{"id":839891,"date":"2026-09-07T21:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/839891\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T21:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T21:36:09","slug":"stephen-a-smith-says-hes-never-uttered-a-negative-word-about-bronny-james","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/839891\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith Says He’s Never ‘Uttered a Negative Word’ About Bronny James"},"content":{"rendered":"

During an interview with Cari Champion<\/a> and Jemele Hill<\/a> on their Flagrant and Funny podcast, Stephen A. Smith<\/a> stressed that he\u2019s never said anything disparaging about LeBron James\u2019<\/a> son, Bronny James<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last year, Stephen A. and LeBron had a viral moment <\/a>when the latter confronted the former courtside. Many speculated it was over Stephen A.\u2019s criticism of Bronny, but LeBron later said it was because the opinionated sports media personality had gotten too \u201cpersonal\u201d with his criticism. Stephen A., however, maintained<\/a> that it was about his criticism of Bronny. The First Take co-host believes that he never criticized Bronny, despite the tense on-camera confrontation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn January, his son, Bronny James, is playing for the Los Angeles Lakers\u2026 The night before, he was in the G-League,\u201d he explained around the 32-minute point of the Flagrant and Funny podcast, as seen below. \u201cThe next night, he\u2019s guarding Tyrese Maxey. Me being a basketball guy, I know you can\u2019t do that. You putting him out to slaughter. You can\u2019t do that!\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that LeBron confronting him in such a public setting is a bad look, because he\u2019s \u201casking us not to do our job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I point that out, when he was in high school,\u201d he said. \u201cI never went to Sierra Canyon to watch his son, because I knew it would be unfair to the James family. \u2018Cause if I walk into an arena to watch a high-school kid, everybody\u2019s going to ask me, \u2018What do [you] think about that kid?\u2019 I didn\u2019t think that was fair to Bronny. He goes to USC. Obviously, he has the heart ailment. Praying for his recovery. He gets drafted. Everybody knows that LeBron James got his fingerprints all over that, because he didn\u2019t have the resume to be drafted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite that, he said that he was happy to see Bronny playing alongside his dad in the NBA. \u201cI\u2019m standing up applauding\u2026 I never ever once uttered a negative word about that young man ever,\u201d he claimed. \u201cI didn\u2019t say anything about him. I said, \u2018What you doing? You his dad, we got to cover this. You can\u2019t put him in that position in front of us. He\u2019s gonna get slaughtered. That\u2019s not good!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephen A. still believes that if LeBron had an issue with his comments about Bronny, he could have gotten his agent, Rich Paul<\/a>, to get him on the phone for a chat. \u201cIf that man said, \u2018I want to see you face-to-face, man-to-man, I got to have a conversation with you,\u2019 it\u2019s my obligation to get to that man as soon as I possibly can,\u201d said Stephen A. Smith. \u201cIt never happened. I never knew anything until I was sitting courtside.\u201d He added that he believes that LeBron\u2019s issues with him extend beyond Bronny, but specified that LeBron has never confirmed as such.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never said anything about his son until that night, that game, and then two months later was when he rolled up on me,\u201d he said. \u201cI go on TV the next day, and I\u2019m like, \u2018I understand that was a dad talking.\u2019 Let it go\u2026 Until he went on the Pat McAfee Show just to disrespect me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During an interview with Cari Champion and Jemele Hill on their Flagrant and Funny podcast, Stephen A. Smith…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-839891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}