One week after attacking LeBron James on First Take, Stephen A. Smith gave the Los Angeles Lakers star the utmost compliment by putting him ahead of Michael Jordan.
It’s not quite March Madness season; we still have a few days before NFL free agency kicks off, and the NBA hasn’t reached the point in its schedule where every game matters yet. This means there’s always time for debate shows to reach for the LeBron James vs Michael Jordan argument. And what better time for it than the morning after James surpassed 50,000 combined points in the NBA?
🚨🚨Stephen A. Smith says it’s time to retire the Jordan-LeBron debate 🚨🚨 pic.twitter.com/0RyJtli7Mh
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 5, 2025
“Although he annoyed the living hell out of me last week,” Smith began of James Wednesday morning on First Take. “In the end, the greatness that he has put on display for as long as he has put on display, I’ll even go a step further, knowing how I feel about Jordan…I actually think it’s time to not even have the debate anymore because that’s how great LeBron James has been for as long as he has been that great.”
Smith clarified that he believes peak Jordan was better than peak James. But according to Smith, he’s finally ready to end the GOAT debate because of LeBron’s longevity.
This is weird. Less than a month ago, First Take reacted to James surpassing Jordan as the oldest player to score 40 points in the game. A stat Smith was quick to mock as Shannon Sharpe boasted about James as the GOAT.
As Smith noted, this about-face comes after he saved one of his biggest rants of the year for James last week. James slammed NBA media for its negativity, and Smith took that personally by torching the 40-year-old superstar in an uninterrupted rant that lasted nearly six minutes.
Was it really the 244 points James scored in the last month that persuaded Smith to join his side of the GOAT debate? Or was this some sort of peace offering after last week’s rant? If the rant bothered James and other NBA stars, Smith would undoubtedly have heard about it. And maybe his decision to finally rank James ahead of Jordan was an attempt at smoothing things over.
Whatever it takes to officially end the debate.
Although, it’s hard to imagine Smith won’t find a reason to revisit the debate on First Take very soon.