ESPN host Stephen A. Smith tried to defend his claim that the Los Angeles Lakers could not win a championship built around “three White dudes” during an appearance on Fox News’ The Will Cain Show on Tuesday.
Cain confronted Smith, calling his remarks about the trio of Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Walker Kessler “racist.”
“If I came out and said anywhere, anyplace, anytime that a Black quarterback couldn’t win the Super Bowl, I’d be wrong, and you would also say, ‘Will, that is racist,'” Cain told Smith. “You wouldn’t accuse me of being a racist, but you would say that statement is racist. And I can say the same to you now when it comes to basketball.”
Smith called Cain’s characterization “fair” and said he wasn’t “offended” by the criticism. Still, he doubled down on his underlying argument.
“I’m going to repeat it again: a trio of White players in the NBA has never led a team to a championship,” Smith said. “The top three players on a basketball team being White in the NBA has never led an NBA franchise to a championship since the Minneapolis Lakers did it between 1949 and 1955.”
Cain countered that a trio of Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Cooper Flagg would be more than capable of winning an NBA championship.
He also pointed out that Smith’s standard is conveniently narrow. Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, two White stars, led the Boston Celtics to three championships in the 1980s. Smith’s argument survives only because Hall of Famer Robert Parish, who is Black, happened to be the team’s third-best player.
At this point, Smith’s defense amounts to little more than a technicality. Whenever he’s challenged, he argues that he needs to see three White stars lead a team to a championship before he’ll believe it’s possible.
But that’s not the claim he originally made. There’s a meaningful difference between saying something hasn’t happened and saying it cannot happen, as Smith initially did.
As OutKick has argued, Smith’s reasoning simply doesn’t hold up. If a White player can be the best player on a championship team, as Jokic was in 2023, and two White players can anchor a dynasty, as Bird and McHale did, there’s no logical basis for claiming three White stars can’t win a ring together. The far more reasonable conclusion is that the right trio of White dudes simply hasn’t existed yet.
For one, it’s a numbers game. The NBA is roughly 75 to 80% Black, meaning there are naturally fewer elite White players available to build around.
The same logic applies elsewhere.
Just because an NFL team has never won a Super Bowl with a Black quarterback, Black head coach, and Black general manager doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It just means that, because of the racial makeup of those positions, it hasn’t.
Of course, there is the racial double standard that Cain referenced. If a White commentator argued that a team couldn’t win a Super Bowl because its leaders were Black, Smith would be among the first to denounce the comment as racist and call for that person’s job.
Yet Smith is unlikely to face any repercussions from ESPN despite making what is, by the same standard, a racist argument.
Credit to two of Smith’s former debate partners, Will Cain and Skip Bayless, for pushing back on his comments about the Lakers’ potential trio.
Max Kellerman next? (Just joking.)
Still, Smith’s argument has only grown weaker with each attempt to defend it. Tuesday’s interview did nothing to strengthen his case.
His comments about the Lakers’ new trio remain illogical and, quite frankly, racist.
