Stephen A. Smith weighed in on the Los Angeles Lakers and made a big deal out of the players’ skin color, and that kind of commentary deserves a clear response. This piece pushes back: calling out the racial framing, pointing to hypocrisy, and insisting that merit, not melanin, should decide who plays. It also holds that the media figure’s influence matters because it shapes how kids and fans see the game.
I admire parts of Stephen A. Smith’s work, but his recent line of thinking about the Lakers’ roster is baffling. He looked at three players and made race the center of the story, saying “This ain’t golf,” he said. “This ain’t baseball. It ain’t even soccer.” That focus sidelines achievement and elevates identity politics over performance.
Labeling that take as anything other than a racial judgment misses the point. When a commentator treats skin color as the headline, he reduces athletes to pigment instead of skill. That turns a sport built on competition into a scoreboard for grievances, and it sends the wrong message to young players who are grinding in gyms every morning.
History shows how dangerous it can be to assign ownership of a sport to one group or another. Segregation once barred Black athletes from top leagues, and now some pundits act like basketball belongs to any single race. That backward logic only deepens division instead of celebrating progress and hard-won opportunity.
Great players reach the top because of work, not because of the color of their skin. Michael Jordan didn’t practice his blackness; he practiced his shot, his footwork, and his mind. Larry Bird didn’t win titles because of luck or skin tone; he saw angles and outworked opponents. Talent turns up or it doesn’t, period.
When someone with a massive platform frames three accomplished players as an oddity because they’re White, that’s not bravery or honesty. It’s tribalism dressed as critique. That kind of rhetoric pits fans against each other and tells kids they belong to basketball because of their race rather than their effort.
There’s also plain hypocrisy in the outrage cycle. If a White commentator complained different groups were taking over a court, the same voices who defend outraged statements would howl. You can’t pick and choose when to condemn racial thinking and still claim a moral high ground. Touch racism, and you forfeit moral authority.
The right answer is simple: judge players as individuals. The Lakers signed those athletes because they believe they help win games. Fans want winners, and teams will roster anyone who can deliver. Reducing those choices to racial narratives cheapens the sport and ignores the mechanics of winning.
I’ve seen excellence across every background and it never asked for permission from someone’s skin tone. Excellence asks for discipline, sacrifice, and sunrise workouts for years when nobody is watching. That grind builds careers, not identity politics or entitlement.
Our kids deserve commentary that uplifts effort and achievement instead of teaching entitlement by group identity. Basketball was built by people who wanted to be the best at what they loved, not to score points for a grievance. It’s time sports talk started treating talent as colorblind and stopped turning locker rooms into cultural battlegrounds.
