Kenyon Martin Explains Why Athletes Feel Frustrated with Analysts Like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith’s Criticism

Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith are known for their unabashed criticism of top-flight NBA athletes. However, their approach often tends to upset NBA players and they lash out in response. On the other hand, players tend to be much more receptive when former athletes criticize their actions.

On Gil’s Arena, Kenyon Martin and Gilbert Arenas pinpointed the issues they and other players like them have with analysts who are overly (and often unfairly) critical of NBA athletes. 

Martin argued that their criticism is unwarranted since they have never gone through the challenges a professional hooper has to undergo. Only players who make it to the top-flight of basketball know the ins and outs of the trade. 

Talking heads who have never played pro ball can only guess and speculate when they are being critical of players.

“As athletes, we have a problem with Skips, the Stephen As, these people. When you’ve never laced ’em up and you don’t know what it took for these guys to become who they are,” Martin said.

“You have no leg to stand on cause you ain’t never been in this arena, you ain’t never been on this field, you ain’t never done it. So for you to have anything but praise and admiration for these people, it’s crazy.” he added.

Then Arenas brought up a suave analogy to illustrate the point. He compared an Airplane pilot to an NBA athlete, stewards to analysts, and passengers to fans. While pilots have a separate cabin in the airplane, with no one telling them what to do, in the NBA, the fans and analysts are in the same cabin with the NBA player.

They are always up in the athlete’s ear.  For Arenas, this is only unique to sports, where a non-professional can tell a professional how to get the job done.

It is indeed difficult to make it in the NBA,. Therefore, the demand for respect from the athletes is understandable.

However, Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless also have the right to express their opinions. What Arenas and Martin miss out on is art critics don’t need to be artists to criticize art.

Similarly, you don’t need to be an elected representative to criticize politicians and Congressmen. There are plenty of fields which allow the public to be critical of the professionals, like movies, literature, art, the food industry etc.