Sometimes, people like to play with fire. Well, that’s exactly what Stephen A. Smith did on Wednesday night. The popular analyst once again took shots at LeBron James, whom he has been feuding with ever since LeGOAT publicly confronted him for speaking ill of his son Bronny earlier this month.
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LBJ poked fun at Smith during his recent appearance on the Pat McAfee Show, claiming that SAS was on a “Taylor Swift-type” tour of smearing him. Now, Smith is firing back, sort of.
Smith recalled James confronting him on that busy March night in Los Angeles, then made a claim as wild as his $100 million ESPN contract. “If that man would’ve put his hands on me. I would’ve immediately swung on him. Immediately,” he said in as serious a tone as he could muster.
As tough as SAS tried to sound, his words have only been met with uproarious laughter from the basketball universe.
Kevin Love, who famously won a championship alongside LeBron in 2016, took to Instagram to mock Smith for his wild statement. The five-time All-Star shared a clip of the comedy classic Martin, where Martin Lawrence similarly looks for a fight that everyone, including the live studio audience, knows he will lose.
Love captioned the post with the exact quote SAS used about swinging on LBJ. It has already been liked nearly 10,000 times in the 60 minutes it’s been up.
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That’s not all, either. James’ old friend and business partner Mav Carter was one of the people who liked Love’s hilarious post slamming SAS. He posted several laughing emojis in the comments section, an indication that he too thinks King James would smoke the 57-year-old New Yorker.
The NBA fanbase wasn’t shy of joining in on the fun. “Fake tough for clicks that’s insane,” wrote one person on X in response to SAS’s “swung on him” claim. A second person agreed and wrote, “Stop it Stephen you’re not that guy pal.”
A third user really put this feud into perspective. “If this was Kendrick vs Drake You’d be Drake in this beef,” they wrote.
Smith has since tried to play off his comment and agreed that James would stomp him
Stephen A. must navigate social media as much as the rest of us because he didn’t allow the slander to happen for too long without once again responding. He posted on X and immediately tried to play off his original statement.
“I would’ve gotten my ass thoroughly kicked by the 6’8”, 250lb Goliath,” he wrote. “But folks just left that part of my Youtube sentence out, huh? Okay. Have fun!”
Nice try folks. On my show, I said I would’ve swung on @KingJames had he slapped me — like lots of y’all said I was scared he would’ve done a few weeks ago. I also said immediately after that I would’ve gotten my ass thoroughly kicked by the 6’8”, 250lb Goliath, but folks just…
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) March 27, 2025
The SAS vs. LeBron shenanigans have been going on for nearly three weeks, with no signs of it slowing down.
Unfortunately for James, it may serve as an awful distraction at the worst possible time. The Lakers are on a three-game losing streak and have lost a great deal of momentum since acquiring Luka Doncic at the beginning of February.
Hopefully this ends sooner rather than later because SAS screaming nonsense at you during playoff basketball doesn’t sound like an enticing postseason for LeBron James and the Lakers.
