Kicking their public feud up to another level, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith targeted LeBron James with a 15-minute rant on Thursday’s First Take.

While barely pausing for breath, Smith painted the Lakers superstar as a childish, petty, passive-aggressive phony and liar. He denied insulting Bronny James (the supposed reason for James physically confronting Smith at a Lakers game). Smith also asked why James was so “butthurt” despite the many times he praised him as a great player, father, family man, businessman, and philanthropist.

“My God, I have done everything but put diapers and a bib on this brother. But it ain’t enough,” said Smith. “Because one thing matters to him and one thing only—and that’s him being recognized as the greatest of all time. Well, you’re not, in my book. That belongs to Michael Jordan.”

Then Smith went further, accusing James of disrespecting the late, great Kobe Bryant and former Heat running mate Dwyane Wade.

“I suggest that he be happy with the things that I haven’t brought up. I never brought up, really, and never really discussed, why you were not at Kobe Bryant’s memorial service. I never really brought up or discussed why you did not attend Dwyane Wade’s Hall of Fame induction when that man was directly responsible for you capturing a championship for the first time in your career.”

However, Smith was wrong about the presence of James at Bryant’s funeral. He posted this on X/Twitter Thursday afternoon: “My apologies and clarification. I misspoke in Hour#1 of @FirstTake today when I intimated that LeBron did not attend Kobe Bryant’s memorial. I corrected myself in Hour#2 when I acknowledged he was indeed in attendance. My mistake. Should not have even broached that subject. It was not my main point. I retract NOTHING else that I said. Have a nice day!”

Smith’s rant came the morning after he responded to James’s controversial interview with Pat McAfee. On his YouTube show and podcast, Smith said he would have punched James if he were attacked during their courtside confrontation. James countered by posting a decade-old video of Smith awkwardly boxing to his 159 million followers on Instagram. “WHOMP WHOMP WHOMPPPPPPPP,” cracked James along with a laughing emoji.

James got his jabs in during McAfee’s show. And the Instagram video was a nice burn. But James could rue the day he challenged Smith to a war of words.

As Smith noted, this is his lane. He can spend hours every week hammering James on ESPN’s First Take and NBA Countdown. Not to mention his own YouTube show, where he just won the right, contractually, to say whatever he wants about whoever and whatever he wants.  Smith, in the role of prosecuting attorney, could make Skip Bayless look like a LeBron apologist. In effect, Smith rope-a-doped James into playing “Embrace Debate” against the master. That’s a fight even King James can’t win.

One media executive at a rival network was surprised James would engage in a war of words with Smith. “LeBron’s playing right into Stephen A’s hands,” he said.

You can read the rest of Michael McCarthy’s column on ESPN’s risks in the Smith-James conflict here.

Dwight Howard, D’Angelo Russell, Penny Hardaway, and Victor Oladipo are all bringing their podcasts to Blue Wire, the platform’s founder and CEO Kevin Jones confirmed to Front Office Sports. The podcasts were all previously independent.

Over the past several years, current and former player podcasts have become a cottage industry in the sports media space, and nowhere is this more pronounced than with basketball. FOS asked Howard, who was inducted into the Magic’s Hall of Fame earlier this week, how he thinks he cuts through the clutter.

“Well, we’re not trying to compete against nobody but ourselves,” Howard said. “I think the best version of ourselves every day, the most authentic version that we give to the fans and the world will bring enough energy and bring enough force that people will really love watching our podcast. … We talk about things outside of basketball, things that are different from sports. And that’s why it is called Above the Rim.”

Howard’s dream podcast guest? President Donald Trump.

“I just like to have conversations with people just to see where their spirit and their energy lies,” Howard said. “And a lot of times, when we see people online, we see people in the media or the face that they put on when they’re on TV or whatever, maybe [it’s] a little bit different than how they carry themselves and how they move when they’re not on camera and stuff like that.”

Howard said he’d want to discuss Trump’s upbringing and the difficulty of the job. “I don’t think people understand it, the tough assignment of being a president, but also trying to carry your own morals. … I’m [not] taking up for any president or anything like that in history but I’m just of the understanding that it is a very hard job—it’s like being a king in your own land and you have so many people that you have to try to take care of, and a lot of times your feelings and emotions have to be out of decisions and stuff like that,” he said.

For more on Dwight Howard’s podcast ambitions, and Blue Wire’s plans, read Ryan Glasspiegel’s full story here.

• Jim Nantz is circling 2036 as the date of his final call of the Masters tournament. It would be Nantz’s 50th Masters broadcast for CBS Sports—and the 100th anniversary of the tournament. “But if all the stars aligned, right now, it feels like a pretty good exit point. April 14, 2036,” said Nantz in an interview with Bunkered. Meanwhile, Nantz is set to call his 39th Masters in April. He called his first Masters in 1986, memorably intoning, “The Bear has come out of hibernation,” during Jack Nicklaus’s final-round charge.
• CBS Sports has named J.J. Watt a game analyst for the upcoming NFL season. Watt will call games with Ian Eagle on the CBS No. 2 broadcast team behind Tony Romo and Jim Nantz. The former NFL superstar joined CBS as a studio analyst on The NFL Today in 2023. Meanwhile, Charles Davis, Eagle’s longtime partner, will become the CBS lead college football analyst starting with the 2026 season. He’ll succeed Gary Danielson, who’s retiring after the 2025 season.
• NBC Sports PR boss Greg Hughes is opening his fifth bar/restaurant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisc., about 40 minutes outside of Madison. The new spot will be called Jack & Jenny’s.
• Curtis Granderson signed a multiyear contract extension with TNT Sports to remain in the network’s MLB studio.

 “They stepped up for the NBA, they stepped up for football, stepped up for this one, and to come back to us and say, ‘We want to cut you.’”

—MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to SiriusXM’s Chris “Mad Dog” Russo on why he turned down ESPN’s request to renegotiate for less money after the network opted out of their deal.