Stephen A Smith says LeBron James left players and owners 'turned off'
"He was speaking out of pocket and was talking to players in a fashion that really turned some of these young cats off . . . He came across as if he was the King with some crown."
(? ESPN) pic.twitter.com/21ZkqCXzkz
— NBA Central (@TheNBACentral) August 28, 2020
It turns out the NBA season will resume after all.
Following a series of meetings on Wednesday and Thursday between players and owners, the two sides have come to an agreement to continue the Orlando bubble on Saturday, after agreeing on several initiatives to promote voting access, combat social injustice and racial inequality, and advocate for police reform.
The news comes as a bit of a surprise after reports that the season was on a knife’s edge Wednesday night following league-wide boycotts in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting, and reports that a players only meeting turned ugly when the Lakers and Clippers walked out after telling the rest of the league they refused to continue playing.
Whatever common ground was not found during that initial meeting, was apparently worked out on Thursday. As was an agreement to open every NBA arena as a voting center on Nov. 3. Yet there appears to be some fall out from the conversations, specifically regarding comments LeBron James made during a meeting involving players, owners, the commissioner, Michael Jordan, and the head of the NBAPA.
Stephen A. Smith — an entertainer no doubt, but one that has a track record of legitimate NBA reporting — said as much on “First Take” Friday morning:
“I heard (LeBron) was speaking out of pocket, and was talking to the players in a fashion that really turned some of these young cats off. This is a new day, this is a new generation. And as we have said on previous shows when cats were out in the street protesting, just talking about the younger generation, they’re not having it anymore. Well guess what, the younger generation of players were not having what they were hearing from LeBron James, because the fashion in which he spoke to them.
“When he stormed out of there, I was told it was in part because of that. He sort of came off like ‘I got mine, I don’t need this,’ and walked out. Now we later learned the Lakers and the Clippers were the two teams that did not want to participate while the other 28 teams were willing to go forward.
“Fast forward from Wednesday to Thursday, they have a meeting. There’s at least two players from each team that’s in the playoffs. In the case of the Lakers, I was told there were four guys. There was an owner on the call from each team in the playoffs. Michael Jordan was on the call even though his team isn’t there because he’s the Chairman of Labor Relations Committee. Adam Silver led the call and of course Michelle Roberts did most of the talking from what I was told.
“When everyone thought the meeting was over, LeBron James grabs the mic and from what I’m told, talks for about 15 minutes. And he talking in a fashion that turned everybody off because they had already agreed to what they were going to do moving forward, and he was talking about ‘the guys beneath me. I have to look out for the guys beneath me’ to the point where you had people saying ‘what the hell you mean beneath you?’ Now they didn’t say that to him, but they certainly said it to people like myself, Adrian Wojnarowski and others who were covering that meeting.
“He came across as if he was the king with some crown.”