Paying Attention

Apparently it's not a job requirement...

This is Stephen A. Smith.

Stephen A. Smith works for ESPN and according to the internet, recently signed a 5-year contract worth $100 million which means Stephen A. Smith is getting $20 million a year to watch sports and have opinions about them.

But if you look closely—and a lot of people did—Stephen A. Smith is playing solitaire on his phone during Game 4 of the NBA finals. When a fan took this picture and posted it on social media, Stephen A. Smith lied and said he was playing solitaire during a time out.

A subsequent video – taken by a different fan – showed he was actually playing solitaire while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (a player Stephen A. Smith is getting paid $20 million to watch) was scoring a basket in transition.

And NBA timeouts are typically 75 seconds long so if Stephen A. Smith finished a game of solitaire during a timeout, I assume the Guinness Book of World Records will soon be calling him.

Also…

Things continue to happen during timeouts.

This wasn’t during a mid-season blowout played by two teams nobody cares about, it was during Game 4 of the NBA finals and it was a great game if you don’t count the referees making bad calls or non-calls to even up the series.

75-Second Timeout for an Explanation of That Last Comment

Many NBA fans and players firmly believe the league is in favor of more playoff games (more playoff games mean more playoff money) and want every series to go 7 games and if you don’t believe me or those cynical fans and players, read former NBA referee Tim Donaghy’s book Personal Foul in which he confessed to doing just that.

OK, so we now have photographic evidence that Stephen A. Smith is a lazy blowhard and I already knew that because two of my sons are big NBA fans and if you ask them to explain a game they’ll use terms like “off-ball screen” and “late help” and “weakside versus strongside” and for some reason never seem to feel the need to call anything “disgusting” or “deplorable” or “disingenuous.”

Second 75-Second Timeout for an Example

One of my sons has a podcast about movies, but every once in a while he’ll say fuck it (I don’t know where he gets the goddamn profanity from) and says I’m going to talk about basketball today just because I want to and then go on to explain how the Indiana Pacers won a game and here’s that example:

Tyrese Haliburton is the Pacers star player and when he was bringing the ball up court the Thunder double-teamed him because they wanted him to pass the ball to someone else which is a tactic used in every sport known to man and/or woman: get the ball out of the star’s hands and make somebody with a smaller salary beat you.

So the Pacers see this and start having someone else bring the ball up the court and you’re not going to double-team a guy who doesn’t have the ball so now Tyrese Haliburton only has to shake free from one guy – not two – and when he did that his teammates got the ball to him.

Pretty simple and once you hear that you can look for it and see it and how it affects the game.

And if anyone from ESPN reads this I feel confident in saying my son would be happy to replace Stephen A. Smith for just $10 million a year and it’ll be a feather in your cap (assuming you wear caps with feathers, which let’s face it, is a bad look unless you’re Robin Hood or Peter Pan or one third of The Three Musketeers) when you tell your boss you just figured out how to save the ESPN network $50 million.

Now Back to that Deplorable, Dysfunctional, Disgraceful Stephen A. Smith

Stephen A. Smith rarely talks X’s and O’s, most likely because he can’t and he explains game results through vague emotions (this guy “wanted it more” that guy “didn’t step up”) and every once in a while will throw in stat provided by someone who wasn’t playing solitaire, but apparently most sports fans like that “hot take” approach because Stephen A. Smith has two million followers on Twitter.

That’s why Stephen A. Smith is on ESPN, not because he knows sports.

(BTW: it’s still Twitter not X and I’m not calling it something different just because a drug-addled multi-billionaire has some infantile obsession with the letter X.)

The main thing I get from that solitaire photo is that basketball—even played at the highest level—bores Stephen A. Smith.

And frankly, he’s not alone.

ESPN finds baseball so boring they’ve started interviewing players WHILE THEY’RE ON THE FIELD PLAYING and in one of those It-Was-Only-A-Matter-Of-Time incidents, were recently distracting New York Yankees third baseman Jazz Chisholm when a ball was hit to him, which seemed to catch Jazz by surprise and he wound up making an error.

None of the ESPN guys said, “Oops, our bad!” because if they admitted they caused an error they’d have to stop doing in-game interviews and while I’m pretty sure the ex-players in the booth – David Cone and Eduardo Perez – find baseball interesting, their network is clearly convinced fans don’t feel the same way and need to hear what hair products a player uses (an actual question asked during a game) to keep things interesting.

Now here’s an excellent column about sports reporters finding sports boring and it also says Stephen A. Smith used to leave the New York studios to eat dinner during the first half of games and then rush back to comment on the action he hadn’t seen:

https://www.outkick.com/analysis/stephen-a-playing-solitaire-during-nba-finals-underscores-biggest-problem-sports-media

Some Good Advice

When I got the opportunity to cover the Kansas City Royals I called a friend who played Big League Baseball and then coached Big League Baseball to ask if he thought I knew enough baseball to pull it off.

He said yes and then offered this piece of advice: “Watch the game.”

Me: “What does that mean?”

Him: “You’ll see.”

And I did.

The first time I walked into a press box I was very impressed by the number of people not there.

Some sports-talk radio guys who act like they know everything about the Royals never come to games and even if they decide to drop by once in a while to make sure they haven’t already built a new ballpark, nobody wants to talk to them and if a player gets cornered he’ll offer some sports clichés—“That’s a good team over there.”—and then say he’s due on the field or in the trainer’s room where he’s about to have open-heart surgery.

And a lot of the reporters who do come to games don’t always watch them.

I’ve seen guys on Facebook, guys reading real books and on one memorable occasion, a group of out-of-town reporters conduct their fantasy football league draft while a game was going on.

To be fair (as always, an intermittent policy) there were and are reporters who try to pay attention, but even those guys are distracted by the requirements of the job like having to Tweet during games and turning in a game story ASAP after a game ends which means writing during games and if you’re looking at your laptop you’re not looking at the field and now here’s a story about that.

Ned Yost’s Misplaced Confidence

For reasons that are too boring to get into I had to miss a Royals weekend series against the White Sox and convinced the Kansas City Star my son (the one who is currently carving out a career explaining basketball on movie podcasts) could hold down the fort while I was gone.

I arrived during the Sunday day game and after the game had to drive him to Columbia, Missouri where he was attending college to earn a degree that he’d never use after graduation.

Anyway…

This one time I wanted to write during the game so we could hit I-70 immediately after it was over and told him to watch the field while I wrote, but before long he nudged my elbow and said: “Nobody’s covering third.”

Now here’s the deal on that (assuming I remember all the character involved):

Tie game, Alexei Ramirez was on first base with one out when some White Sox player whose name I’ve forgotten hit a flare that landed behind the Royals third baseman (I think it was Mike Moustakas) and Moose went back to attempt the catch, which left third base wide open and the Royals shortstop (can’t remember his name either because he wasn’t there very long precisely because of plays like this) turned into a spectator and didn’t cover third base.

So Alexei Ramirez motored right past him and took third.

Next up, another White Sox player whose name I also can’t remember (and it’s just dawning on me how bad my stories are going to get in the near future: “Y’know that guy? Played a bass shaped like a violin? Had long hair? Was in that group?”) hit a fly ball, Ramirez tagged up and scored, tied the game and the Sox went on to win.

It might’ve been in extra innings which is not the point, but still doesn’t stop elderly people from getting distracted by some irrelevant detail when telling a story and if my 99-year-old mother is any indication we all better get used to it because you can ask her which backyard bushes she wants trimmed and wind up talking about Pearl Harbor.

So I go to the post-game press conference and wait until everyone else had asked their questions because maybe someone else saw the same thing I did and as Ned Yost was getting out of his chair at he end of the press conference, I asked:

“Who had third in the seventh?”

Ned sat back down and said the failure to cover third “changed the whole game” and as he left the podium, leaned in and whispered to me, “I knew you weren’t going to miss that.”

And I’m thinking not only did I miss that, everyone else missed that and it was caught by a college student who had to get back to school ASAP so he could resume his busy schedule of smoking weed and cutting classes.

As we drove to Columbia I told my son about the exchange and he asked “Did you tell Ned I’m the one who caught it?” and being the kind of father who always likes to teach a Life Lesson when one smacks you in the face like a rake you just stepped on, I said:

“Fuck no. I need Ned to be impressed with me, not you.”

Today’s Lesson

First, take credit for things you didn’t actually do whenever possible, especially if the person who actually did it is one of your kids because until they start buying you pizzas and giving you rides and changing your diaper, they’re still in your debt and making you look good in front of Ned Yost is just a small down payment on what they owe you.

Second, in sports there’s always a logical explanation that has nothing to do with feelings. Talent levels are hard to change and you might not have enough of it, but good fundamentals are how you get the most out of the talent you have and bad fundamentals hold you back.

But if a reporter doesn’t know the difference between good and bad fundamentals he can’t explain what’s happening logically and in these finals Stephen A. Smith explained the results of a first half by saying the Pacers were swarming “like a bunch of piranhas” which would be an impressive basketball analysis if given by a special-needs fourth grader.

And finally…

Do not follow ignorant blowhards like Stephen A. Smith on Twitter or X because if you do TV producers and newspaper editors are going to assume that’s what you like and keep shoveling bad sports reporting down your throat.

P.S.

I just read a Sports Illustrated article defending Stephen A. Smith and calling the controversy “disingenuous” which is extremely—what’s the word I’m looking for?—disingenuous.

The writer defended being on your phone while covering a game and expressed the opinion that checking Twitter would be OK and so would checking Instagram or Snapchat so what’s so bad about playing solitaire?

He also said you could easily play solitaire during the first quarter of an NBA game, because as all good sports writer already know, those points don’t really count and the only points that matter are scored in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter so if you’re bored in the first half go ahead and build a model airplane or plan your vacation in the Bahamas or check Instagram for funny cat videos.

True story:

One night Royals closer Greg Holland wasn’t available so they used Aaron Crow and Aaron got the save, one of six in his four-year career. After the game I was talking to a coach on the other team and he asked if I had watched Crow’s warm-up pitches.

I had not, (I was busy planning my vacation in the Bahamas).

Pitchers get eight warm-up pitches and apparently Aaron was nervous in the unfamiliar role of closer and threw three of his warm-up pitches to the backstop. When that happens it’s a good idea to take some pitches and let the pitcher get himself in trouble, but the opposing team’s lead-off hitter was paying just as much attention as I was and swung at the first pitch, popped it up, Crow calmed down and got the save.

According to a Big League coach who has forgotten more baseball than reporters will ever know, the key moment of the game happened between innings.

Having tried it for 10 years it is hard to pay attention every moment, but paying attention is what we’re getting paid to do and at least theoretically we should find what’s happening in front of us somewhat interesting and not check out mentally and play solitaire. (And you’re monumentally stupid to play solitaire in front of fans on their cell phones who are going to take pictures and out you on social media.)

The SI writer (who at least sounds like he spends a lot of time on his phone during games) concludes that people are out to get Stephen A. Smith because he signed a $100 million contract so they’re making a multi-tasking a crime, but knowledgeable sports fans think the real crime is ESPN paying that much money to a guy who finds the sports he covers boring.

(If you’re a Stephen A. Smith fan, don’t worry about this controversy; ESPN isn’t going to give a guy $100 million and then dump him. If Vlad the Impaler had 2 million Twitter followers ESPN would hire him and some sympathetic Sports Illustrated guy would write a column saying the occasional impaling is no big deal.)

And now I need one of my sons to draw a cartoon that I can slap my name on.