Stephen A. Smith can often be found pointing a finger at a player or a team for reasons he feels passionately about. Everybody knows that LeBron James and Los Angeles Lakers have been his recent focus. He’s controversial, he likes to give hot takes, and make people think. All this is great for ratings as it gets people talking, whether they agree or disagree with his views.
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And Smith gets paid well for it too. He was recently given a new contract with ESPN because of the attention he garners. It was reported that he’ll earn $100 million over the next five years, adding to the huge fortunes he has already earned. At 20 million dollars a year, his contract would rank 85th in the NBA alongside Nikola Vucevic and Jarrett Allen.
SAS would be among the first to criticize a deal if he felt strongly about it. He has done it publicly as well, when he called himself “underpaid” in 2022. He has also complained about players for earning money beyond what he believes is fair, such as when he targeted Ben Simmons.
All this is to say, Stephen A. is known to speak his mind about what he thinks is an unfair use of money.
But, there was a time when he came to the defense of a player. In 2012, he and Skip Bayless went at it in a debate about whether Kobe Bryant deserved the salary he was receiving during the 2012/13 season. At $27.8 million, it made him the league’s highest-paid player by nearly seven million dollars, far above the second place Dirk Nowitzki.
Bayless went on to criticize the performance of Bryant in Games 2 and 4 of the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder. “That’s $27 million worth of nothing that you got in those two games?” argued Bayless.
While Smith accepted that they were two bad games, he couldn’t believe the disrespect that Bayless was showing toward the great. “I can’t believe the words that are coming out of your mouth,” said Smith. “You are unbelievable!”
Smith defended Black Mamba, saying he couldn’t see what the problem was in the earning differential when looking at Kobe as a superstar. He said, “It is about whether or not you’re box office. You’re must-see, and there is nobody in this league, maybe outside of LeBron James, that is more must-see than Kobe Bryant.
“Every city, every arena, everywhere he goes, the house is packed because he’s in the house.” Smith insisted, “That alone is worth the deal.”
It also helped that Kobe had won 5 championships by then and his name was influential in helping the Lakers sign a deal with Time Warner Cable, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Stephen A. Smith doesn’t consider Kobe the second-best player ever
It’s interesting that Stephen A. would be so passionate about defending Kobe, especially when he didn’t even consider him the second-best player ever.
Speaking in January 2024, SAS took to Instagram and shared a reel of him dissecting the statistics between Kobe and LeBron as he looked to try to dismantle a take from Allen Iverson.
He went on to say, “You can’t put him [Kobe] over LeBron, you cannot put him number two over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kobe was number two to MJ as a two-guard, and he might be a number two as a Laker to Ervin Magic Johnson, depending on who you ask.”
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Of course, 13 years have passed since his defense of the contract that was being received, and opinions can change. Since that rant in 2013, LeBron James has added two Finals MVPs and two championship rings, including an all time performance in the 2016 Finals. Additionally, he is now the league’s all time leading scorer and is 4th all-time in total assists.
The league’s salaries have also changed a lot since 2012. Steph Curry is the league’s highest paid player, earning a reported $55.7 million this season, which is set to bump up to $59.6 million next year. That’s almost double what Kobe had been receiving at the time.
It’d be interesting to see how much Kobe would be making in today’s game. Maybe Steven A.’s take would a little different as well.
