This is about as angry as you’ll ever see Stephen A. Smith… and that’s certainly saying something.
There’s no one that talks more about sports than Stephen A. Smith. He does get paid a lot of money to do so, but one might think that Smith could get a little burnt out blabbering about sports around the clock like he does. At the very least, the quantity of content that he puts out sometimes has to mean there’s a lack of quality (lack of factualness might be a better way of putting it).
Think about it… the man is on ESPN around the clock talking about every sport under the sun. Football game on? He’s there to talk about it. Basketball game that just wrapped up? He’s there breaking down the game (and yelling about something). Add on the fact that he’s a certified hot take machine and you’ve got yourself one of the busiest personalities in all of sports.
Recently, he decided to weigh in on the mess of a league that is the WNBA. This time, it had to do with Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” t-shirt while coaching a game against the Indiana Fever. It was an undoubtable protest to Fever forward Sophie Cunningham saying that she was against biological men playing women’s sports.
That right there is the latest in a series of headline-worthy stories out of the WNBA. Just in the past couple of months, Caitlin Clark was voted the 11th best guard in the league by her peers, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert dodged an interview with The Dan Patrick Show, the Seattle Storm co-owner was suspended and fined for screaming at Sophie Cunningham fans, and the WNBA outing their very own gambling scandal.
Needless to say, things have been messy in the WNBA, and the Lynx head coach coming out and wearing a “Trans Kid Belong” shirt when Minnesota played the Indiana Fever – which Sophie Cunningham plays for – is another thing that’s garnering a lot of attention for the WNBA (and not in a good way).
Many have criticized Cheryl Reeve over the t-shirt, after all, she coaches women’s basketball, but no one has criticized her more emphatically than Stephen A. Smith. On his non-ESPN Stephen A. Smith Show, he launched into a fiery rant against Reeve and her stance on the conversation that was originally stirred up by Cunningham:
“This is not about being anti-anything. This is about being PRO-GIRLS… You can’t be born a male, transition into female and think that you should have the right to compete with women! Not in basketball, not in football, not in boxing, not in the UFC. Hell, not even in tennis!
It’s an aberration when you find somebody like a Serena Williams serving 120 miles, 125 miles an hour. That’s ordinary for Djokovic… that’s ordinary for Sampras, Agassi, and all of these guys.
We gotta stop this. We gotta stop acting like somebody that’s speaking up on behalf of girls, like a Sophie Cunningham, like a Riley Gaines, are scourges of the earth. You are Cheryl Reeve, the head coach of the Minnesota Lynx. That is an irresponsible thing to do. You are a coach for a female basketball team.”
Smith went on to hammer his point home, defending Sophie Cunningham (and others who have spoken out against biological men participating in women’s sports) and ripping into Cheryl Reeve for being the head coach of a women’s basketball team and basically suggesting that she would be okay with having biological men play in the WNBA:
“Do you not think that the females are being screwed over if they have to compete against an individual born as a male? What are you talking about? Nobody said you can’t transition from male to female. The issue here is competing against the women. That’s what Sophie Cunningham was talking about. That’s what Riley Gaines is talking about.
How are you, Coach Cheryl Reeve, and you could condone that? Then you gonna come out with a T-shirt? No regard for the WNBA, no regard for the sponsors that may be put off by that. No regard for the bottom line that might be affected because of a position that she has taken that you know is going to be politicized because that’s what you did. How is that okay? How?”
Of course, the obvious implication here is that every player in WNBA would be out of job if the league did, in fact allow, biological men to play in the league. So what exactly is Reeve advocating for here?
Here’s the full conversation:
Gotta love Stephen A. Smith… always telling it like it is.
Another one telling it like it is is Outkick’s Clay Travis, who has put up $10 MILLION for a high school boys team to play the WNBA Champions Las Vegas Aces. Of course, it will never happen… and we all know why.
