ESPN's Stephen A. Smith controvery over Shohei Ohtani is what happens when a network hitches its wagon to one guy

Defector

"Shohei Ohtani could end up being the most remarkable and exciting baseball player of my lifetime, and perhaps he already is," says Drew Magary. "If you watched him at the Home Run Derby last night, you didn’t need a goddamn interpreter to love him. The man’s got enough smiles and enough titanic dingers to win you over, no matter who the f*ck you are. So it’s not simply that Stephen A. was wrong about Ohtani in the ugliest possible way, but that he was so NEEDLESSLY wrong. He didn’t need to be talking about Ohtani at all. But this is what happens when ESPN hitches its wagon to ONE guy, and then decides to filter everything that happens in sports through him. When I wrote that GQ profile (in 2019), I was told by someone within the industry that Stephen A. was quietly campaigning for the network to replace his First Take co-host, Max Kellerman. I couldn’t verify that claim, and Max still occupies a chair opposite Stephen A. every weekday morning. But that clip above shows you that Max, in fact, already HAS been replaced. By his own co-host."

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• The problem is Stephen A. Smith is a little bit too good at his job at ESPN: "There is no suitable counterweight for his bombast both because ESPN hasn’t provided one for some time and because his brand of bombast is extremely heavy," says David Roth. "It is a problem that so much of the programming on ESPN is grounded in the same kind of Stephen A.-style playfighting, and it is also a problem that so much of that work is done by Stephen A. himself despite his abject lack of interest or category knowledge in a lot of it. Smith can run through his proprietary suite of signature sounds and faces, all along his usual attitudes and gestures and perfectly on beat, on virtually any topic. This is one of the ways in which he’s good at his job. But when he doesn’t really know or care very much about topic, those sounds and faces are all you get. The cumulative effect is deadening in the same way that, say, a radio station that only played Journey’s 'Wheel In The Sky' all day long every day would be. The commentary that got Smith into trouble on Monday, in which he berserkered himself into some extremely antique nativism while trying to defend the bizarre position that universally beloved sunshine superman Shohei Ohtani is somehow hurting baseball’s marketability, was an example of how this sort of thing works when it really, really doesn’t work. Smith doesn’t really care about Ohtani speaking to the press through an interpreter, and it was easy to tell from his commentary that he hasn’t really thought much about it, either."
• It was striking to see such an outward pushback toward ESPN's No. 1 star: "Completely avoiding controversy is ideal, yet unrealistic," says Kyle Koster. "Doubling-down has become a more popular gameplan over the past few years as any type of contrition is viewed as a weakness. Smith placed himself and his co-workers — whether of AAPI heritage or simply an ally — in a regrettable spot. And he re-focused the microscope on ESPN. All parties faced decisions about the next steps. Veer toward separate, angry corners or steer toward some place constructive. Choosing the latter has proven to be the smart move, perhaps enough to satiate the faction of people open to any reconciliation. The first hour of Tuesday's First Take was as good as any in the show's tenure. Smith did more listening than talking as guests helped add perspective on Ohtani and why Monday's attempts at discussion were not satisfactory."