In case you don’t get enough Stephen A. Smith on ESPN, he graced NBA Today and was promptly berated by Kendrick Perkins.
The often-abysmal New York Knicks are good. Like Eastern Conference Finals contenders good. And they have Jalen Brunson to thank. But the fans didn’t do a good enough job thanking Brunson, and he was subsequently snubbed from being named an All-Star Game starter this season. However, that’s an outcome that Smith wasn’t too worked about.
Kendrick Perkins trying to set Stephen A. Smith straight pic.twitter.com/694PbVqIna
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 26, 2024
“Jalen Brunson is a star and deserves all the credit in the world, but I’m sorry,” Smith told Perkins on NBA Today. “There’s a reason the fans the media and the players all voted for [Indiana Pacers’ PG Tyrese] Haliburton over Brunson.”
Perkins believes Brunson already established himself as a 1A type of superstar, while Smith isn’t there yet on the Knicks’ point guard. For that, Perkins believes Smith is part of the problem.
“You stay right there and you fix your body language,” Perkins fired back at Smith. “You know what the problem is? The problem is you are a prime example, along with the organization, of not promoting this man of what he is. When you talk about putting up the numbers with the best of them, when you talk about his production, I should go to New York and land and walk through LaGuardia or any airport and see posters of Jalen Brunson.”
For years, the fans and media have been desperate to see the Knicks become relevant again. And now that they are, the team and their stars aren’t getting much fanfare. Maybe it will change after the NFL season finished, but Brunson just finished fifth in the fan vote among Eastern Conference guards for the All-Star Game.
You would expect the Knicks’ fanbase to do better, and you would expect one of their self-proclaimed premier fans in Stephen A. Smith to be leading the charge. Instead, Smith seems content with Brunson finishing fifth.
Knicks fans know they have an All-Star caliber guard in Brunson, but it’s taking them longer to realize he’s elite. After pining to see Knicks land a superstar for decades, they finally stumbled on one in Brunson. He didn’t come with the expectation of being a superstar, but he is one, and this unexpected rise to stardom hasn’t caught on yet.
