News broke earlier this week that Cleveland Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith was launching a Kickstarter for a new reality show that would follow him around in his everyday life off the court. That’s a premise with potential for vast entertainment, as Smith is known to possess one of the NBA’s more fascinating personalities. He’s an experienced partier with a network of celebrity friends, not to mention a seemingly piping-hot love life.
But as you can imagine, Smith caught some heat for the timing of the announcement – which came as the Cavs are down 2-0 in a very lopsided NBA Finals, while J.R. is currently playing like crap.
But it’s hard to imagine anybody was as angry about the news as Stephen A. Smith. The ESPN analyst apparently found out about the news during a live taping of First Take on Tuesday and then went bananas in response. A very animated and exaggerated Stephen A. seemed extremely bothered by the fact that a guy who has only put up nine shots in 69 minutes (nice) is potentially in line for his own reality show. That’s a fair criticism.
However, it’s somewhat ironic that Smith claims the problem with America is “celebrating people who don’t deserve to be celebrated.” This coming from a guy who continues to be one of ESPN’s most rewarded personalities despite the fact that he has a very lengthy history of saying and doing some pretty dumb things, many of which reflect extremely poorly on his character.
Even with all his questionable stances and takes, Smith’s career trajectory continues to climb both financially and exposure-wise while more intelligent and deserving folks continue to fight for their money and minutes. Maybe he’s not the best guy to be ranting about people being unfairly celebrated.
With that being said, J.R. should probably try making a couple more buckets before he starts gunning for reality shows.
