‘Saturday Night Live’ sees Kenan Thompson roasting Stephen A. Smith’s ‘nonsense’ as Kendrick Perkins

Kenan Thompson again brought his impression of ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins to Saturday Night Live‘s “Weekend Update” segment this week. And this time around, the segment had “Perkins” saying insane things as a shot at his ESPN colleague, Stephen A. Smith. Here’s how that went down:

Kendrick Perkins swings by the Update desk! pic.twitter.com/0b51TmpBWW

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 9, 2025

That starts with Thompson answering host Michael Che’s question about why the Dallas Mavericks would trade Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers with a bunch of medical-sounding gibberish, including “I’ve heard rumors that he’s got a small tear in his interior crustaceous uterus. I’m no doctor, but by my estimations, I believe he’ll be dead by April.” Che responds with “Why would you say that?”, and Thompson replies “I just be saying things, Michael. Stephen A. Smith, he just got $100 million to go on ESPN every day and talk nothing but nonsense, and I want a piece of that too!”

The nonsense gets wilder from there, with lines like “Larry Bird was created by scientists in the back of a Cracker Barrel” and a repeated run of exaggerations about LeBron James. Those include “A man who, despite being 55 years old, just won the Tour de France!” and “LeBron is 71 years old, has one arm, 12 kids, one of them is Black, and he works undercover as a French superspy…the name is LeBron, James LeBron.” There’s also “Luka and LeBron are the best black-and-white duo since them Jewish cookies.” Che then ends this by asking “Perkins” about Charles Barkley making fun of him, and that makes “Perkins” so mad (not unlike the real Perkins) that he takes off his fake beard and mops his face with it.

For his part, Perkins reacted to this recurring impression in a similar way to a falling bowl of petunias:

Not again 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/9Ih82npNiR

— Kendrick Perkins (@KendrickPerkins) March 9, 2025

Thompson, SNL‘s longest-tenured cast member in history (he’s been on the show since 2003), has been a key part of their sports coverage over the decades. That’s appropriate for the man who once played legendary goalie Russ Tyler. And his Perkins impression is pretty solid. The particular way this went was great too, with it managing to roast all of Smith, Perkins, and the insanity of many of the things said on First Take daily, especially about James.