ESPN’s Jay Williams called out Stephen A. Smith for his “asinine” take regarding Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Last week, Smith argued on First Take that Antetokounmpo could be considered an “underachiever” if he finished his career with just a single NBA championship on his resume. The 30-year-old is a nine-time All-NBA selection, nine-time All-Star selection, and two-time MVP. He also won the Defensive Player of the Year award in 2019. In short, Antetokounmpo is unquestionably one of the greatest players the sport has ever seen, and Smith’s suggestion that he’s underachieved was met with a great deal of pushback online.
On Monday’s episode of First Take, Williams told Smith on air it was “one of your worst takes I’ve heard in a long time” and “horrible”:
If you were to say that the franchise, the Milwaukee Bucks, have underachieved — or are the biggest underachievers with the talent of Giannis — fair; but a guy who has a 50-point closeout game, a guy who’s never chased any of these “dream team” scenarios, a guy who is a Finals MVP, a guy who’s a multi-time All-Star, All-NBA, all-everything, global face of the game, the fact that he brought an NBA championship to Milwaukee — to Milwaukee — in the midst of the fire that he did. To call him an underachiever, I just think, is an asinine comment because then, if we go through history, we’re calling a lot of these other great players who have won one NBA championship — which, by the way, you know how hard it is to win a championship? It’s one of the hardest. It’s like, OK, my college career, I’m an underachiever because my freshman and my junior year, we lost to Florida in the Sweet 16 and we lost to Indiana in the Sweet 16; and both of them went on to lose in a national championship game. But I got one my sophomore year, so I’m an underachiever because I should have more.
So you’re calling Allen Iverson an underachiever. You’re calling [Dirk Nowitzki] an underachiever. You’re calling [Kevin Garnett] an underachiever. You just called Oscar Robertson an underachiever because they’ve all got one championship! And because their talent is so great that, in your mind, if they don’t win more than one, if their career ends with only one championship — which just sounds crazy to say, that that would have negative connotation in it, which I think, frankly, is part of your job, having a seat that you have, having a career that you’ve had, right?
We got to frame these conversations because there’s no way in hell anybody who watches basketball, who knows the level of greatness that comes along with Giannis, would say that he’s an underachiever.
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