Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless are well-known for their candid critiques of elite NBA players. However, NBA players frequently become enraged by these tactics and react negatively. Conversely, when past athletes critique a player’s behavior, the player is typically far more open to hearing it.
Kenyon Martin and Gilbert Arenas on Gil’s Arena identified the problems they and other players have with commentators who unfairly and excessively criticize NBA players.
Martin contended that their criticism is unjustified since they have never experienced the difficulties that a professional hooper faces. The ins and outs of the trade are only known by basketball players who reach the highest levels.
Kenyon Martin talks about the impact of Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith
When talking heads criticize players, all they can do is assume and conjecture because they have never played professional ball. Kenyon Martin said,
“As athletes, we have a problem with Skips, the Stephen As, these people. When you’ve never laced ’em up and you don’t know what it took for these guys to become who they are,” Martin said.
“You have no leg to stand on cause you ain’t never been in this arena, you ain’t never been on this field, you ain’t never done it. So for you to have anything but praise and admiration for these people, it’s crazy.”
Arenas then used a dapper comparison to make his argument. He likened stewards to analysts, passengers to fans, and airplane pilots to NBA players. In the NBA, the player and the spectators share a cabin, but in an airplane, the pilots have their own cabin with no one instructing them what to do.
In terms of arenas, this is exclusive to sports, where a layperson can instruct an expert on how to complete a task. It is true that getting into the NBA is tough. It makes sense, then, that the athletes would demand respect. Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith, however, are equally entitled to voice their viewpoints. What Martin and Arenas fail to realize is that everyone can critique art; they don’t have to be artists themselves.
In a similar vein, it is not necessary to be an elected official in order to criticize lawmakers. There are many industries, like film, literature, art, and gastronomy, where the general public is free to criticize specialists.
