The Stephen A. Smith vs. Jaylen Brown feud continued on Wednesday night, much to the dismay of brain cells everywhere. <\/p>\n
Smith responded to Brown’s comments<\/a> from earlier in the day, in which the Boston Celtics star called ESPN “unethical” and said Smith was the “head face of that.”<\/p>\n “He’s getting on my last damn nerve, I ain’t going to lie,” Smith responded. “I mean, he’s so full of s–t I want to throw up. Suddenly we’re unethical? Because we’re telling you how your comments came across? No wonder your ass is in France. You can’t deal with the heat here in America and justify the way that you’ve acted since you got bounced out of the playoffs. Nobody’s done anything to you, Jaylen Brown.”<\/p>\n This latest chapter in Smith’s latest feud with an NBA player originally stemmed from comments Brown made on his Twitch stream last month while speaking about the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n “I’m so proud of this group and the way we played,” he noted. “I wish we trusted that style of play a little bit more, and playoffs kind of shifted our rotations and what we wanted to do. But I’m so proud, and it was my favorite year of my basketball career.”<\/p>\n That last sentence raised some eyebrows, given the Celtics were bounced in the first round of the playoffs by the Philadelphia 76ers. While Brown had his best statistical season as a pro (28.7 PPG, 6.9 RPG, 5.1 APG), the Celtics were the No. 2 seed and expected to be contenders. <\/p>\n A number of outlets immediately jumped on the remarks, including ESPN and Smith.<\/p>\n “This is his favorite year?” Smith said in May. “You got knocked out in the first round. The Celtics, one of the top two if not most storied franchises in the history of basketball, lost a 3-1 lead for the first time in its history. And it’s star this season, and one of its preeminent stars over the last seven seasons, goes on camera 24 hours after losing\u2014not six months, not eight months, not next season\u201424 hours after losing a 3-1 lead and says this was his favorite year. You can’t do that. … The year that Tatum was down with an Achilles tear is your favorite year? The year that Tatum had to sit out this closeout Game 7 because of the injury he incurred in Game 6, that’s your favorite year?”<\/p>\n Brown clarified Wednesday that his original remarks were about the Celtics making a number of cap-cutting moves before the 2025-26 season but overcoming that adversity. They were expected to have a down year, with Tatum also recovering from a torn Achilles, but instead went 56-26 and earned the No. 2 seed<\/p>\n “The leader behind that was ESPN. ESPN is unethical, and Stephen A. Smith is the head face of that,” Brown said Wednesday regarding the backlash to his remarks. “But, you know, the organization, the players, they were all in [agreement], they all knew what I meant by that. Our team was basically salary dumped. We lost a lot of players and for us to emerge and still be in the same position, we got to start to understand success doesn’t always mean… [comments cut off here].”<\/p>\n Brown’s had a bizarre offseason<\/a>, to say the least, and has certainly brought some of this heat on himself. All of it has coincided with rampant trade rumors<\/a> and questions about his future in Boston, which may or may not be by design.<\/p>\n Either way, it’s yet another headline the Celtics would have been perfectly happy to avoid. Smith, on the other hand, is getting plenty of ammunition to help fill up airtime on his many platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Stephen A. Smith vs. Jaylen Brown feud continued on Wednesday night, much to the dismay of brain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":759137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-759136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759136","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=759136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/759137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}