Stephen A. Smith has dabbled in the world of politics that he knows a good flip flop when he sees one. And that’s exactly what he is doing with the status of Tyrese Haliburton in Game 6 of the NBA Finals.
Haliburton struggled mightily with a calf injury in Game 5 as the Thunder took a 3-2 lead in the series and moved one win away from the championship. At halftime, with Indiana’s star point guard scoreless, both Smith and Kendrick Perkins ranted about how he should be sat down because of how badly he played.
Stephen A. Smith on Tyrese Haliburton: “HE LOOKS BAD! HE WAS NOT ACTIVE! HE WAS NOT AGGRESSIVE! AND NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT HE’S NOT HEALTHY, I TOTALLY AGREE WITH BIG PERK! SIT HIM DOWN! GET HIM READY FOR GAME 6!… HE AIN’T HELPING THE TEAM! HE’S NOT HELPING THEM!” #NBAFinals pic.twitter.com/nSsX2y3US8
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 17, 2025
But just a couple days later and Stephen A. Smith is changing his tune about Tyrese Haliburton.
When asked on Thursday morning’s episode of First Take whether the Pacers should start or sit their star point guard, Smith said that he had to play in a do or die game because there was no tomorrow on the brink of elimination.
.@stephenasmith doesn’t believe the Pacers should sit Tyrese Haliburton in Game 6 of the NBA Finals.
“It’s do or die, you’re on the brink of elimination, there is no tomorrow. Absolutely he should play.” pic.twitter.com/N3fEE9d8D1
— First Take (@FirstTake) June 19, 2025
“It’s do or die, you’re on the brink of elimination. There is no tomorrow. Absolutely he should play, make no mistake about that and give you what he has. Now if it’s not much like it was in Game 5, if it’s that kind of awful, pedestrian, impotent performance, then guess what? You’ve got to pull him,” Smith said.
Wait, what? Were the stakes not similar in Game 5 when Stephen A. told the entire world how much Haliburton was hurting his team and that he needed to be dragged out of the arena kicking and screaming in order to save their championship hopes?
In isolation, Smith’s comments make a lot of sense. Give Tyrese Haliburton the chance to show what he can do in Game 6 because he is that important to the Indiana Pacers. But if he is ineffective and can’t make the plays we have seen all postseason, then Rick Carlisle has plenty of options off the bench, especially in TJ McConnell that can keep Indiana in the game.
But Stephen A. Smith going there after making such a big scene about sitting Haliburton during halftime of Game 5 is what makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. How can Smith so quickly pivot from yelling about the need to sit Haliburton in one game to then saying that he needs to take the floor in the next game no matter what? Does Haliburton have access to some kind of miraculous hyperbolic chamber that we don’t know about?
Furthermore, Smith saying that Haliburton should take it upon himself to tell Carlisle to play McConnell goes against everything that we heard when the First Take talker and fellow NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins were criticizing Darius Garland for not playing through injury against the Pacers earlier in the postseason.
“What I would say to Tyrese Haliburton is this, you know what you can do when you’re healthy. That means you know what you’re not doing when you’re not healthy. And if you see your teammate flowing like that, there is absolutely positively nothing wrong with you rolling over to the coach and whispering in his ear, ‘TJ is rolling,'” Smith added.
It’s dizzying trying to keep track of where Stephen A. Smith stands on this one, but if you’ve followed his nascent political career so far, maybe it’s not all that surprising.