Once again, ESPN analyst Stephen A Smith finds himself at the center of one of the most heated basketball debates of all time: Who is the GOAT of the NBA?
Of course, the two players at the point of this discussion are NBA Hall of Famer Michael Jordan and active NBA superstar LeBron James.
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However, after a guest appearance on Chad Johnson‘s podcast, The Late Run Show, last month, clips of Stephen A Smith’s making his argument may have gone viral on X, potentially impacting the debate, after SAS ripped apart LeBron James for almost 2 minutes straight.
Before tearing into LeBron’s accolades, Smith would admit that the current Lakers star is his number-two greatest player of all time, but the number-one spot would still belong to Michael Jordan.
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Johnson would interrupt SAS just as he admits James is second on his list, making a major point for a 41-year-old veteran: he’s the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.
Smith would state, “That don’t mean nothing,” and that is when the ESPN analyst erupted against James’ case in the NBA GOAT debate.
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“He (Lebron) played 23 years, he still has 2 less titles than Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan played all 82 games 8 times. How many times did Lebron do it?, Michael Jordan is a 10x Scoring Champion….Michael Jordan is 9x All NBA defensive player… there’s nothing to discuss. Michael Jordan averaged over 30 in the postseason 7 times..hes approaching year 24 and still has 2 less titles.”
This is not the first time SAS has decided to deep-dive into why LeBron James is not the rightful GOAT of the NBA, as Smith has been very vocal about the debate against James for almost the past decade.
Back in February of this year, Smith also did a sit-down interview with Graham Bensinger, where he flat-out stated, “We don’t like each other. The world needs to know that.. I hope he’s watching.”
Stephen A Smith with a message to LeBron James:
“We don’t like each other. The world needs to know that.. I hope he’s watching. I think he crossed the line with the incident involving his son. I don’t think I did what he said I was doing. I thought that was unfair and a low… pic.twitter.com/vqO4cXZMB9
— NBA Courtside (@NBA__Courtside) February 26, 2026
Clearly, there is some bad blood between the two, which could introduce bias into Smith’s NBA GOAT argument, but the conversation remains one of the hottest topics in basketball and will seemingly always be.