It’s one thing for Charles Barkley to rip ESPN’s NBA coverage from afar, but Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo is doing it while on ESPN.
Wednesday morning on ESPN, First Take asked whether Anthony Edwards was to blame for the Minnesota Timberwolves Game 4 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. And the conversation quickly pivoted to a debate over whether ESPN rushed to crown Edwards as the face of the NBA.
Someone check on Windy after sitting through Chris Russo and Stephen A. Smith losing their minds over whether Anthony Edwards is the face of the league. pic.twitter.com/ChBZjbAhCH
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 28, 2025
“He’s 23 years old,” Russo said. “And ESPN, more than anybody else, has put him on a pedestal, ‘the face of the league,’ which is the biggest bunch of garbage I’ve ever heard in my life. And I think that hurts him.”
Stephen A. Smith quickly chimed in to defend ESPN’s incessant desire to debate whether Edwards is or can be the next face of the league.
“The brother is special,” Smith said.
“No, he’s not the face of the league!” Russo ranted. “He plays in Minnesota and they’ve never been in a Final and they almost got swept in the Conference Final last year. Let’s take it easy. Will you please take it easy? Face of the league? That’s LeBron, that’s Bird, that’s Jordan. That’s a high level. He’s not on that level!”
Smith again defended the debate, insisting they never definitively said he was the face of the league, they only claimed he could be the next face of the league, with emphasis on “next.” And that’s when the debate went off the rails.
“Win something! Win something!” Russo screamed. “And then you can say that! Win something! WIN SOMETHING!”
As Russo was yelling “win something” on repeat, Smith eventually told his Wednesday co-host to “be quiet.”
“You be quiet!” Russo fired back. “I’M TALKING NOW! You talked for 40 minutes, NOW IT’S MY TURN!”
Behind all the theatrics, was the fact that Russo called ESPN out for seeming desperate to dub Edwards the face of the NBA in recent months. Except for Kendrick Perkins, who is still waiting for Edwards to get married before he can own that title.
Tuesday night, Charles Barkley called ESPN out from TNT for trying to make Edwards the face of the league. And Barkley has made a habit out of criticizing ESPN from afar in recent years. Russo doing it while on ESPN, however, is much bolder. But even if you didn’t enjoy the yelling match between Russo and Smith over ESPN’s coverage of Edwards, hopefully you watched the clip long enough to see Brian Windhorst’s perceived disgust at their tangent.