{"id":224110,"date":"2025-10-19T02:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T02:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224110\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T02:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T02:17:07","slug":"stephen-a-smith-rips-lebron-james-for-choking-in-the-nba-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224110\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith Rips LeBron James For Choking In The NBA Finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESPN\u2019s Stephen A. Smith<\/a> continues to show no interest in mending fences with Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> superstar LeBron James<\/a>. Smith appeared on the latest episode of The Pivot Podcast<\/a>, where he fired a shot at James for choking in the 2011 NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks<\/a> when asked about media members not holding him accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t like me because you see me calling it like I see it,\u201d Smith said. \u201cYou\u2019re not Michael Jordan. You\u2019re not the GOAT. You did choke in an NBA Finals. Four consecutive fourth quarters in an NBA Finals, this man was scoring four points. One game, he scored zero points in an NBA Finals fourth quarter. With Jason Terry or JJ Barea guarding you.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no explanation for that,\u201d Smith added. \u201cTo anybody who knows basketball, that\u2019s a choke job.\u201d<\/p>\n

James has lost in the NBA Finals six times in his career, but 2011 is really the only occasion when you can point the blame at him for his team not getting over the line. He came up short for the Miami Heat<\/a>, and that series remains the biggest blemish on his career.<\/p>\n

As Smith pointed out, James disappeared in the fourth quarter on multiple occasions against the Mavericks. He only managed to score two points in the fourth in Games 2, 3, and 5 and went scoreless in the period in Game 4.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 performance in Game 4 might well be the worst of his career. The Heat entered that game up 2-1, and he recorded just eight points (3-11 FG), nine rebounds, seven assists, and two steals on the night. That allowed the Mavericks to come away with a narrow 86-83 win to tie up the series.<\/p>\n

If James had even put in a mediocre performance, the Heat would have come away with a win and gone up 3-1. Instead, the tide turned, and the Mavericks would go on to stun that Big 3 of James, Dwyane Wade<\/a>, and Chris Bosh<\/a> by winning the series in six games. It is one of the greatest upsets in NBA history.<\/p>\n

James averaged just 17.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, 6.8 assists, 1.7 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game in the 2011 NBA Finals. He has claimed that the Heat didn\u2019t have enough complementary pieces to win it all that year<\/a>, but that\u2019s nonsense. They should have won that series, but didn\u2019t because of him.<\/p>\n

Smith did acknowledge that James overcame that failure and has built up a legitimate case to be regarded as the greatest. The 40-year-old has won four NBA titles, but the ESPN analyst remains on Team Michael Jordan<\/a> in the GOAT debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael Jordan was averaging 30 10 times in his career,\u201d Smith stated. \u201cPlayed all 82 games nine times. Nine times an All-NBA First Team defensive player. A Defensive Player of the Year, okay? A six-time champion, a six-time NBA Finals MVP, a five-time MVP of the league. And in your 22nd or 23rd year, you still chasing. Now, I don\u2019t know about the rest of y\u2019all, but I think it\u2019s obvious who the GOAT is in my estimation.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving said that, let\u2019s appreciate the fact that a GOAT conversation is nothing denigrating anybody because I\u2019m still acknowledging you as being in the conversation as the greatest of all time,\u201d Smith continued. \u201cSo, we understand that, right? So, we get that out the way. But I also never looked at Michael Jordan and said he choked in an NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also didn\u2019t see Michael Jordan joining D-Wade and Bosh and then [Anthony Davis],\u201d Smith added. \u201cSo, I didn\u2019t see that. I\u2019m sorry. Kyrie [Irving] and Kevin Love before that. I ain\u2019t see that.\u201d<\/p>\n

James was a big talking point in this episode, and Smith also called him out for not challenging White media members<\/a> the way he went after him. The 21-time All-Star had confronted him<\/a> during a game between the Lakers and New York Knicks<\/a> in March 2025 over comments that had been made about his son, Bronny James<\/a>. Smith is still going at James over that, and it will be interesting to see if the latter responds to these latest comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN\u2019s Stephen A. Smith continues to show no interest in mending fences with Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224111,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-224110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}