Stephen A Smith offers conspiracy theory on beef

Stephen A.  Smith, the outspoken ESPN persona, has publicly alleged that LeBron James might have conspired to set him up during a confrontation at a Lakers-Knicks game, after Smith slammed James’ sensitivity over his son, Bronny James.

According to Smith, the incident — and the approach it was introduced to the public — stays deeply troubling for him.

Smith’s beef with James dates again to comments he made about James’s son, who earns a strong wage for a second round decide, and the position the NBA star performed in his early profession.

“I am pleading with LeBron James as a father: Stop this,” Smith said on “First Take.” “Stop this. We all know that Bronny James is in the NBA because of his dad.”

Smith added: “How are you doing him favors? We know that he’s not ready yet. And I’m saying this with compassion. … You know what these numbers mean. You know what it’s going to do to your son, to people that are missing out on opportunities, that are busting their tail on other NBA teams and the G League and Europe and everywhere else, what kind of opportunity they’re starving for. You’re exposing your son like this?”

During the March 7 game, James approached Smith courtside and the trade was caught on digicam. After the game, Smith later told the media: “That wasn’t a basketball player confronting me. That was a parent. That was a father.”

In a current look on the “7PM in Brooklyn” podcast with Carmelo Anthony, Smith mirrored on how the footage of the confrontation was cropped and edited in his view.

“I arrived in the first quarter. He rolled up on me in the third quarter. This is 2025, we got technology everywhere,” Smith said, including, “TNT is a nationally televised game. How is it we got one angle and the only angle of it you see was of him and his face but you see the back of my peanut head?”

Smith went additional, claiming: “Damn right. That’s how I feel” when requested if he believed he was “set up in that moment” by the discipline of media and broadcasting.

He argues that the narrative that adopted — which painted him as attacking a participant’s household — shifted the focus away from the core pressure: his criticism of James’s public habits and affect.

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That pressure, Smith said, goes again more than a decade. On the podcast, he said: “I don’t like his ass. Not a little bit.”

Smith claimed that after his commentary about Bronny, James publicly addressed the matter on The Pat McAfee Show — a program that airs after Smith’s ESPN look — which Smith felt additional signalled the chip on his shoulder.

However, James has framed his involvement in another way. On The Pat McAfee Show, he said he welcomed skilled criticism however drew the line at what he thought of private assaults.

“When you take it and you get personal … it’s my job to not only protect my damn household but protect the players.”