J.R. Smith And ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith’s Hoodie Feud Escalated On Monday Morning

The latest feud between ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and an NBA player involves Cavs shooting guard J.R. Smith. The two got into it over the weekend after Stephen A. ranted about Nike’s hoodies and questioned the message they send, bringing up protests about Trayvon Martin.

He also called out J.R. Smith specifically for wearing his hoodie on the bench while looking frustrated, saying it was a bad look for the Cavs’ veteran guard to appear pouty on the bench over being behind Dwyane Wade in the rotation early in the season. Unsurprisingly, J.R. heard those comments and took exception, taking to Twitter to respond to Stephen A. and voice his displeasure with what he said.

J.R. elaborated on those comments further on Saturday night after the Cavs’ loss to the Pelicans, but on Monday, as one had to expect, Stephen A. came on First Take ready to respond himself after a brief string of tweets on Saturday back to J.R.

“I wasn’t talking about J.R. Smith. I was talking about Nike,” Smith said. “Nike’s the one making the hoodies. I wasn’t talking about him wearing the hoodies during layup lines or whatever. I was talking specifically about the J.R. Smith that was on the bench cause he had only played three minutes in the fourth quarter of that opener against Boston, Max Kellerman. When he was sitting on the bench with his hoodie on looking like a sad puppy, because D-Wade was on the floor for eight of those 12 minutes as opposed to J.R. Smith. Who obviously, reportedly, was very upset at the fact that he was taken out of the starting lineup.”

We’ll get to J.R.’s response to this first, but I have to point out the Rick James being interviewed on Chappelle’s Show-like contradiction from Stephen A., saying “I wasn’t talking about J.R. Smith” followed, three sentences later by, “I was talking specifically about the J.R. Smith.” It’s art. Just incredible stuff.

Alright, so of course J.R. Smith heard about this and he returned to Twitter to fire back at Stephen A., calling out First Take‘s ratings and how the show isn’t the same without Skip Bayless.
https://twitter.com/TheRealJRSmith/status/925031153106669573

J.R. Smith is clearly fed up with Stephen A. and the biggest point of contention remains the latter’s ill-advised notion that people would be made uncomfortable by seeing the hoodies as some kind of social statement by NBA players to remind fans of Trayvon Martin being shot and killed as an unarmed black man wearing a hoodie. Stephen A. has otherwise avoided that portion of his initial comment, noting in his First Take response on Monday he was simply voicing his opinion on personal preference of the hoodie looking unprofessional and then he went off on J.R.’s stats.

At no point did he speak on his original comment about bringing up the Trayvon Martin protests in his initial complaint, which remains the biggest issue for Smith with his comments. J.R. doesn’t seem to care about Stephen A. calling out his stats or questioning whether he looked frustrated, instead he had an issue with the substance of the initial comments. If Stephen A. doesn’t address that or simply let this strange beef go, he’s only going to dig himself a bigger hole with J.R. and others.