JJ Redick may never appear on First Take again after this.
I love the way any time a player or another ESPN analyst makes Smith looks terrible or, in this case, foolish, those clips are never promoted on the First Take or ESPN social media channels.
The only promoted takes are the Stephen A. Smith takes, which must be in his contract.
Here is how this all went down.
“In all the years I’ve covered the league, we talk about the Jordan’s of the world, the Kobe’s of the world, people like that,” Smith said. “You saw LeBron when he first came into the league, you saw when they went to the finals, you saw when he was… taking pictures and playing around and being jovial and all that other stuff. LeBron James is too phenomenal and too great not to be incredibly respected, but in my estimation, from the people that I’ve spoken to covering the league, [LeBron] has never been feared. … With LeBron, you believe you can take him. You believe he can be had.”
Smith hit back, starting a sentence with, “If you watched the game,” before Reddick reminded him that he actually “played the game.”
“I played against LeBron for 15 years,” Redick added. “LeBron has grown up in a completely different world [than what] existed in the ‘80s and ‘90s. There was no First Take in the ‘90s. Could you imagine, in the New York Knicks series, MJ going to Atlantic City the day before the game and coming home at 2 a.m.? Social media, this show, that’s all you would talk about for days.”
“To say that his peers don’t fear him, opposing coaches don’t fear him, you think people want to go into a playoff series against LeBron,” he said. “More than one, find me a player who’s attacked LeBron.”
Social media thinks we won’t be seeing Redick back on the show because he had Stephen A. visibly flustered that he didn’t just bow down to his takes.
Flip the page for the whole interaction and Twitter saying that will be a wrap for Redick on First Take.