On the latest episode of the 7PM in Brooklyn podcast with Carmelo Anthony, Stephen A. Smith went into detail about his issues with LeBron James.
At around the 29-minute mark of the episode, Smith was asked about his decision to be so vocal about his dislike for LeBron, especially over the past year. He said there won’t be a “peaceful solution” to their issues and admitted that the public reaction to their feud left him frustrated. After going on a brief tirade about the responses, Smith circled back to LeBron and laid out the origins of their beef.
“I don’t like his ass, not a little bit,” he said around the 35:50 point of the podcast. “I understand what he means to Melo. I understand what he means to D Wade, my boys. I understand it. But all I’m going to say when it comes to that, Melo is 1,000 percent right. This dates back more than a decade. I’m not going to go into detail of the shit this man has tried to do to me. People don’t understand. You do not understand the lengths this man would go to. You know, I believe he’s one way publicly, he’s another way privately.”
He said that comments that LeBron has made in private, and some of things he has “tried to do,” have come back to him. When asked if Bron attempted to get him off the air, he said, “I’m not going there, figure it out, ‘Cause I’m not going to find myself in a position where it can get uglier.” He didn’t specify anything further, but he said it was “low low shit” that Bron has said about him or tried to make happen behind closed doors.
“The day that he rolled up on me courtside, it was the day my contract was announced that I had stayed with ESPN,” he continued. “Go back and look at the camera angles. I arrived there in the first quarter. He rolled up on me in the third quarter. … How is it we got one angle and the only angle you see was of him in his face, but you see the back of my peanut head? … Y’all guess, I’m not going there. I’m just telling you what I see. Remember, I’m in this business.”
Smith said he felt “set up” in the moment when LeBron confronted him courtside. “‘I have to protect my family,’ that’s the narrative you playing?” he said. “When I tell y’all, you can’t measure the level of how pissed off I have been over that. There is no level of disrespect that has been accorded to me in my life for what he did. … To try to paint me as somebody who would attack somebody’s family, knowing I’ve never done it? I can’t tell you how offensive I find that.”
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