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By Root 2304 0

As far as talking about guys I knew as fellow players, you cross over from the light side to the dark side. You’re on the dark side once you’re in the media, and you have to be careful. When I was a player, I always remembered to speak about a teammate in the media like he was standing right next to me. What I would say about them had to be something I would say if the guy and I were standing face-to-face. Now if I have to be really harsh, I will start it out with, “If you ask So-and-So, he would tell you he needed to get to this ball,” because I know the standards these guys hold themselves to. I know they’re going to fail sometimes, because I failed too. But it’s our job to point out those moments even though it’s impossible for them to be perfect.

BUSTER OLNEY, Reporter:

I usually get up at 4:00 or 4:30 depending on what other responsibilities I have during the course of the day. I go newspaper by newspaper across the country, collect the links. Most of the time I write the lead of my column in the morning. Sometimes you sort of play off whatever the news story of the day is. If there’s some trade thing developing, you know, maybe something that’s been reported on the night before, you sort of just rip off a lot of things that happen in the morning paper, collect all that, and put it out by 7:30. Then I start my day. I go up to Bristol, have Mike and Mike at 6:25 and 6:42, then do SportsCenter at 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, and noon. Then there’s more reporting and planning the show. Baseball Tonight will be on from 7:00 to 8:00.

NOMAR GARCIAPARRA, Baseball Analyst:

I was contemplating retirement when they asked me to come out and audition. They said, “We really liked you. What do you think?” I had gotten to the point where my body wasn’t able to do what I wanted it to do, even in the off-season, so we started talking, and it worked out.

They ask you if you’re going to be critical; you can be critical of the play but not the individual, especially when you know the guys. You can talk about the play because you played, and it might make sense because it came from you. But in this game we’re used to people being critical of us all the time. Some people have a tendency to make it about the person as compared to the play, and you have to be aware of that.

Stephen A. Smith had blown into Bristol about as subtly as a Michael Bay disaster movie. As a columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, the outspoken Smith had proven himself a natural and controversial attention-getter, which is what Mark Shapiro’s gut had told him when he hired Smith in an effort to boost ratings. What many thought Shapiro may have failed to consider was that while controversy can attract and titillate viewers, it can also scare them and potential sponsors away and rub other high-ranking executives the wrong way. NBA commissioner David Stern had already been wrongly rubbed; he was no fan of Smith’s style being more prominent than the NBA brand, and neither were varyingly important persons on the Bristol campus who thought “Stephen A” had too much to say about athletes, coaches—and himself.

As Smith’s contract came up for renewal, John Skipper had to weigh the benefits of keeping him versus letting him go. Smith was highly paid—at one point making even more than the company’s other rising star, Bill Simmons—and while he knew that his number-one fan Mark Shapiro was now gone, Smith nonetheless assumed he would be begged to remain on-air at ESPN or have plenty of options elsewhere.

ROB KING:

It’s my first day on the job as the deputy sports editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. I’m out getting lunch at the food truck, and I hear somebody walk up behind me. “Robert King! Stephen A. Smith! Do you know that I am the lowest-paid NBA writer for a major franchise in a major city?” And that’s how I met him.

JOHN SAUNDERS:

Stephen A. Smith and I became pretty close; we still are. When they first wanted to put him on Sports Reporters, there was some pushback from people who didn’t want him on the show. They didn’t think he would be right for it. But to his credit,