an in-person confrontation during a game in March<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe ESPN sports personality added that other things happened between him and James \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d that the public does not know about.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I would say is people don\u2019t know the things that have happened behind the scenes,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThings that have been said, who they\u2019ve been said to. The kind of things that have been engaged in in an effort to hurt me, along with contemporaries and others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smith also mentioned how he did not appreciate how James came at him on \u201cThe Pat McAfee Show,\u201d which airs directly after \u201cFirst Take\u201d on ESPN.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James arguing with the ref in the second half of a game against the Knicks. Charles Wenzelberg \/ New York Post<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of s\u2013t that I don\u2019t say. And there\u2019s a reason that I feel the way that I do. And the last straw was him approaching me and turning the Bronny thing into something about me attacking somebody\u2019s family, when it was him I was talking about. Not Bronny.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then to go on\u00a0\u2018The Pat McAfee Show,\u2019 which comes directly on after my show. On the channel that I work on. To insult me. Now, people can get into all kind of components that go into it and all that other stuff. I have nothing to say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephen A. Smith looks on before the game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers during Game 3 of the 2025 NBA Finals on June 11, 2025 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Smith concluded by saying that he plans to only mention James in the context of NBA analysis going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m never going to denigrate any employer, any partner, or myself by getting into anything excessively, unnecessarily, when it comes to him or anybody else,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI\u2019m going to do my job. I\u2019m going to cover the game of basketball. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut if I never, ever speak to him again in life, that will be OK. And I\u2019m good with it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Things did not end on a good note with Stephen A. Smith and LeBron James. During an appearance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,130,185,6,66,2086,3647,2603],"class_list":{"0":"post-233538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-espn","10":"tag-lebron-james","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-entertainment","14":"tag-sports-media","15":"tag-stephen-a-smith"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115035848368888804","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}