Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [362]
What worked against Stephen A. Smith was that ESPN wanted him to be bombastic and loud. He gave them what they wanted, but then they punished him for it. And you know who almost predicted it? Mike Lupica. Mike and I were talking one day, and he said, “John, the one thing with Stephen A. Smith is, they are creating this individual now, but what happens when they don’t want that individual?” And that’s exactly what happened. Shapiro whipped him up, leaves, then Skipper and Norby say, “We don’t want that, good-bye.” Now, that’s unfortunately one of the things in this business that applies not just to Stephen A. Smith but to anybody. If Norby and Skipper were to leave, somebody could come in, sit down one Sunday, watch Sports Reporters, and go, “Oh man, I hate John Saunders, he’s terrible, I don’t want him on”—and I’m gone. If you hit .300 in the Major Leagues, you’re going to have a place to play every year, a place on the team. That’s not necessarily the case in this business. The other thing with Stephen A. is that he has strong opinions, not just on the air but off the air, and sometimes that does not work very well in this business. And if you have enough run-ins with enough different people, it can cost you, and that happened to Stephen A. too. He’s a smart guy, a talented guy, and a good writer—very knowledgeable with great opinions. I still feel bad about it.
ROB KING:
Mark Shapiro was absolutely instrumental to Stephen’s being omnipresent, and like most cases, when one person feels strongly about somebody, that doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody else feels exactly the same way. Do I believe that there were people who supported Stephen’s rise in the company mainly because it was important to Mark? Absolutely. But I also am close enough to Stephen to know that he shares some measure of responsibility for how it all came down.
DAVID STERN:
With Stephen A. we simply wanted clarification. We thought he had two different personalities—the Stephen A. on CNN, and the Stephen A. from his column. I call Stephen A. a friend—he is smart and articulate—and all I said to him was “There’s somebody who is trying to program you in a way that is not you.” I told him I thought that was a mistake, that he should be directed and produced differently, because in our opinion, he was caught between those two different types.
MIKE TIRICO:
Stephen A. was certainly not afraid to give his opinion. I think it was not just what he was saying but how he said it. He said it at a volume that was pretty loud. He was strong and confident and challenging of people if they didn’t agree with him. I always think that method only works if that’s the way you are. You have to be really comfortable to be that boisterous or that outgoing or strong-minded on the air. I think if you try to act like that and it’s not really what you believe, it shows over time. It’s really hard to be something you’re not on the air. After time, if you’re only an act, it ends up wearing you down, or it ends up showing that it’s only an act.
I think Stephen was pretty strong in his convictions, but it probably didn’t please a ton of people that he covered them the way he did. Still, I admire him for it. If you have the courage to say some of the things he said on the air, good for you. I take my hat off to you.
STEPHEN A. SMITH:
It was a job I never wanted to leave. But I didn’t want to be limited, either. I didn’t have aspirations to just do the NBA; I didn’t have aspirations to just do radio. I also wanted to host SportsCenter; I wanted that experience. And more importantly, I wanted the freedom to go on other networks to talk about issues that you would never talk about on ESPN. The police aimed fifty bullets in Sean Bell’s direction just five minutes from