Stephen A. Smith has picked every finals wrong since 2011
Stephen A. Smith, who was once a pretty good newspaper columnist, is a shining example of ESPN’s “embrace debate” ideology, where the Worldwide Leader throws two people with opposing views at each other on national television and advertise it as some sort of important dialogue.
It’s not.
These “debates” include Colin Cowherd claiming John Wall won’t be a good player because he dances and his dad is dead. Or Stephen A. and Skip Bayless arguing about whether or not it’s ok to be homophobic. Or Stephen A. blaming women for domestic violence.
The mastermind behind this whole philosophy that any idea is worth debating, regardless of how ridiculous or offensive it is, is producer Jamie Horowitz. Horowitz is now employed by Fox Sports 1, which would explain the uptick in ridiculous debate shows embroiled in controversy over there recently.
News networks like CNN have also adopted the approach, causing a total degradation of our news media and perhaps leading to the legitimization of extremist and bigoted views that had long been dormant.
Anyways, these debaters are also very bad at their jobs on the most basic level.
I refer you to this (amazing) video courtesy of Twitter user @LeKingJames23 of Stephen A. Smith predicting every NBA Finals since 2011 incorrectly.
https://twitter.com/LeKingJames23/status/867940091557277696
My favorite part of this video, and there are many, is Stephen A.’s utter confidence of his picks as his flails around embarrassing himself on national television.
This kind of thing is obviously far less harmful than putting Stephen A. on Fox News to debate racist lunatic Ted Nugent about Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, which is a thing that actually happened.
Behind the embrace debate bullshit, the race-baiting, and the general screaming, these guys just don’t know what they’re talking about.
ESPN management has decided to air First Take live in primetime from the NBA Finals. There is no punchline.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) May 24, 2017
But there’s no denying the people love their takes!