Stephen A. Smith and Jay Williams have formed a competitive rivalry during these NBA playoffs on First Take. Monday’s edition saw Williams go at Smith for a recent take about Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Stephen A. Smith Calls Giannis An ‘Underachiever’
Stephen A. Smith says he will consider Giannis Antetokounmpo an “underachiever” if he doesn’t win another ring
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Before getting to Williams’ take, we first must revisit Smith’s take that set off the former Duke Blue Devil.
On Friday’s show, Smith was asked to sum up Antetokounmpo’s career with one word if the Greek Freak never wins another NBA title.
“Underachiever,” Smith said without hesitation.
Smith believes that one championship is not enough for someone like Antetokounmpo, who will end his career as one of the 25 best players in NBA history.
“He’s one of the greatest players to ever play the game,” Smith said. “Over the last four years, minimum 200 games, Giannis second in the league at 30.4 points per game, fifth in the league at 11.7 rebounds per game, fifth among qualified players at 58 percent from the field. And nine All-NBA selections, nine All-Star selections, and top 10 finishes in league MVP voting nine times. He has more of that than postseason series wins. That’s unacceptable.”
Smith was quick to say that it’s not Antetokounmpo’s fault for his postseason failures.
“You don’t look at somebody that dominant, that fantastic, with that kind of fire in his belly to compete on a night-in and night-out basis, and all you have is one championship to show for it,” Smith explained. “He’s got one playoff series win in the last four years. Ain’t his fault. He’s hurt a couple of times. Got upset by Miami and Jimmy Butler. Jimmy and the crew gave it to him, no doubt. But this year, Damian Lillard goes down and you lose to Indiana.”
Smith expects an all-time great like the Greek Freak to have multiple championships.
Jay Williams Passionately Fires Back At Stephen A. Smith
After taking the weekend to think about it, Williams did not hold back with his response to Smith on Monday about the underachieving comment.
“That was one of your worst takes I’ve heard in a long time, man. That was horrible,” Williams said to Smith.
While acknowledging that Williams feels like the little brother coming at Smith, he says it’s from a place of love.
“I think we really need to do a better job of reframing some of these conversations,” Williams added. “If you were to say that the franchise, the Milwaukee Bucks, have underachieved or are the biggest underachievers with the talent of Giannis, fair. But a guy who has a 50-point closeout game, a guy who has never chased any of these dream team scenarios, a guy who is a Finals MVP, a guy who is a multi-time All-Star, All-NBA, all everything, global face of the game. The fact that he brought a championship to Milwaukee … to call him an underachiever is just, I think, an asinine comment.”
Williams finished by saying that no one “who watches basketball” would call Antetokounmpo an underachiever.
Smith waited until Williams finished to respond and called his take “asinine.” Smith took it one step further and explained why Williams’ take was “worse.”
“It’s a bit worse than that because you’re ill-informed, because clearly you didn’t listen to what I had to say,” Smith said to Williams. “Maybe you were stuck in traffic, maybe you were negotiating another business deal, maybe you were doing another one of your shows because you are a very, very busy and successful man. But you didn’t listen to my full take.”
If First Take wants to keep its rating dominance, they’ll have Smith verbally spar with Willaims more often.
