doing it with the potpourri of individuals um for a few years i had been gone from espn over a contract dispute from january or from may of 2009 to february of 2011. skip bayless was doing his thing with first take having the two live stools jamelle hill rob parker and various other people debating against them and then in 2012 they weren't satisfied with the numbers they weren't satisfied with the ratings the level of revenue that was being generated skip bayless comes to me in the parking lot uh on the campus of espn in bristol connecticut and he says i know you got your plans you love the nba you love being out on the road you love being in the locker room but he said but i need you he said i can't i've done all that i could to take this as far as i could go i need you to do this for me please he said i just need three years he said i think we'll knock it out the part i thought about it those were clearly my best options they weren't about to give me my own show or anything like that at the time i said i thought about it for a couple of days i said all right i'll do it one month later we were number one and we've been number one ever since and so when it skyrocketed to that point it's like oh [ __ ] i didn't see this coming you know i didn't i mean i knew we'd be successful but i didn't know we'd skyrocket to the number one morning show and it happened a month after i arrived and it's never changed we talk about the chemistry all the time with with things like this did you feel that chemistry right away hey we always had chemistry skip and i used to work at fox together jim rohn rome is bernie yeah he had that show on espn he had it was called the last word when he was on fox and we would be in fox studios off of pico boulevard and avenue the stars which i absolutely love the palm trees sunshine lunch outside with 90 degree weather sunshine beam it down y'all just loved it you know and they did a pilot with skip and i because skip and i used to bait all the time and we never agreed on anything um but i love the fact that again he stood for what he felt and his his whole thing is this is what i believe and i can make that argument now no matter how much i disagreed i respected the fact that that's how he felt and that was an argument that he could make so we would debate sometimes in the hallways and then the executives saw us one time they watched him do his work they watched me do my work when i was on the best damn sports show period and they said let's create a pilot and we created a pilot that was called sports in black and white and they were they were basically trying to create it to go up against pti and we did it they loved it we went contract talks the whole bit and at the 11th hour and 59th minute the head of fox david hill pulled the plug and said this is not what we want to do and so from that moment on that was in the year 2000 from that moment on skip and i had always wondered what it would be like if we had worked together because we had kept in touch throughout the years so when the opportunity finally came and he approached me in that parking lot that was what he brought up this is unfinished business we were supposed to do this 12 years ago but here we are again and this is our opportunity steven a i need you to do this for me and by this time i was coming on once a week because i had returned in 2011 and then a few months and i would come on every wednesday and the ratings would blow up and he said i need you to do it did your did your relationship with skip ever fracture was there was there any contentiousness there never the only time anything came close to that was when i knew he was leaving before he told me and i was like what the hell is going on you know and so i confronted him because i'ma for better or worse i'm a straight-up guy you know if i work with you and all of a sudden i'm leaving you ain't gonna find out from somebody else you're gonna hear from me i'm gonna come looking for you to tell you i'm gonna give you the news face to face and i was hearing it and i'm like what the hell is going on and then when he confessed to me what had transpired between his negotiations with the company i understood why he couldn't tell me in the immediate moment but that's literally the only thing that we've ever had any kind of issue about and that lasted for like six hours so so with anyone that has come on the show uh my myself included um you know there's that critique of um [Music] the critique towards the disagreement right the critique towards the contentiousness which plays itself out on a debate show and so the critique often as well it's just a bunch of people yelling at each other but isn't inherently a show centered around debate uh you know especially when we talk about things because you know give a little just give everyone a little secret to the thing like we only pick topics generally that we are going to disagree on so we only pick topics generally that we are particularly passionate exactly that we want to talk about and so a lot of times it ends up i'm probably guilty of this as anyone is like the body language the the emotion like it's it's just inherently part of what we're doing and i'm curious to get your thoughts on sort of that critique of the show well to me it is a debate show and for the most part you shouldn't have the same perspective in the same point of view as your counterpart otherwise it's not embracing debate because it's not a debate so it's about giving the audience what they expect it doesn't mean that things can't be tweaked it doesn't mean that you can't be agreeable from time to time it doesn't mean that you can't reach a conclusion that's similar to one another once you have that discussion but it's a it's a discussion and again we could talk about yelling we can talk about fiery whatever but it's about projection everybody can't get away with mumbling and being successful on tv like shaquille o'neal they can't do that okay most people if you're mumbling on tv nobody wants to watch you you see what i'm saying if you're not passionate about what you're discussing and you you're not you're you're not aggressive to some degree maybe that's not the appropriate word but just assertive with it to some degree about your position they're watching anybody feel passionate about what you have to say so i this this brings me to something that i wanted to ask you about and bring up and that's just the steven a on camera versus the stephen a off camera right because right and i tell people what's steven a like people ask me all the time steven a like i'm like well there's the person i know on camera there's the person i know off camera right how are you so s able to seamlessly change that because you aren't this loud um uh demonstrative person off camera you're you're you're actually i would describe you soft-spoken off-camera i mean believe it or not i would describe you as that i wouldn't describe myself but i will say this to you the lights come on it's time to perform and that doesn't mean faking who you are that means bringing out that element that's appropriate for that platform that you're working in again you i can't get away with if i think about this and and and i've often said this to folks that have asked me this question so jj redick himself let's ask jj that question rhetorically anyway if i came on first take and sat across from you and i said to you well jj i disagree with you you know here's the reason why you'd be like holy [ __ ] what the hell is wrong with him says something's not right something not right but more importantly the part that you may not see because you're not that experienced at doing this show is that what kind of position would that put you in see as the face of the show that they've handed this to it's not just my responsibility to go on the air and spout my opinion it's my responsibility to provide a show so a lot of times again i'm not faking what i feel i'm not inauthentic or anything like that but what i am doing is looking at j.j reddick and i'm like i know i'm going to get him with this you know i know this is going to get it riled up and i'm messing with him and i'm tugging at you because we're doing a show and there's an audience out there that we're projecting to and we have a responsibility to feed them at least to some degree what they came if you come to a steak restaurant man you ain't looking for shrimp you looking for steak you see what i'm saying you come to a seafood spot you ain't looking for a burger you know i mean you you got to give the audience to some degree what they get but in the same breath do it in an authentic fashion where they know you're not faking it you're not cheating them you're not selling them a bag of goods that's not authentic and what have you and so to me that's my responsibility when it comes to first take it's not just me i gotta make sure i feed molly i'm feeding jj it's cj it's swag goo it's anybody if you notice i'm messing with everybody because i you're not gonna lay down and go to sleep with me across from you you never know what i'm gonna come at you with and i do it on purpose yeah exactly that's what i wanted to get to so i'm not saying that your character is inauthentic but you are saying you're playing a character in some ways well i i don't i it's a part of my personality yeah like for example i go home jj i'm off the air and literally my sisters will tell you i'll it'll be a family gathering and i'll walk through the door and i say i have a ride and everybody's like whatever and then we know we had a family picnic or whatever i said damn dammit i'm sorry y'all they're like why what what i said it's time for me to go so i'm just i'm messing with people all the time because it is a part of my personality is what i'm saying it's not something that i don't do i remember years ago man i got and i remember and i'm bringing this up because mo cheeks was the assistant coach in philadelphia 76ers he got me back good because i go to a sixers game palace in auburn hills and i'm coming back with about three other sports riders in the car with me they pulled me over said that you know ultimately told me i was driving with a suspended license cuffed me you know threw me in the jail cell in troy michigan this is like in 1999 i was pissed oh i was hot and i'm going off and stuff like that and i come back the next day and i'm going to the philadelphia 76ers practice and i'm complaining about this and mochi said all i want to know is is it in the papers is it in the papers because that was his way to get back to me saying you would have put it in the paper if it was us you know so it's guys guys who know me know that i have a personality and you know you can vibe with me we could talk we might disagree or whatever but if i'm your guy i'm your guy and i'm gonna have your back and we're gonna have a good time we're gonna have a good time going at each other and we can just we can agree to disagree i'm not gonna be offended by somebody disagreeing with me i'm not gonna be offended by jj saying you have lost your mind you don't know what the hell you talking about like what and then the minute we go to commercial good job good job you know that was good yeah i don't say it and we have a good time and and you know we go from there it's no secret that aches and pains can keep you from accomplishing your fitness goals well now there's help with new plus cbd pain relief topicals say goodbye to sore muscles and joints and power through your workouts over the years i've certainly had my fair share of injuries from the nba grind and i can confidently 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all-in-one commerce platform to start run and grow your business shopify gives entrepreneurs the resources once reserved for big business so upstarts startups and established businesses alike can sell everywhere synchronize online and in-person sales and effortlessly stay informed that's because scaling your business is a journey of endless possibility shopify has the tools and resources that make it easy for any business to succeed from down the street to around the globe you can reach customers online and across social networks with an ever growing suite of channel integrations and apps including facebook instagram tick tock pinterest and more that's because shopify is more than a store it grows with you go to shopify.com jj all lowercase for a free 14-day trial and get full access to shopify's entire suite of features grow your business with shopify today go to shopify.com right now shopify.com jj you mentioned that you played college basketball i tried to play that's what i said i tried to play jj i didn't play i tried to play but go ahead uh for uh clarence big house gains a legendary coach um and we were with uh grant hill yesterday who um whose episode will be out next week and he told us this story about you writing a very critical uh critical article in the student newspaper while you were playing for clarence gaines and i was like that can't be true there's more to this story we did our research and it is true it is true but it was it was more to the story than that um coach gaines was like a father to me and he had health issues and i don't know whether it was cerebral palsy or whatever it was but he would literally at times have to wear a patch over his eye he was catching mild strokes and stuff like that and he was a guy that you know i never had a great relationship with my dad and when i got there you know he gravitated towards me and we'd sit back practically four or five days a week in his office and giving me just life lessons and talking to me about a lot of things he said damn it you ain't gonna be a pro player let's get that out the way right now damn it you you can't play that good and blah blah blah and he got to a point where his health was so shaky we'd see it literally while he was on the sidelines there were a couple of times we thought he was gonna fall over and collapse and so i went into his office one day and i said it's time you know you gotta go you gotta go home be with you you got a wife you got children you got grandchildren you gotta go home man and he said shut the [ __ ] up exactly he said to me and i said i'm serious coach you know and i said you know i'm studying journalism in a whole bit i'm calling like i see it be fair be as accurate as i possibly can but be up front and stuff like that and he or he would talk to me about my career aspirations and i said i'm gonna write this he said [ __ ] you man i say it i said okay and then um i wrote the article you know and so when i wrote the article without giving all the medical details about his business you had the chancellor and a bunch of other people that were just appalled like you know the legends and broadcasting and beyond coach k and others i don't know what they would say but i just heard everybody was like who the hell is this no name kid blah blah and the chancellor wanted me expelled and coach gaines stepped in and stopped him and literally said he told me what he was going to do he told me why he told me to my face before he did it and i told him to go ahead leave him alone and i always remember that because years later when people would get on me and they'd see me on tv and coach games would be like damn it everybody don't want all the truth all the damn time won't want you telling them about themselves i said that's what you told me to do he said well goddammit i changed my mind you know and i said not so easy coach i said but i i don't i never tell everything coaching you know i'll get into people's personal business but i said i gotta call her like i see everybody watching i gotta call it like i see it he said okay when somebody cuts your ass out don't say anything i said did i say something when you cussed me out he said that's true and that was pretty much it what's interesting to me about this story um well of particular interest to me is because the whole story is very interesting what's a particular interest to me is that you essentially were you were pioneer you were at the forefront of athlete driven media content when you think about it yeah you know listen like i said i tried to play but i mean listen when i was in high school my senior year in high school i was five nine one hundred and thirty pounds my first year in college i gained like about five pounds um and i went to fit fashion institute of technology because i didn't have any scholarship offers because i only played basketball my senior year and i played in the tournament at that school i dropped 27 and they were like we want you and then i went there thinking i would go there for a couple of years and then transfer to a four-year university and when i went there for one year winston-salem state came calling because a former player there was a family friend of mine and he drove me down for a tryout and it was the greatest shooting performance i ever had in my life because i've never done it since and i never did it before that but that particular day that tryout i went down to winston-salem and i just passed the ball around when coach gaines put me on the court and coach gaines blew the whistle and he called me over because he's six six six two eighty and he was older he wasn't about to get up so he blew the whisper said come over here he said ain't you supposed to be a shooter i said yes he said well god damn it shoot the ball and i said all right and i went out there and i hit 17 straight three-pointers i've never done that in my life before or after but that day i hit 17 three-pointers straight and he signed me to a scholarship on the spot and so you know from that point forward it was like wow this is this is what happens and all of this other stuff but i cracked my kneecap in half my first year here a month in um i went up for a layup and my kneecap split and i wasn't at duke i wasn't at north carolina we didn't have the facilities and the medical coverage so i had the operation at wake forest hospital right in winston-salem and i could only rehab off of my mother's insurance which forced me to leave school or go back in rehab and because i wanted to get back to school so badly i did exactly what was necessary for rehab pretty much nothing else and my knee was never the same and that was that was what happened that was the end of the plane that was the end i still was on scholarship i could still go on a basketball court and bust somebody's ass but if you ask me to run up and down the court for 20 25 minutes that's i couldn't do it couldn't do it when when you got to the daily news and when you're at the inquirer were you how good of a verbal communicator were you i've always been a verbal communication my mother told me i could talk coming out of the womb so so so what was this but so like was there a period where like the switch flipped and you're like oh i'm i'm now because i mean instead of you talking about in terms of print from print to television print the television radio everything like that i did in my career what i try to encourage folks to do like see jj is a former nba player that's not but he's a rookie in the media that's what i call him a rookie i literally take it as a badge of honor to help him and anybody that i can excel in this business they can call me up talk to me ask me anything that they want i'll do anything that i can to help them because that's what people did for me and when i was in print journalism the real change in my career took place in 2001 when the philadelphia 76ers went to the nba finals alan nobson i'm the beat rider covering the team i'm breaking all the stories i mean i know everybody i got connections all over the league i know what's going on blah blah blah and for the cert for the purposes of philadelphia's newspaper i'm really killing it but once they got to the playoffs nothing mattered the features department the investigative department other writers the columnist everybody took over because what they're trying to do is generate you know revenue from ad sales and what have you because you got to maximize yourself when the team wins that's what the print industry is what they all do and i was nothing i had my 800 word i had my space for my 800 word article and that's all i could do and i said what the hell is this so i look around and i'm like we got radio hosts they say more in three minutes than i can write in an entire article and they got an hour two hour three hour show plus i'm getting paid 75 000. they get paid three four five hundred thousand dollars a year television they get paid seven figures i'm like what i mean i ain't blind this is where the money is and on top of it all as good as everyone thought i could write i knew i could talk better than i could write so i'm like wait a minute i get to talk instead of right and make more money this is not a hard transition to make and so i can't and and from that point forward i made up my mind that that directs that was the direction that i was going to go in so i was a insider for cnn si when cnns i existed fox sports came calling um when fox sports came calling then they created the best damn sports show period they wanted me on the show to be next to um chris rose and tom i'm tom arnold i was making again 75 000 a year they offered me a three-year contract for 1.4 million and i turned it down the reason i turned it down was because i wanted to be taken seriously and i know you can't be taken seriously sitting next to a comedian every day no shade on tom arnold whatsoever great comedian great guy loved him the whole bit but he's a comedian and if you're sitting next to a comedian you get attached to that and you're presumably that person or like a sidekick of that person which prevents the espn's of the world and others to come down the pike to hire you i saw that ahead of time and said no because my sights was on getting here and three years later i got here now i still was a contributor to the show in terms of giving the nba insider interviews and stuff like that but john sally ultimately took that role he took that role because i turned it down did you enjoy being a beat writer pay aside i loved it you loved it i loved it because i've always been a guy who believed the reason why i never backed down is because number one i was on the scene number two i knew i was willing to talk to the people that i talked about i wasn't running from anybody and number three i knew i was fair i always knew that i was the kind of person if you showed me i was wrong and i did something publicly that was erroneous or whatever i wasn't gonna apologize privately i wasn't gonna correct it privately i would go right back on the same platform that i screwed up on and i would say nope he's right i was wrong i knew i've always been that person so the fact that i knew that about myself that put me in a very potent position because players respect that jj knows this players respect that you you know you want you want to fester first of all we respect when we see you you got something to say and then you in the locker room they respect that number two if you're willing to correct yourself they respect that too and number three i was on the scene because i had to travel wherever the team went so i was courtside i was in the locker room i was there covering the team on off days i didn't just get the first take i i spent you know 20 damn years in this business before first take ever came along pounding that pavement going to games covering practices traveling with the team doing all of that stuff on an everyday basis what i think is remarkable though and i we we've talked about this a little bit off camera but what i think is remarkable is is that you know you started i think winston-salem journal right yep yeah winston-salem journal for free in school yeah while you're in school you wrote for your student newspaper you were a beat writer you grinded through a bunch of television shows now you're in a position let's be honest you're you're i believe the highest paid talent uh at espn or what would you say until yeah right until until those guys sign their deal for monday night football um and my observation of you having worked with you for the last six or seven months is that grind hasn't stopped that's what i find to be pretty remarkable i mean we you know we do the show if you could fly in for just one day you're flying in to do the show in person you've got countdown you've got steven a's world you go on almost every other show at some point in time uh whether that's you know get up or a radio show you're you're always out there grinding and i'm curious if the grind is the enjoyment the work is a little bit um that feeling of relevancy and cherishing that feeling is that a little bit of it i guess so but i think the biggest thing is let's just be honest is the is is the power is the influence and what i mean by that is that one of the reasons i can jump all over an athlete is because i'll challenge anybody to find somebody who defends athletes more than me other than the athletes themselves and i'm talking about a career where it's not just what i do on camera or on the microphone on radio or in a news room for a television network or a television or television network or a print or or print newspaper what i've done behind the scenes to fight to make sure athletes got a fair shake i'll put my record up against anybody because there's a lot of stuff that athletes don't know like i'm big on let's be fair i'm big on that's their personal life what the hell are you doing that for they're not in police bladders you don't know what the hell is going on why would you say something like that people don't realize how many stories i've stopped from getting printed stopped from getting publicized or whatever just because it was grossly unfair and it was very presumptuous and people we had no businesses in the industry doing those kind of things so when you know you're fighting those battles you know there's a level of influence that comes along with it so when somebody tries to come along and be like what the hell you just doing you just running your mouth i laugh because the instant thought that comes to my mind is you clearly don't know my background you don't know my history you don't know the sacrifices that i've made and how much money i would be making even now if i was willing to sell you out but i've never been that guy and so for me it's just when you talk about power and influence what i mean by that is that i say something that resonates last year 1.5 billion people watched me on youtube 1.5 billion i make sure i have these numbers i know exactly what kind of impact that i have and i know that that's the impact that a beat rider is going to the games and all of this other stuff well owners call me president of basketball operations called me players call me et cetera et cetera which is why a lot of times if a player challenges or they've got something to say and they'll pick up the phone and call me and i'm like you think you're the only one you think are you are you accusing me of getting this out of thin air you think somebody didn't tell me this oh no we know somebody told you this okay well let's understand that then so if i'm wrong you got enemies what you gonna do about that you know and so all of a sudden you see how things swirl and how news percolates and how change actually takes place behind the scenes 90 of which people never see i'm the person i'm one of the people that has an abundance of people on speed dial and they have me on speed dial and they will text or pick up the phone that's why a lot of times there has not been one segment and jj probably knows this maybe doesn't there has not been one single segment i've been on the air with you where i'm not getting text messages from people in the league while we're talking get him he's wrong no no stephen he got you there he's right about that i mean they're they're literally giving commentary on our commentary we had an incident yeah three four weeks ago i'm not gonna name the person but where the guy literally texted both of us simultaneously that's right exactly the same thing about someone about why we were both wrong actually that's right but what i'm saying is that for me that's every show every segment of every show yeah which is why when people sit up there and say he doesn't know he doesn't know they don't get it i'm not one of those commentators that think i know more than the people involved i think i know something because the people involved told me there's a difference so if somebody if i'm sitting here with you and jj and jj walks out today and jj there's some news going on about jj somebody might come up to me and ask me do you know yeah i know or what is it none of your damn business and they'll go like this well you must not know because you're not saying anything i know i just spoke to jj i'm just not telling you so that's where my power comes from because i know that people communicate with me all the time and they use me as a conduit for whatever information they want disseminated that's my job as a journalist we were talking about the the performance angle earlier but about turning it on do you think if you from your own personal interest level if you decided to be in like another field whether it be politics entertainment i know i mean this wouldn't necessarily work for television yeah so like like could this translate to anything if you decided like five years ago like oh i want to really do politics i really want to do entertainment i really want to do whatever when espn let me go in 2009 i appeared on fox news msnbc and cnn 150 times i honestly thought that could be a potent a possibility in 2015 one of those networks cnn actually interviewed me for my own show on cnn i can honestly tell you i believe that if i were in politics it might have got me killed because of the world we're living in because if it didn't get me killed it would have me as a pariah by half of the country like the likes of a sean hannity or whatever because when i'm doing stuff and i'm in i don't view myself as a second place kind of guy i'm coming to be the top dog that's just by nature and i'm not gonna fake the funk or whatever i just know that when i do things i know how to resonate with an audience and if i were doing politics we talk about real life issues things that affect the average everyday american and the thing that would be so dangerous about me is i'm not one-sided sometimes the liberals are right sometimes the conservatives are right it's on a case-by-case basis but the one thing i could assure you of is i would piss off millions because but you know literally subject my subject because i'm taking aside and i'm not scared to do that i'm scared to take an ideological position because i don't believe in that i believe that it's a case-by-case basis i think it's very impractical living in the ground that's right living in the gray i'm not that guy i'm a god the incident how i feel about gay rights is entirely different by how i might feel about the economy i'm a liberal when it comes to gay rights i am a fiscal conservative when it comes to my money i can't stand paying taxes it drives me nuts i'm thinking i can't wait to get out of new york city i'm just sick of it and i was born and raised in this town i'm sick of them taking my damn money in taxes it just drives me nuts okay the things that i do from a business perspective the decisions that i make the things i'm in pursuit of primarily is because i'm tired of all my money being taken i want to be more of an entrepreneur i want to make sure you know i'm aware of what a capital gains tax is i'm aware of what income taxes i know the states that don't have income taxes okay they don't pay state income taxes i know these states i can give it to your chapter and verse i pay attention to this stuff it matters to me and so i would take a position and i'm unafraid to do it and considering that it affects the lives of people i would tell you i'm glad i didn't but i came very very very close to being a pundit and one time i was approached by governor evan dell in pennsylvania he wanted me to run for senate yeah he said you should you said you should do it i said you know i'm not a liberal you know i'm not a conservative either but he said don't matter what you don't matter with you you're a voice that needs to be heard he told me this about close to 10 years ago but doesn't it seem not to get too like sidetracked with politics but doesn't it seem now that like showmanship and performance i mean obviously we saw this with our last president it's incredibly important for all of these fields it's like the the television to politics pipeline is happening it's pivotal there's no doubt about that but the difference between politics and everything else even if they love you or hate you they want more in anything other than politics when it comes to politics as charismatic as you may be it does ultimately come down to what you do once you have the charisma you can have the charisma but you can be a person that is making decisions that's to the detriment of a segment of our society if not our society as a whole and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose you know and and you got to take that into consideration i mean listen you could say what you want about donald trump he had charisma there's no doubt about that the thing that conservatives have a hard time coming at me about is when i come at him it was never because of his politics because i see the world we have to the the prism of history tells us the effectiveness of a president or lack thereof you can't tell us in a moment history tells us that but what you can tell about a president is whether you're a divisive force or are you capable of galvanizing people things of that nature and i've said this before and i'll say it again do y'all realize that if donald trump had simply said wear a mask and conducted himself with any kind of decorum he'd still be president literally i've said and i'm telling you i'm sharing this with you guys i've said that to sean hannity i've said that to mark levin i mean i know these people you know i'm on all you know i've been on all of these shows and they're sports fans that's how i know them but think about that and i remember one time i said i said how does it feel if the presidency is so important and it matters so much and you have that power to influence hundreds of millions of lives okay and you passed on it just because you wanted to show little class and you wanted to you didn't want to agree with the liberals and you politicized covent 19. do you realize have you not done that you would still be president i said so what does it say to you about a person that knew that and still let his ego get in the way anyway that's not politics that's human that's human beings that's human communication it transcends that and those are the kind of things i look at do not expect to have that conversation uh full of surprises yeah yeah you know we'll get we'll get we're getting back on track i do want to the the the part about um the earlier comment you made about um not really like being in a player's uh personal business uh you know fighting to have stories not right become public and i i am curious not not just on first take but in anything you've written anything you've done are there uh is there particular stories or a particular take that you've had about a player that you've then regretted later on i regretted the beef that me and glenn big dog robinson had um as i reflect on it i had to take the brunt of the blame for that i'm the professional and the professional because even though he was a grown man what was what was sort of the cop he had a beef because randy airs got fired okay from the philadelphia 76ers and i had a real problem with it because i happen to have known that at the time that he was dismissed and you know i don't i'm not bringing it up to throw any shade on anybody because we dropped that a long time ago but the the issue that i had is i felt like there was disrespect accorded to him and that led to billy king in the 76ers believing he wasn't the guy because he didn't have the respect of the players and i had a problem with that because he was an african-american man and the level of disrespect that i felt was accorded to him was not right and i said that and because of that glenn and i had a beef for years um and then one day i saw his son and his son came over to me and talked to me and was just such a gentleman and a whole bit and i was like damn no glenn's a good father there's no way his son would come up and talk with me if this man was behind the scenes doing all of this nonsense or anything like that and more importantly i didn't want his son to ever think that because of any disagreement i had with his father that that would reflect on him in any way in terms of my coverage if it came to that and so from that moment forward i just said drop it on what your part and all of this disagreement is let it go glenn's a good guy y'all just got a disagreement and that's okay and the other one was allen iverson um it's hard to admit this as you know as an objective observer journalist commentator now all of this other stuff but i love alan obviously he's like a little brother to me and covering him being an african-american from the streets of new york knowing his story and knowing what he endured we went through a lot together covering him i don't believe i'm sitting here in this position today if it were not for allen iverson covering him was a separate beat in and of itself when he was a star in this league the only person more popular than him one could easily argue was michael jordan that's how popular allen iverson was and he didn't always do the right things and sometimes that stuff was hard to write and a whole bunch of stuff i didn't say and i did it right but sometimes it left you no choice and one time the latest the last time his last stint with the philadelphia 76ers we didn't speak for two years because he was upset that i had written an article about him he was away from the team you know supposedly his kid was sick or whatever but then they saw him partying and he didn't know any of this but one of my editors said i thought you said allen iverson was with his family see you know he is he told me whatever he turned around the computer and had video of iverson surrounded by hundreds of people you know and he said you write it or we'll take it out of your hands and we'll have our department write it and so i had to write the story um about how he wasn't with the team and et cetera et cetera and he was incredibly hurt and we couldn't connect for a couple of years and i heard that i started hearing that if he's man if y'all saw each other it would be a problem man he won't put his hands on you whatever that's the worst thing somebody could say to me because you know i mean you know i'm not scared of anybody but more importantly i got boys just like everybody else so i went down to atlanta looking for him and i had i had a few of my boys with me you know and i went down there looking for him and i found him and we met up and it wasn't any of that he said man i don't care about the article is that it came from you and when he said that i felt this small yeah because i got it i didn't know he has a job as a player i have a job as a reporter and that was it and by that time i was a columnist et cetera et cetera and i looked at it to that and i never thought in my i'm here thinking he had a problem with the story he had no problem with the story he said i deal with that every day it's the fact that your name was on the byline and i really didn't say much but when i saw the hurt in his eyes the story wasn't worth it to me so i i think this this is one of the challenges with being in media being a journalist uh even to some degree in my case being a former ex-player whose friends and former teammates and peers that i respect are still playing um and you build relationships and it's i think challenging to be fair and balanced and impartial and unbiased towards people right that you respect or that you have a relationship with and that's i to me that's a perfect example of that and that's really one of the main challenges to your point about having these relationships with different people across the league that really is the biggest challenge to me but it's never a challenge for me to talk about your game like i walk up to you in a heartbeat you play like garbage you don't want to see me on tv the next day because i'm going to say so but that was his personal life that was the challenge okay but not just personal life then because yes i mean when cp had a game seven i came on the team and i said he sucked yeah exactly he sucked for five straight exactly i love cp and i rewarded you for that yeah because that's what you have to do when it comes to their game because everyone's watching that but but hold on but hold on then it becomes about other another conversation another conversation about somebody's legacy right another conversation about somebody's money right how much they deserve and that's where i think the challenge lies it's not it's not reading a box score it's not watching a game right it's it's it's the comparison of players it's it's when we talk about a guy's contract what they're worth that's where i think there's some challenges and truthfully that's where i think some people have run into some problems yes you're right i don't think you i don't think you're wrong at all for me it's never been a problem in that regard though because how you start off the relationships matter if i come to you and i say this is who we are i have to write about what i see you do on the court or the field of play that's my story to tell now you can give me quotes you can give me your perspective and i'll quote you but whatever i believe i saw you're gonna be hard-pressed to convince me that i saw something different you got a shot and i'ma listen but what i saw is what the hell i saw that's entirely different when it comes to off-the-court field to play now that's your story and so i've always made sure that players who unders who know me understand that if you don't know stephen a smith as a professional athlete that's your problem because i make myself available there's no athlete on the planet that can say they can't find me if i'm talking about you i'm the easiest person to find i'm not hiding because that's when it's really really weak and incredibly unfair to that athlete you have to make sure that athlete has access to you if they want it if you don't want it is that your problem i've had players come up to me you [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] i hate your ass okay knock yourself out you know what i'm saying i'm not losing any sleep over it because all you have to do is talk to me and no matter what i feel i have an obligation as a professional and as a human not only to hear your side but to make sure i convey your perspective even if i disagree jj redick and i come on first take yes we've disagreed tell me one time where i've said no you can't express your point but i can express mine i've never done that i always make sure everyone gets heard that's my obligation to make sure that you're heard and to make sure you get a fair shake not that i have to agree with you not when it comes to your professional performance your personal life is different because we don't know what goes on in the walls of your home your personal life figuratively speaking whatever we don't know that that's your story to tell but feel the court of play oh no no no no that's mine real quick uh before we go into the next thing i do want to ask you just about a.i and that period of time in philadelphia because um you know that was when i was in high school and he you know him along with kobe that sort of next era that post-jordan era was was an interesting time for the nba but specifically as it relates to philadelphia uh and having played there for two years and seen the receptions that he gets when he comes back what do you think it was about alan iverson in probably the toughest sports town to be revered in that still to this day he is so revered easily he was a warrior philadelphia is a phenomenal sports town i loved my time there philadelphia is a as a town however with a complex it never feels like it's respected and appreciated to the degree that it deserves allen iverson eradicated all of that annan iverson representing philadelphia personified everything that philadelphia saw itself as undersized underdog in a land of giants but still conquering that's how they viewed allen iverson and allen iverson practice man we talking about practice the allen iverson that was in friday's all the damn time on city avenue the allen iverson that was running the streets and stuff like that was not the allen obviously that showed up when it was time to perform the brighter the lights the bigger the challenge the more he welcomed it that's philadelphia and that's why somebody dare i say like ben simmons not literally but figuratively speaking he can never go back they will never forgive him ever because they view him as a coward i don't view him as that that's a bit extreme i don't know all the intricacies of what's going on with him i just feel like hey you still asking for your money so i got a problem with that but philadelphia philadelphia believes he's a coward philadelphia believes he's the antithesis of everything allen iverson personified and if anything ben simmons existence over the last year has elevated the allure to allen iverson even more because they're saying damn we missed that and remember when they went to the finals aaron mckee tough hard-nosed player george lynch tyrone hill dicamba tumbo these guys they all had eric snow they all had that kind of personality wasn't blessed with tremendous mercurial abilities but they were hard-nosed they ran from no damn body and alan iverson was their star yep we we talked about this with gary payton last week i'm curious what you think about it um having a little bit of sympathy for some of the guys now not just in the nba but just you know pro athletes in general with social media and with the constant barrage of criticism and attention all the time with everything they make a mistake and it becomes a 24-hour talking point but gary was like he's like i don't think i would have been able to make it if i was playing if i was doing everything i was doing off the court yeah when if i was if i was like his son now like i was playing now i wouldn't be able to make it do you feel that having sort of covered both the like ai obviously like in a generation where that didn't exist and now covering these guys today i don't feel sorry for them i know that exists but i don't feel sorry for them and here's why i don't feel sorry for them because you're no different than the rest of us i ain't playing the nba i blink wrong could you imagine what they're gonna say about me on social media it's most of us now any everybody wants a voice everybody wants their voice to be heard and by the way it's not because they have the sensational appetite to be heard they think it can be monetized and in some cases it can and so when you think about it we all want to act like dollars and cents doesn't have something to do with everything but dammit if it ain't everything is most things and when you think about social media that's what you have to think about you got people who are youtube stars you've got females who are instagram stars i mean think about that for a second here and so when you have that going on and you find a way to monetize well guess what the vast majority of american citizens ain't making but so much money and so not only that they got to show up to work they got to answer the bosses they don't want to answer to they got to show up to a job they gotta they wanna show up to they gotta travel to get to that job do or do do a means of transportation they would prefer not to utilize you got all of this going on and all of a sudden i can get on my computer straight out of bed and make myself some money if i can somehow someway manufacture whatever abilities i have into something that resonates to an audience that's how they're thinking they for example jj reddick complains all the time about being misquoted he is absolutely right what did i say to him i didn't say to him he wouldn't be misquoted i said get used to it it happens all the time you know how many times people will click bait something and they put a headline and it had nothing to do with what i said i could get the [ __ ] yeah they do it right because that way you click on it and you read the article here's where it's a problem for somebody like me half the time people hold stuff against me based on the headline they never even read the article they never even saw the clip they saw the headline and they said that damn stephen here you go again and they do stuff like that i accept it i understand that it comes with the territory i understand the reason for its existence and a modern day player has to understand it too because they want to if you want to utilize something to your advantage you have to recognize its detriment you have an obligation to do that this leads right into i think a really important topic that i wanted to ask you about and that's just this this wave of athlete driven content athletes owning and having their own platforms of course draymond with this catchphrase if you will the new media the new media um and like just to provide some sort of personal opinion on this i don't think athlete driven content will ever replace traditional journalist or traditional reporters um because you know i think about how you started yeah you you need a beat writer yeah you you need reporters that's right you need experience you need experience you need hosts um so it's to me it's a welcome addition and of course i'm i'm you know admittedly a little biased in that of course it's a welcome addition but i do want to get your perspective on it i love it i love the fact that athletes have uh this outlet i have i've i have a career span of 28 years where i've been fighting for athletes my entire career that's why i can call them out because i'm quick to sit up there and say okay here's what i've done on this side for you you talk you pointing about something this matters this much when i'm supportive on stuff that matters this much well i had to have the objectivity in order to pull that off and i don't have it if i can never disagree with you so let's understand that and when you look at athletes today there are so many athletes that are highly intelligent incredibly accomplished and more importantly whose hearts are in the right place particularly because of what they endured and the fact that they have an opportunity to disseminate that message is something that pleases me the fact that they see something that can be an outlet and an extension of their career something beyond their playing careers that they can monetize to their benefit it's something we should all welcome what do you want you want the the handful of athletes that's making nine and you know eight and nine figure salaries and whatever what do you want them to do be done at age 35 wondering what the hell they're going to do with the rest of their life while the rest of us are out here working certainly we may not make the money that a few of them have made in in our lifetimes but the point is we have something to do and we have a direction and we have a focus and it preoccupies our mind and our spirit in such a way that it inspires us to march forward and move forward as opposed to that lost athlete wondering what the what the hell are they going to do with the rest of their life why should any of us want that so i'm incredibly supportive of athletes having that voice and expressing it just understand all that comes with it understand the good the bad and the potential ugly that comes along with it and be willing to accept it all if you're gonna venture into it that's my only criteria outside of that knock yourself out which is why i've often said look you know i remember one time lebron had me speak in akron at at one of his camps and you know kobe had me come one time and i was talking to guys and they were like you know when are you available to do this and i said for y'all always and they were like why i said we come to y'all asking y'all for your time every day i know it's in your contract you're supposed to talk to the media whatever but the bottom line is i don't know of a single athlete who hasn't extended themselves to give time to others that they didn't have to give the least we could do is do the same and so i always pride myself in doing that and i always pride myself on supporting athletes having a voice and i'll never deviate from that just know what you're talking about and know what the consequences are if you don't are we good i think it's yeah i agree with all that and i i think the the second chapter part of every athlete's life is very difficult when they retire so it is like a death um having just gone through it over the last year and so the monetization uh you know if it is in in the media space is obviously important i do think as it relates to the media space uh having a different perspective having a narrative and a discourse that comes from experience to go up against a journalist or a reporter i think that's important again it goes like we're all shaped by our own experience our opinions oftentimes are shaped by our experiences and so i i think that whether it is draymond or cj mccollum who's been here the last couple days like being able to get their perspective on things provides balance and of course we could go to any sport right now and there's athletes all over the world uh who who are owning and driving their own platforms you're not wrong the only thing that i would say to you jj is understand everybody ain't you and what i mean by that is that you have the ability to go up against traditional conventional journalists and give a perspective that's on their level even though their perspective is totally different than yours and most and oftentimes wrong whatever you say right the bottom line is the perspective that you provide you have the ability to articulate it in a way that we articulate our thoughts and that's okay but when you have people that will come at you and just say you don't know what the hell are you talking about well why because you never played that doesn't cut it and you know what i've said because you got a lot of guys that have podcasts you've got a lot of guys that have ventured in a lot of things and they've come to me asking me for advice for crying out loud in terms of this business and i've often said to them when you say stuff like that you think you're insulting me you don't realize you already lost the debate you're insulting the audience because they didn't play either so when you say that you think you're talking to me no you're not you're talking to 99 of the population out there who aren't fortunate to be the less than one percent that you are to play on this level so when your cry is i played you didn't you don't understand this so let me explain and blah blah blah blah blah the audience is like who the hell do you think you are really that's how you talking to us we watched we got two eyes we saw what you did now granted they don't know what you know but in the same breath when you articulate it that way i've already beaten you because the objective is to be heard not just listen to they're gonna hear me because i'm speaking their language they're ignoring you because you spoke against their language and i know that so i start laughing the moment somebody does that because you're already lost you don't you don't you're already lost and i'm i'm mindful and cognizant of that part of communication is understanding who you're communicating with who you're reaching and keeping them there and i know how to do that i have a debating question i was thinking about this we were talking about this earlier and this is not even just with athletes in general going back to the beginning of your career we talk about we talk with players a lot about when they are either offensively or defensively when they see their opponent if they can like see fear in their eyes when they're sizing them up if they can tell right away oh like i've got this person i'm in their head when you're debating somebody and and you know you're debating them and they don't have it can you tell right can you tell right away do you have to like yeah a little bit yeah but for me personally that's where the human side comes i might get on you i'll get on you if you know what you're talking about but i just disagree if i know you're clueless if i know that you just don't have the ability to you know volley back and forth against me verbally i'll pick that up right away and i'll dial it back because then that's just a beat down and i'm really not trying to do that i'm trying to make my argument more profound than yours i'm not trying to embarrass you i'm not trying to hurt you i'm not trying to let you allow you to be viewed as somebody who doesn't even belong sitting across the set from me when i'm the one that gave the okay for you to sit across the set for me to begin with i'm not doing that to you i'm going to protect the people that are on the show with me i've got their back we disagree on a subject but what's not going to happen is that you're going to leave the show and everybody's going to be attacking you and i'm going to leave you to stand there by yourself when i was the one who okayed you being on the damn show as far as i'm turning the people on my show and the people that i work with and the people that are sparring against me verbally and stuff like that they're my teammates and so i'm going to treat them as such i'm always going to do that all right i've got to go on uh max kellerman uh this just in in like seven minutes sure so i do want to finish up with uh the fact that you for uh seven months now have said the warrior's gonna win the championship how are you feeling we're recording this i'm a little nervous the day before it came through to be nervous to be nervous i mean listen you got the boston celtics within the championship i don't blame you one bit they're pretty damn good they're an elite defensive team uh we know what they bring to the to the equation offensively and if we didn't know all we got to do is listen to you and we'll know because you've told us numerous times you're absolutely right i'm just thinking the warriors with that experience with their marksmanship they should be able to win this series but i will openly confess i honestly don't know who i would have picked had i not been riding the warriors all year long the fact that i started off the season i'm not jumping off the ship i'm not doing it i'm staying right where i've been all year long and if i got to go down i got to go down credit to you and i gave you credit uh you know when they made the uh yeah when they made the finals yeah i mean i one of my first times on the show i told you to slow the [ __ ] down with the warriors talk they were i think eight and one that you were nine games into the season and i was like easy boss man i said i'm telling you what i'm saying to you man you called it yes i did jj thank you for very much admitting that yes i did call it okay because and this is the crime with jj that they'll make no sense i love jj it was a crime i'm getting ready to tell you what that crime is i've loved jj for years because the the man could shoot and there's very very few people who could shoot off the move the way that you did i thought that was a big big deal because you took a lot of pressure off you know your back court mates throughout the years because of your ability to do that this is my opinion and i'm saying how the hell is he of all people not seeing what i'm seeing in these warriors how is he not getting this because if you're j.j redick you're supposed to see this clearer than me but somehow some way you're recording with the phoenix suns you record it with the phoenix sun with the phoenix and i said to you look listen i'll tell you right now what dallas did to them i thought golden state was going to do to them in about five or six games that's fair that's what i thought was going to happen to them i was like they can't mess with they can say whatever they want they will beat phoenix this this is this is where i i i joke about the misquoting because you're go ahead somebody the other day commented on something they were like oh you you've picked against the warriors in every series and i'm like no i didn't i picked the words of the nuggets i love it i love it the warriors have agreed over the grizzlies i love it i picked the warriors over the mavs i said it i said at the beginning of the playoffs i thought the suns would win the west that's right i'd never pick the warriors against the warriors in any series until the finals i'm just saying you picked that's all i'm trying to say but i love i love how jj going i got to make sure i'm correct because people have misquoted me and i'm like this athlete i said we go through this stuff all the time and listen draymond complained about this one time k.d along with other players i mean cp3 others and i went like this welcome to my world how does it feel i love the fact that y'all suffer like this it makes me it makes me some of it though and we were talking about this with grant yesterday some of this though we and i and i probably did this too we now have lumped essentially traditional media we as players we have lumped traditional media aggregate media yep which is the worst type of media yes and social media like aggregate media is worse than social media to me we've lumped all three of those things so all the the people with attila 87462 twitter handles who make negative comments that's media clutch points terrible website that's media traditional media that's all media so when we talk about being misquoted or misrepresented we're taking out what may happen on this side of media on social media or in aggregate media on traditional media exactly and i hold the athletes accountable to that because you have an opportunity to cultivate relationships in life everything's about relationships everything's about relationships i've never known jj the way that we know each other now he knows he can call me now i know i can call him now you know numerous players in the nba nfl major league baseball and others it's like wait a minute here you you know i never thought i'd have the relationship with alex rodriguez that i have you know i never thought that i'd be in a restaurant in the four seasons that somebody said could you excuse me sir um derek jeter's waiting to say hello to you i never thought that would happen for me you know what i'm saying or you know michael jordan is on speed dial and magic and all of these other guys i never thought that that would happen but at the end of the day as an athlete you are empowered to cultivate the relationships with anybody that's relatively decent you can't come to me and tell i i don't give a damn what anybody say i know how i was raised i'm never gonna lie to you about you on purpose i'm never gonna know something's wrong and say it publicly i'm never gonna put your personal business out in the street for no reason you said i'm never gonna do things like that i would never do something like that i've had players that are sitting up there sorry [ __ ] i can't stand your ass and a month later man i need your help and i'm like what you need because i understand that you mad in the moment whatever who cares at the end of the day i want us all to eat i want us all to be successful i've never rooted against an athlete in my life because i understand what they ain't doing what they go against i'm sensitive to it i got love for them for and i'm always gonna be here but in the same breath i'm gonna tell the truth as i see it as it pertains to your performance that's it anything else you could talk to me about except for what you do in front of millions of people watching on television and 20 000 people in attendance that i'm going by what i saw fair enough uh stephen a we appreciate the time i just so everybody knows uh for the youtube audience and and obviously the the listeners we we had to record this in two different segments that's why there was a chair switch today wanted to sit above us no i wanted the king appreciate you baby

Channel: JJ Redick

Views: 630,429

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Id: RMd5RmqCU68

Length: 74min 3sec (4443 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022