If you had an issue with Stephen A. Smith boldly claiming NASCAR drivers aren\u2019t real athletes, Michael Jordan agrees with you.<\/p>\n
Last week, Smith\u00a0picked a fight with golfers and NASCAR drivers<\/a>\u00a0by proclaiming they\u2019re not real athletes during an episode of his Mad Dog Sports Radio show on SiriusXM. Smith broached the hot take after a caller suggested Richard Petty\u2019s longevity rivals what LeBron James has been able to do over the course of his NBA career. To which Smith promptly argued, NASCAR drivers \u201cdon\u2019t count.\u201d<\/p>\n It sparked a week of content for Smith, with listeners continuing to call in to defend golfers and NASCAR drivers. It garnered pushback from NASCAR announcer Mike Joy<\/a>, semi-retired driver and current Fox analyst Kevin Harvick, Front Row Motorsports, and three-time Cup Series champion Joey Logano<\/a>. And this week, Smith revealed he also took a phone call from Michael Jordan, who attempted to correct his opinion of NASCAR drivers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know who wanted to correct me about the NASCAR thing? Michael Jordan,\u201d Smith said during his Thursday afternoon Mad Dog Sports Radio show on SiriusXM. \u201cMichael Jordan. I argued with him! Because that\u2019s how I feel! I\u2019m being honest. That\u2019s how I feel. That\u2019s all, it\u2019s not a crime. That\u2019s what makes radio and sports talk.\u201d<\/p>\n Surely, Smith would agree that Michael Jordan is an athlete. He would also have to agree that Jordan knows a lot about NASCAR. And while Smith admitted he doesn\u2019t know enough about NASCAR to really know what it takes to be a full-time driver, the pushback from Jordan and those who do know enough about the sport hasn\u2019t been enough to make him renege on the polarizing opinion.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t you notice what we call the gang mentality?\u201d Smith asked. \u201cWhere everybody in my line of work jumps on popular opinion so they are lumped in with the vast majority of people who feel the way they feel? That\u2019s easy. The hard part is, \u2018this is where I stand, and I genuinely feel this way, and here\u2019s why.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Which basically means NASCAR experts can attempt to counter Smith\u2019s argument with all the evidence, reason, and sensibility they can muster. But sensibility be damned, Smith isn\u2019t giving up on an opinion that\u2019s garnering him attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you had an issue with Stephen A. Smith boldly claiming NASCAR drivers aren\u2019t real athletes, Michael Jordan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,3004,634,82,35518],"class_list":["post-641776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-michael-jordan","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}