Stephen A Smith is a clown

Now SAS is is lying about Lebron not attending Kobe Bryant’s funeral service. He did. This man is pathetic.
 
He also said Lebron didn’t attend Dwayne Wades HOF ceremony. Well he was in the hospital with his son having heart surgery at that time. This nerd has made it personal to the level he is lying now to try and make Lebron look like a bad person.
 
Carolina Fever said:
That was after LeBron confronted him for simply saying Bronny was only with the Lakers because of LeBron, which everyone knows is true, and after LeBron went on the Pat McAfee show talking about the whole ordeal instead of just moving on. Smith didn't say anything about LeBron being a bad father. Even that clip he's not saying LeBron is a bad father. Really reaching here.
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No, this is what pissed LeBron off to begin with. Smith made those comments weeks ago.
 
theel4life said:
Not sure why Carolinafever is defending this dork.
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What you’re clearly missing is the mutual douche-dom of both SAS and lebron. They’re both annoying as fuck. If anyone likes or apologizes for lebron as a person (not as a player), it says a ton about them. Know that. He’s a spoiled, entitled, megalomaniac.
 
Bigs23 said:
I think Bronny is fair game. I don’t think LeBron’s parenting is, but nothing seems to be off limit these days.

If you talk smack about my parenting don’t be offended if I call you out on it.
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Good thing SAS didn’t do that. Even going out of his way to compliment LeBron.

But SAS looked like a full on clown shoe today. Saying all that stuff about Kobe’s memorial and then walking it back. Silly.
 
duluoz said:
What you’re clearly missing is the mutual douche-dom of both SAS and lebron. They’re both annoying as fuck. If anyone likes or apologizes for lebron as a person (not as a player), it says a ton about them. Know that. He’s a spoiled, entitled, megalomaniac.
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Lebron is awesome. Not sure how heat douche. Seems like a great man/husband and father. Also one of the 5 best ever.
 
duluoz said:
What you’re clearly missing is the mutual douche-dom of both SAS and lebron. They’re both annoying as fuck. If anyone likes or apologizes for lebron as a person (not as a player), it says a ton about them. Know that. He’s a spoiled, entitled, megalomaniac.
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This seems more like a you thing.

You could say the same things about Kobe, MJ, Kareem, etc.

For your own reasons you really despise James.

Not despising him doesn’t tell you anything about anyone else other than they don’t agree with you here.
 
Bigs23 said:
You could say the same things about Kobe, MJ, Kareem, etc.
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You could and should say the same types of things about them. Kobe redeemed himself in his later years but let’s not forget he was a rapist. MJ is a dick by most accounts, and once I was old enough and mature enough to understand that my sports heroes aren’t (and shouldn’t be) on a pedestal as people just because they can make a ball do things, I was off the MJ train. It was the HOF speech that did it for me.

Kareem, less of an opinion. But he gets credit (as does lebron to a much lesser degree) for social activism and giving a shit about something other than himself. Certainly can’t say that for MJ.

So no, it’s not just a lebron thing. And it’s not just a me thing either. Many, many people not blinded by stats and amazing plays know that lebron is a spoiled person with a warped view of himself and the world (we’re all just “haters” right?). Not everyone who goes through that level of success and achievement turns out to have such a failure of humility, grace, and self awareness. But plenty do, and he’s an all-timer in that sense.
 
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duluoz said:
You could and should say the same types of things about them. Kobe redeemed himself in his later years but let’s not forget he was a rapist. MJ is a dick by most accounts, and once I was old enough and mature enough to understand that my sports heroes aren’t (and shouldn’t be) on a pedestal as people just because they can make a ball do things, I was off the MJ train. It was the HOF speech that did it for me.

Kareem, less of an opinion. But he gets credit (as does lebron to a much lesser degree) for social activism and giving a shit about something other than himself. Certainly can’t say that for MJ.

So no, it’s not just a lebron thing. And it’s not just a me thing either. Many, many people not blinded by stats and amazing plays know that lebron is a spoiled person with a warped view of himself and the world (we’re all just “haters” right?). Not everyone who goes through that level of success and achievement turns out to have such a failure of humility, grace, and self awareness. But plenty do, and he’s an all-timer in that sense.
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What has LeBron done?
 
theel4life said:
What has LeBron done?
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I’m not going to take the time to catalogue the myriad ways lebron has been a douche since HS. Go ahead and think I’m wrong or a “hater” or whatever you like. Because if you have truly never noticed anything he’s done that would raise all the questions I’ve raised, then we are just very, very different types of people who won’t ever agree on this.
 
People often think it's much easier for superstars to have "humility and grace" than it actually is. I was a superstar in law school. I was generally considered the smartest person in my law school class, and my law school was famous for having the smartest people. If there was a McD AA team for law students, I would definitely have been in the starting lineup. I didn't think it was going to be that way -- I mean, I was one of the smartest kids in college, and then the smartest one in grad school, but law school was an attractor basin. Top to bottom, it was going to be the smartest kids from the best colleges. My goal upon entering was to be in the top 10%. I didn't think I would be the best. And I'll get to a couple of anecdotes and you can tell me how I should have acted with humility, in just a minute. First, it's worth noting:

Let's say I was actually the #1 law student in the country in my graduating class. Not bad. LEBRON WAS UNQUESTIONABLY THE BEST BASKETBALL PLAYER IN THE WORLD. He's one of the two best of all time. Not best in the US in one graduating class in one profession. The best worldwide, first or second best in history, for a game that hundreds of millions of people play.

People see me as arrogant, but I have always tried to be as humble and gracious as I can. I am admittedly not the most socially adept person, but it's not like I'm Rain Man either. And I've thought about episodes like these for a long time, trying to figure out what I should have done to not come away with a reputation for arrogance.

1. At the beginning of law school, I befriended a student from China. That's what I do. I know what it feels like to be excluded, so I reach out to be inclusive. And she seemed quite smart, but her English was less than perfect and that can make law school a bit tricky (especially first semester, when the curriculum contains lots of centuries-old cases that are hard for today's native English speakers to read). So I offered to form a study group with her. To be honest, I didn't really know what study groups were about -- only that law students were supposed to have them, and again this woman benefited from support. She was 10 years older than me, btw, and I was in a relationship, so there wasn't a romantic angle at all.

Well, she had also befriended another young woman in our class. This young woman was hot, and having grown up with absurdly rich parents (I think she grew up on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, though I can't remember), she dressed very fashionably. And predictably, she was friends with another hottie. And they wanted to be in a study group with me. This surely had nothing to do with the fact that I knew all the answers in class, LOL. After another two sessions, two more hotties. I was literally in a study group with me, a woman from mainland China, and four of the hottest, straight-out-of-college ladies in the whole section, plus another attractive woman who somehow made it into the study group (she was probably 7-8 out of 10 in attractiveness, unlike the other 9-10s).

I didn't try to make that happen; it just did. And boy did the other XYs take notice. "How did you get in a study group with X, Y, Z." My favorite was "just how much pipe are you swinging?" But then they started asking to join my study group. It had meant to be me and one other. It had grown. It was now 7. And the study group sessions were not exactly symmetric. I was as much TA as peer. And I didn't want the group to be any bigger. It was closed.

So how should I have told these guys that I didn't want anyone else in the study group without coming across as arrogant? But someone used the word harem and it wasn't entirely wrong (except no sex, but you get the point). If I said no, they would have thought me to be snooty and exclusionary. If I said yes, the whole thing would collapse. Humility experts?

And to reiterate, I was the top law student in one school in one graduating class. Lebron is one of the two greatest basketball players in history.

2. After that debacle -- a description that I'm not sure would be the most common way to describe it -- I swore off study groups. So when there was a mad dash at the beginning of the next semester to get into a study group with me, I said I wasn't doing any. First effect: this made some people angry at me. Especially men, but whatever. Second effect: I got tired of telling everyone "no." So I said to one young woman, "could you spread the word that I'm not doing study groups." Oops. I'll admit that came across as arrogant -- "please tell all the peasants that the noble is not taking visitors" -- but all I wanted to do was to avoid having to tell everyone no. I didn't think about the second order consequences.

Anyway, I was never a person who tried to pack their classes into the tightest of schedules, so I had downtime between classes and I would hang out at the law school. As you can imagine from the above, I managed to attract lots of attention (for some reason, I attracted considerably less attention when it came to things like party invites; in fact, the attention on that front was close to zero). And there was one pair of dudes who figured out that I really really liked one particular brand of chili lime corn chips. They would show up from time to time, crack open the chips and hang out and sure the conversation would happen to shift to Con Law but we were just hanging, right?

So it was not exactly a best-selling brand, and the store near campus that carried them stopped carrying them. Oh well. So two weeks later, the dudes showed up again with the chips. I was like, "oh, I should have known that it was you who bought out the stock" or some joke like that. Not exactly. They had traveled several miles to another store that did stock them. They said, "we were in the area and it was awesome that they had these chips" but come on. They had traveled miles to buy my favorite corn chips so they could keep plying me for information.

I found the whole episode embarrassing, and I didn't know how to respond. I didn't really want to keep hanging out with them, but I didn't want to alienate them either by avoiding them and I was worried people would think I was a dick. But it's awkward to be part of a group where the other group members had gone way out of their way to pay tribute to the group leader bribe me for help brought great corn chips to eat while hanging.

And to reiterate, I was the best law student at one law school -- albeit a very top one -- in one graduating class. Lebron is the best or second best player in the history of basketball.

*****
So, yes, I have sympathy for Lebron. It can be really hard to be humble when everyone around you puts you on a pedestal. I'm not even talking about reading your own press clippings, so to speak (which cannot be avoided). I'm just talking about how your actions might come across, even if they are intended differently. I don't want to judge Lebron unless I have some experience in those shoes. Maybe if I was a Supreme Court justice, but even that isn't as rarefied as Lebron.

And I think it's ludicrous to make judgments about people based on those people's opinions of Lebron. I do not think I am a bad person for appreciating Lebron not only as a great basketball player, but as a good person put into a situation where it's hard to come across as good even if that's the pure attention. He's not cheated on his wife, or had any trouble with the law, or been a problem child in a locker room, or any of those things that pro athletes with egos will often do. I think I'm a person with some experience in this area, and can appreciate how hard it must be for someone who literally is the GOAT or close to it.

Sorry for the rant. I just get triggered a little bit when this shit comes up. People said Barack Obama came across as arrogant. He was the first black president. He won the Nobel Prize because he was so cool. He would attract crowds of hundreds of thousands in Europe, of all places. He should have a high opinion of himself. Feature, not bug.
 
I don’t expect perfection from anyone. Given where LeBron came from and what was thrust upon him an early age my take is that he’s managed his life remarkably well. He certainly has his flaws and has made mistakes but by and large seems to have put more good in the world than bad.

His status as a player speaks for itself.
 
superrific said:
People often think it's much easier for superstars to have "humility and grace" than it actually is. I was a superstar in law school. I was generally considered the smartest person in my law school class, and my law school was famous for having the smartest people. If there was a McD AA team for law students, I would definitely have been in the starting lineup. I didn't think it was going to be that way -- I mean, I was one of the smartest kids in college, and then the smartest one in grad school, but law school was an attractor basin. Top to bottom, it was going to be the smartest kids from the best colleges. My goal upon entering was to be in the top 10%. I didn't think I would be the best. And I'll get to a couple of anecdotes and you can tell me how I should have acted with humility, in just a minute. First, it's worth noting:

Let's say I was actually the #1 law student in the country in my graduating class. Not bad. LEBRON WAS UNQUESTIONABLY THE BEST BASKETBALL PLAYER IN THE WORLD. He's one of the two best of all time. Not best in the US in one graduating class in one profession. The best worldwide, first or second best in history, for a game that hundreds of millions of people play.

People see me as arrogant, but I have always tried to be as humble and gracious as I can. I am admittedly not the most socially adept person, but it's not like I'm Rain Man either. And I've thought about episodes like these for a long time, trying to figure out what I should have done to not come away with a reputation for arrogance.

1. At the beginning of law school, I befriended a student from China. That's what I do. I know what it feels like to be excluded, so I reach out to be inclusive. And she seemed quite smart, but her English was less than perfect and that can make law school a bit tricky (especially first semester, when the curriculum contains lots of centuries-old cases that are hard for today's native English speakers to read). So I offered to form a study group with her. To be honest, I didn't really know what study groups were about -- only that law students were supposed to have them, and again this woman benefited from support. She was 10 years older than me, btw, and I was in a relationship, so there wasn't a romantic angle at all.

Well, she had also befriended another young woman in our class. This young woman was hot, and having grown up with absurdly rich parents (I think she grew up on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, though I can't remember), she dressed very fashionably. And predictably, she was friends with another hottie. And they wanted to be in a study group with me. This surely had nothing to do with the fact that I knew all the answers in class, LOL. After another two sessions, two more hotties. I was literally in a study group with me, a woman from mainland China, and four of the hottest, straight-out-of-college ladies in the whole section, plus another attractive woman who somehow made it into the study group (she was probably 7-8 out of 10 in attractiveness, unlike the other 9-10s).

I didn't try to make that happen; it just did. And boy did the other XYs take notice. "How did you get in a study group with X, Y, Z." My favorite was "just how much pipe are you swinging?" But then they started asking to join my study group. It had meant to be me and one other. It had grown. It was now 7. And the study group sessions were not exactly symmetric. I was as much TA as peer. And I didn't want the group to be any bigger. It was closed.

So how should I have told these guys that I didn't want anyone else in the study group without coming across as arrogant? But someone used the word harem and it wasn't entirely wrong (except no sex, but you get the point). If I said no, they would have thought me to be snooty and exclusionary. If I said yes, the whole thing would collapse. Humility experts?

And to reiterate, I was the top law student in one school in one graduating class. Lebron is one of the two greatest basketball players in history.

2. After that debacle -- a description that I'm not sure would be the most common way to describe it -- I swore off study groups. So when there was a mad dash at the beginning of the next semester to get into a study group with me, I said I wasn't doing any. First effect: this made some people angry at me. Especially men, but whatever. Second effect: I got tired of telling everyone "no." So I said to one young woman, "could you spread the word that I'm not doing study groups." Oops. I'll admit that came across as arrogant -- "please tell all the peasants that the noble is not taking visitors" -- but all I wanted to do was to avoid having to tell everyone no. I didn't think about the second order consequences.

Anyway, I was never a person who tried to pack their classes into the tightest of schedules, so I had downtime between classes and I would hang out at the law school. As you can imagine from the above, I managed to attract lots of attention (for some reason, I attracted considerably less attention when it came to things like party invites; in fact, the attention on that front was close to zero). And there was one pair of dudes who figured out that I really really liked one particular brand of chili lime corn chips. They would show up from time to time, crack open the chips and hang out and sure the conversation would happen to shift to Con Law but we were just hanging, right?

So it was not exactly a best-selling brand, and the store near campus that carried them stopped carrying them. Oh well. So two weeks later, the dudes showed up again with the chips. I was like, "oh, I should have known that it was you who bought out the stock" or some joke like that. Not exactly. They had traveled several miles to another store that did stock them. They said, "we were in the area and it was awesome that they had these chips" but come on. They had traveled miles to buy my favorite corn chips so they could keep plying me for information.

I found the whole episode embarrassing, and I didn't know how to respond. I didn't really want to keep hanging out with them, but I didn't want to alienate them either by avoiding them and I was worried people would think I was a dick. But it's awkward to be part of a group where the other group members had gone way out of their way to pay tribute to the group leader bribe me for help brought great corn chips to eat while hanging.

And to reiterate, I was the best law student at one law school -- albeit a very top one -- in one graduating class. Lebron is the best or second best player in the history of basketball.

*****
So, yes, I have sympathy for Lebron. It can be really hard to be humble when everyone around you puts you on a pedestal. I'm not even talking about reading your own press clippings, so to speak (which cannot be avoided). I'm just talking about how your actions might come across, even if they are intended differently. I don't want to judge Lebron unless I have some experience in those shoes. Maybe if I was a Supreme Court justice, but even that isn't as rarefied as Lebron.

And I think it's ludicrous to make judgments about people based on those people's opinions of Lebron. I do not think I am a bad person for appreciating Lebron not only as a great basketball player, but as a good person put into a situation where it's hard to come across as good even if that's the pure attention. He's not cheated on his wife, or had any trouble with the law, or been a problem child in a locker room, or any of those things that pro athletes with egos will often do. I think I'm a person with some experience in this area, and can appreciate how hard it must be for someone who literally is the GOAT or close to it.

Sorry for the rant. I just get triggered a little bit when this shit comes up. People said Barack Obama came across as arrogant. He was the first black president. He won the Nobel Prize because he was so cool. He would attract crowds of hundreds of thousands in Europe, of all places. He should have a high opinion of himself. Feature, not bug.
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Jimmy Fallon Waiting GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
 
Carolina Fever said:
I didn't.
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But you felt the need to criticize it? You could just not read it in silence. I mean, I don't really care -- I just find these complaints weird. If there was a rule mandating that you read it, sure, complain. When there's an option to skip it, then skip it. It doesn't matter. I think I'm in a grumpy mood today.
 
superrific said:
But you felt the need to criticize it? You could just not read it in silence. I mean, I don't really care -- I just find these complaints weird. If there was a rule mandating that you read it, sure, complain. When there's an option to skip it, then skip it. It doesn't matter. I think I'm in a grumpy mood today.
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