The beef between LeBron James and Stephen A. Smith just got more complicated. Draymond Green, Golden State Warriors power forward and James’ ride-or-die, has entered the chat.
Here’s a recap for those who missed it: On March 6, James confronted Smith courtside during the Lakers’ matchup against the Knicks. Enraged by Smith’s previous comments that Bronny was pushed prematurely into the NBA by his father, James, according to Smith’s recounting the following day on “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” yelled “stop f**king with my son!” Smith called the public confrontation “weak” and “bulls**t.”
Last Saturday on “The Draymond Green Show,” Green involved himself in the feud, obviously taking LeBron’s side.
“You go on national TV calling out this African-American, this black father, who’s raised another successful black young man, and you go on TV calling him out as a father because his son plays in the NBA? That’s a**-backwards,” he told Baron Davis.
Jason Whitlock weighs in on this latest flare-up in the scandal.
“I’ve never seen a love affair quite like Draymond Green’s affinity for LeBron James,” he tells “Fearless” contributor Steve Kim. “We all know that Draymond Green would love to have LeBron James’ baby.”
“[Smith] gave an opinion that, by the way, most people agree with,” adds Steve, noting that “Stephen A. Smith’s job, whether we like his opinions or not, is to give his opinion.”
The fact that Smith is doing his job and catching so much flak for it has become “really unfair” to him, Steve argues.
Jason agrees that it’s unfair to Smith, but he also speculates that some of this feuding is “manufactured.”
Even so, he condemns Green’s comments as toxic — specifically the emphasis on LeBron being a black father, “as if there’s some special level of treatment that Stephen A. owes LeBron James because of the color of his skin.”
Whitlock can’t understand why having “more melanin in your skin” means “you’re not supposed to say certain things about people that share some level of your melanin.”
“For this to be normalized and sent out to young people that hey, there’s a special set of rules for black people that they have to adhere to or they’re outside the norm … I just can’t believe that’s where we are as a society,” he says. “LeBron James is a billionaire — a billionaire. He needs a special level of treatment” because of slavery and Jim Crow laws that ended decades ago?
Steve agrees and brings up a Thomas Sowell quote that captures the double standard Green is promoting: “When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”
“A marvelous statement,” says Jason.
To hear more of their conversation and more about the LeBron-Stephen A. Smith-Draymond Green feud, watch the clip above.
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