Longtime ESPN media personality Michael Wilbon has seen his colleague Stephen A. Smith get embroiled in a beef with Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James for some remarks he made about his son Bronny.
It has been some time now since the elder James confronted Smith during a matchup between the Lakers and New York Knicks, yet the two have taken jabs at one another recently.
Wilbon has since called his network’s coverage of the younger James “a disaster waiting to happen” and claimed that his show “Pardon the Interruption” refused to talk about the youngster on a day-to-day basis.
“And, look, I am a father, too,” Wilbon said. “Let me let you in on some inside baseball, Bobby [Burack]. And you probably know this. But ‘PTI’ did not talk about Bronny. We never did. All the Bronny talk that our network did was pandering. It was for clicks and eyeballs. I refused to participate.
“You can go back and look, ‘PTI’ didn’t cover him, except for maybe the real news, like the day after he was drafted. Those other shows, it was every day. Bronny. Bronny. Bronny. What the hell is this? It was a disaster waiting to happen.
“I have a 17-year-old son, so this matters to me. I am particularly sensitive to it. I’d do anything for my kid, and I would hug LeBron for what he did for his kid.
“I am a father first. That’s how I see this story—not as a columnist or a talking head–but as a father first. So, I get what LeBron did. And LeBron has also been great to my kid.
“But as far as coverage, no. There were shows that talked about Bronny every day. You know what shows I’m talking about. I don’t care if my bosses get mad. They would try to get Tony [Kornheiser] and me to talk about it. No, we were not going to do it.”
The younger James has scarcely seen the floor for the Lakers in his first season in the best basketball league in the world. He has suited up in just 23 of Los Angeles’ 74 games to this point, and the No. 55 overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft is averaging 2.3 points, 0.6 rebounds and 0.6 assists per game.
Additionally, he hasn’t seen the floor for the team’s last four contests and last played for the Lakers in the squad’s blowout loss to the Chicago Bulls on March 22.
But on the bright side, he did carve out probably his most impressive performance in an NBA game to this point against the Milwaukee Bucks earlier on in the month. In what was another loss for the Lakers, the younger James dropped a season-high 17 points while converting all but three of his 10 shots from the floor and a pair of 3-pointers.
He’s also just days removed from a scoring eruption with the Lakers’ G League affiliate, the South Bay Lakers. The younger James went off for 39 points on 14-of-21 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 from deep in a win over the Santa Cruz Warriors on March 24.
The younger James’ NBA career has gone less than swimmingly to this point, but if his standout G League performances this season are of any indication, he still has what it takes to one day mold into an effective player at the highest level. It’s worth noting that he is still a young player, as he won’t turn 21 years old until October.
