As two fellow New Yorkers with mutual colleagues outside of basketball, Stephen A. Smith and Kyrie Irving have butt heads for as long as the NBA point guard has been in the league.
During Irving’s falling-out with the Brooklyn Nets over his refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine and his promotion of an antisemitic film, Smith brought the hammer down especially hard on Irving. The First Take host ripped Irving’s “arrogance” and challenged him to quit playing in the NBA if he could not handle media coverage of his mistakes.
Since Irving’s return to form with the Dallas Mavericks as part of the team that went to the NBA Finals in 2024, Smith has softened his rhetoric toward Irving considerably. And with Irving once again a topic of conversation recovering from ACL surgery for a team employing No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg, Smith took his mea culpas toward Irving to a new level.
While discussing his history with the 2016 NBA champion on the 7PM In Brooklyn podcast, Smith endorsed Irving’s aversion to the COVID-19 vaccine and stated that Irving was “right” about it in hindsight.
“Kyrie’s a good brother. We used to butt heads because he used to miss work too damn much,” Smith said.
“And I’m like, yo man, this brother’s electrifying, I want to see this brother dancing on the basketball court. I don’t want to hear no sh*t about no COVID vaccines. Get your a** on the court. We see you. Now, obviously in hindsight, the brother’s right because we see all the conspiracy theories that came out. And props to him for having the foresight to see that. We didn’t see that at the time.”
The entirety of Smith’s quip here hinges on his argument that Irving was, in fact, correct about the COVID-19 vaccine because “we see all the conspiracy theories that came out.” Understanding that Smith may have been loose with his words in the flow of a podcast, conspiracy theories aren’t typically the kind of thing that prove a point. If nothing else, Smith should have been far more specific about which theories he believes that prove Irving correct.
After all, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control currently recommends the COVID-19 vaccine for “most” adults 18 and over. The CDC states that the vaccine helps protect people from severe illness, hospitalization and death. And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to approve annual updated booster shots for new variants of COVID-19.
Since taking over as director of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr. has cast doubt on the efficacy and healthiness of the vaccine, and recently moved to require patients to book a vaccine appointment through their primary care doctor rather than their pharmacy.
Nevertheless, Smith went so far as to bring up Irving’s four year-old argument against the vaccine out of the blue to prove his point on a podcast that he is willing to admit when he is wrong with athletes.
“We’re all taking the risk,” Smith said of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. “Kyrie said no. Props to him, but I didn’t see it that way.”
