Dan Le Batard and Stephen A. Smith are still friends. They’re just butting heads.
The ongoing back and forth on Dan and Stephen A.’s respective podcasts is well-documented, but on Friday’s Stephen A. Smith Show, Smith said he and Le Batard had spoken off the air.
“Because I went at him before I went on vacation, cause I didn’t appreciate some of the bullshit he was saying on his show,” Smith said. “And I still don’t.”
Stephen A. has been consistent in taking issue with the potshots Le Batard has taken at ESPN in light of recent layoffs at the network, in addition to expressing his disdain toward Smith for how he and Skip Bayless revolutionized sports debate television. But Stephen A. made it very clear their arguments about the industry don’t change how they feel about one another personally.
“We can disagree and still be friends,” Smith said. “Dan Le Batard and I have been friends for over 20 years. And any disagreement that we have is not going to change that.”
But Stephen A. did want to circle back on the fact that he thought it was very uncouth for Le Batard as a former longtime ESPN employee to continue bad-mouthing the network.
“Got your own damn show, got your daddy sitting in the middle between you and Bomani Jones half the time or somebody else,” Smith said of Le Batard’s former show Highly Questionable. “I particularly didn’t like him constantly bringing up ESPN and bitching all the time about ESPN. Because I’m just one of those dudes where if a place is good enough for you to collect a check from for years, why are you maligning it every chance you get the second you’re gone? I just think that’s bush league.”
