Kyrie Irving and Stephen A Smith have not always seen eye to eye. With Kyrie Irving sitting out plenty of games ever since the 2020-21 season, Smith has been vocally critical of the Mavericks guard. In fact, during his recent appearance on Podcast P with Paul George, Smith went so far as to call what he has with Kyrie a ‘lifelong beef.’ In fact, things got so out of hand that Kyrie’s father, Drederick Irving, was also ‘beefing’ with the veteran ESPN analyst. However, all of that changed during a Lakers Playoff Game at the Staples Center.
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Over the past few years, Smith has said some harsh things about Kyrie. Not too long ago, Smith went as far as to say that Kyrie should retire from playing basketball. Turns out things have settled down a bit between the two, or so Smith told Paul George.
Stephen A Smith reveals how Kyrie Irving helped solve his beef with father Drederick
This year during the Playoffs, we saw Kyrie Irving make an appearance at the Lakers’ home game at Crypto.Com Arena(formerly Staples Center). Turns out, the visit wasn’t only to scout the Lakers and check them out as a potential fit, but also had a Stephen A Smith reason behind it.
Smith talked about it on Podcast P and said,
“We were at the Staples Center, Kyrie rolls up on me. Lakers-Memphis Grizzlies, he rolls up on me. He taps me on the back and he’s like, ‘You still got that same energy face-to-face?’ I said, ‘I’m standing here, ain’t I?'”
Smith continued,
“He said, ‘It’s really not about me anymore.’ I looked at him and said, ‘you right’. It had become about me and his dad and how we had elected to communicate with each other. The shame about it is, I’m 55, his dad is about my age, and the younger son had to be the one to educate us.”
According to Smith, Kyrie’s dad and he sat down and resolved things face-to-face. Despite the entire confrontation, Smith admitted that he won’t stop commenting about Kyrie and what he does on and about the basketball court. However, we can expect the personal attacks to stop now.
Smith had defended Kyrie against Mavericks downfall accusations
Last season when Kyrie joined the Mavericks, they were well on their way to a playoff seed. However, something went wrong and they fell down to the 11th seed by the time the regular season ended. Many people chose the easy way out and started blaming Kyrie for the same, seeing as he was the newer entity in town.
However, Smith stood up for Kyrie and said,
“It wasn’t Kyrie’s fault that things didn’t work out in Dallas. Kyrie Irving did what he was supposed to do. Kyrie Irving did his job.”
For Smith to make these comments just a month after asking Kyrie to retire didn’t make sense back then. However, after the Podcast P episode, we can now infer that the Staples Center conversation happened some time in the middle, which led to the change in stance.
