ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith is pulling back the curtain on what he says really happened when LeBron James confronted him courtside during a Los Angeles Lakers game earlier this year — and he’s not mincing words about how the moment was captured. On a recent episode of 7PM In Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony, the veteran commentator revisited the viral March 2025 interaction that occurred just hours after his ESPN contract extension was announced.
Smith said the circumstances surrounding the confrontation — and how it appeared on camera — didn’t sit right with him.
“The day that he rolled up on me courtside, it was the day my contract was announced that I had stayed with ESPN,” Smith said. “Go back and look at the camera angle… This is 2025, we got technology everywhere. TNT is a nationally televised game. How is it we got one angle, and the only angle you see was of him and his face, but you see the back of my peanut head?”
The longtime First Take host said the interaction caught him off guard but didn’t escalate beyond words. Still, he admitted that he felt the exchange may have been orchestrated.
“Damn right I did,” Smith said when asked if he felt set up. “That’s how I feel. But no big deal, no problem, because I go on the air the next day and I’m like, that’s a dad reacting to his son.”
Smith added that he found the single camera perspective suspicious, considering the number of media outlets and production teams typically capturing footage during nationally televised NBA broadcasts.
“There’s no way that you’re in an arena, you’re LeBron James, and the only angle that somebody sees is a straight up shot of you getting in my face,” Smith continued. “They see no reaction. They see nothing. And that’s an accident?”
The outspoken ESPN personality also made it clear that his relationship with the Lakers star is strained and has been for quite some time.
“I don’t like his ass, not a little bit,” Smith said. “This dates back more than a decade. I’m not gonna go into detail at the stuff this man has tried to do to me. You do not understand the lengths this man would go to… If it were up to him, I wouldn’t be where I am today. It’s some low, low stuff.”
Smith’s comments add another chapter to the complex relationship between the two media powerhouses. Both have shared mutual respect publicly in the past, but their professional friction has surfaced at various moments over the years.
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