Stephen A. Smith’s Former ESPN Colleague Admits She Hates Him originally appeared on The Spun.
Stephen A. Smith might be the face of ESPN, but that doesn’t mean everyone who works with him – or has worked with him – is the biggest fan of him.
Case, in point: Michelle Beadle.
The former ESPN host, known for her roles on “SportsNation” and “Get Up!” is very much not a fan of Smith. She previously ripped Smith for his comments on the Ray Rice suspension. Smith had said on ESPN that women should “make sure that they don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions,” in the wake of Rice’s domestic violence incident.
Beadle hasn’t been a fan of him ever since.
“I don’t respect him. I don’t respect his work. He doesn’t like me. This goes back to the Ray Rice stuff. He made some really piggish comments on the air. I responded; he got suspended for like two weeks. I think that was sort of the beginning of the end for anything,” she told Front Office Sports. “I just don’t respect him. I think he gets things wrong all the time. I’m not talking about opinions; those can never be wrong. But factually, when you spread yourself so thin, it’s hard to be right. Not a fan.”
Stephen A. Smith (Stephen Smith) on the ESPN NBA Countdown live set at Intuit Dome.Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Beadle, meanwhile, is continuing to fire shots at Smith. She is accusing him of ruining ESPN’s NBA Finals coverage.
She responded to a New York Post story about Barstool Sports personality Mark Titus ripping ESPN for letting Smith ruin its NBA Finals coverage.
The headline from the New York Post read: “Mark Titus rips ESPN for ruining NBA Finals with too much Stephen A. Smith: ‘This guy’s awful’”
Beadle didn’t see anything wrong with that: “No lies detected.”
Beadle, who left ESPN in 2019, isn’t shy when it comes to her opinions on Smith or the network as a whole.
It seems clear that Beadle won’t be tuning into ESPN’s NBA Finals pregame coverage, which features a whole lot of Stephen A. Smith, later on Sunday night.
Game 7 is scheduled to tip off at 8 p.m. E.T. on ABC.
Stephen A. Smith’s Former ESPN Colleague Admits She Hates Him first appeared on The Spun on Jun 22, 2025
This story was originally reported by The Spun on Jun 22, 2025, where it first appeared.