Everyone knows Stephen A. Smith loves the NBA, but his bias was highlighted when he completely disregarded the NFL.
Tuesday morning on First Take, Smith’s Stephen’s A-List segment was centered on the Top 5 Duos in Sports History. The segment began fine, with Smith tabbing Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen as his best duo in sports history, but it went off the rails when the First Take host decided to ignore the NFL’s existence on the list.
Does Stephen A. Smith watch football? pic.twitter.com/ultu4sJyQo
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 30, 2024
Smith had Jordan and Pippen first, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant came in second, Cynthia Cooper and Sheryl Swoopes were third, Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fourth, followed by something called a Gretzky and Messier to round out the list? Apparently, they play a thing called hockey? I’ve never seen that on First take before.
Pick apart any individual duo on the list as much as you want. But the most glaring problem here is that Smith blatantly disregarded the NFL less than two weeks before the Super Bowl. Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski couldn’t crack the list, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce didn’t make it either, not even Joe Montana and Steve Rice were a duo worth mentioning. And Smith was aptly called out for the gaffe on First Take.
“This is suspect and it’s a little bias,” Molly Qerim said. “This is supposed to be all sports, I see four basketball.”
“Somebody loves some basketball. And he threw in hockey!” Jeff Saturday ranted. “That was an insult! That is straight trash!”
“I put hockey up there and I put females up in there too,” Smith said proudly as he awkwardly searched for props after giving women a spot on the list.
Kendrick Perkins, however, had no positive things to say about Smith’s sports duos list, giving it an F grade. “I’ve never known you to be so biased,” Perkins said. “This list has a hidden agenda written all over it.”
When Dan Orlovsky snubbed Joe Montana from his top five quarterbacks of all time list last year, Smith wanted him “drug tested” for the slight. Now it’s Smith’s turn to get eviscerated for leaving Montana off his own terrible top five list.
