thelesterlee
Earlier this week, the Boston Celtics hired Ime Udoka as their new head coach to replace Brad Stevens who was fired but somehow also earned a promotion to run the team so he hired his replacement(?). I don’t know.
Jay Williams, ESPN NBA analyst, had to comment on the hire as it is his job to do so.
Congrats to Ime Udoka, the first black head coach in Boston Celtics history. Unfortunately, it takes 0.00000001 seconds to remember that he’s not the first black head coach. In fact, the Celtics were the FIRST team in NBA history to hire a black head coach when they hired Bill Russell.
I mean, Doc Rivers is in the news for losing another playoff series he was supposed to win against the Atlanta Hawks. Rivers won an NBA championship coaching the Celtics a decade ago. Jay Williams should be aware of this.
Here’s Jay’s defense of his lack of knowledge:
As it relates to the Boston Celtics tweet that came from my account a couple of hours ago… I did not post that & my passcode has now been changed.
— Jay Williams (@RealJayWilliams) June 23, 2021
Yes, some nefarious hacker logged into the account of an NBA media member and decided not to post a fake trade or free agent signing. Nope. Decided not to post something racist or profane. Nope.
But they decided to post something that was juuuuust inaccurate enough to embarrass Jay but not get him fired.
Jay Williams was in the news a few weeks earlier for going onto television and quoting a private conversation he and Kevin Durant had in which Durant said not to compare him and Giannis.
Here is his quote from ESPN’s Get Up:
A couple of years ago we’re at a holiday party and I came on this show and we did a segment where we had Anthony Davis and we had Kevin Durant. I said, ‘You know, if Anthony Davis and KD would have a baby, the similarities physically-wise would be like Giannis.’ I go to the holiday party, Kevin Durant comes up to me and says, ”Yo, don’t you ever, ever compare me to Giannis. Don’t you ever compare me to Giannis.’
I say, ‘KD, what are you talking about? I was just talking about similarities physicality-wise, size, length.’ He’s like, ‘No. Don’t you ever compare me to Giannis.’
So, when I see that matchup, you know what that matchup says to me? That’s something personal for Kevin Durant. That’s who he’s attacking each and every day. ‘Cause that’s been in his brain because people have talked about Giannis being on the same level. That’s the kind of intensity you’re seeing in this rivalry.
Here is Durant’s response to this cute tale:
Mans will do anything to advance their careers in this media shit, wanting to be accepted by an industry that will dispose of you whenever they please. Keep me out all that corny ass talk about whos better and legacy and all that dumb ass shit. I don’t even talk like that
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) June 8, 2021
This entire story shows a massive problem with the NBA media at large. I don’t know if Jay Williams was completely fabricating this story. He probably wasn’t. But using his relationship with Durant and choosing to tell a private story to kill time in a segment with Mike Greenberg shows the lack of respect for the players you’re covering.
It seemed like an intimate conversation between Durant and who he believed to be a friend and not something he expected Jay Williams to use on ESPN in order to make some bullshit point.
Let’s look another gross ESPN TV moment this week involving Stephen A. Smith.
Stephen A. Smith received a text about Ben Simmons on-air just now…
— The Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) June 22, 2021
Stephen A. hid behind some anonymous ‘source’ in order to get away with directly calling 24-year-old Ben Simmons a baby. Disgusting to shit on a kid who is probably experiencing an emotional rock bottom and use a fake text to do so.
But let’s pretend for a moment as if that text was real and a source close to Philly really did say that to him, Stephen A. should realize at this point in his career when he is being used by agents or front office execs to raise or lower the value of a player.
These execs and agents know when First Take is on the air. They also know that Stephen A. likes thinking he’s some special media member who gets unique info sent directly to him so he instantly spews it on TV without taking one fucking second to think that he’s being used to create a narrative about a player.
I will never forget watching First Thing’s First on FS1 two years ago during the Kawhi Leonard free agency in which NO ONE knew what Kawhi’s plan was because the only person he talked to was his uncle yet Cris Carter went on TV every day claiming to be within his camp and having details.
He went as far as tweeting out that there will be news by the end of the day regarding Kawhi only for that news to be that he wasn’t making a decision yet.
NBA media is broken. TV analysts spend all day scrolling their mentions instead of watching actual games. You don’t need to be an NBA historian, but you should know that Bill Russell was the fucking Celtics head coach.
Whether it’s Paul Pierce on IG Live with strippers or Jay Williams lying about Durant conversations or Stephen A. Smith becoming puppets for agents with agendas, NBA media is in trouble. And that’s without even getting into Shaq hating every player for not averaging 40 points a night and Jeff Van Gundy spending the entire broadcast complaining about the rules.
Fire everyone on TV. It’s all broken.
Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts, critiques or concerns, drop a comment below or shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s chat, bay-beeeee.
