Stephen A. Smith’s newest turn into shallow, performative political commentary—on his podcast, I can’t imagine anyone spending their free time watching—proves this has-been, clinging on to his remaining years of fame, will do anything for a dollar.
Well, anything except do his job.
Last year’s ESPN NBA Finals coverage displayed, for all eyes to see, just how lazy and disinterested Stephen A. Smith is.
Here’s Stephen A., on his phone—playing solitaire like he’s bored, waiting at the gate for his plane to depart, in the midst of live on-court action for the NBA Finals he is being paid exorbitant dollars to break down for the audience:
Stephen A playing solitaire during the NBA Finals. Yikes pic.twitter.com/bZ1fPptfpE
— Christian (@FreakyFunSize) June 14, 2025
Not a crumb of respect for the audience.
The highest-paid employee in the company—a man who hasn’t introduced an interesting, thought-provoking opinion into the discourse since the Bush Administration—shoved into the Finals coverage under the misguided belief he’d help make the event feel like a bigger deal—and Stephen A. Smith is playing solitaire like he’s in the Jiffy Lube lobby waiting for his oil change.
Anyway, here we are, months later, let’s watch his new AI commercial for some shitty solitaire app:
Cool. I get it. Ha ha, Stephen A. is linking up with “Papaya Gaming” to sell a solitaire app. Lololol.
But it wasn’t just Stephen A. pushing this snakeoil.
Mina Kimes, Dan Orlovsky and other, actually respected, ESPN employees, posted about Solitaire Cash—an app in which people with money, give that money to Papaya Gaming.
Although not exactly a gambling app, your honor, this is a gambling app.
Papaya calls this a “skill” game to avoid gambling penalties—but yea, this app is to steal money from people who like solitaire—and apparently, from people who like ESPN.
Real quick, out of curiosity, let’s meet Oriel Bachar, founder of Papaya Gaming.
Meet Oriel Bachar
A former IDK soldier turned Israeli tech dork/scammer, until the birth of Papaya—a company prior to their partnership with the slowly rotting corpse of ESPN’s staff, was known for helping Israeli families near the Gaza warzone,—but not normal help of course, like food and shelter. Nope, they had to play Mr. Beast-style games to win prizes.
My favorite part of Schindler’s List was when the Goldberg family won the tug-o-war to earn their escape from the war.
Papaya Gaming, as you read this, is in the midst of a lawsuit over the use of bots in their little solitaire game they claim is skill-based.
Here’s some of the complaints from the lawsuit:
Papaya’s advertising led customers to make pointed inquiries about Papaya using bots and to fling angry accusations at Papaya. Papaya did not respond to the inquiries and accusations by acknowledging bot usage, but by denial. For example, executives decided to respond to a customer who asked for a direct answer on whether Papaya used bots by informing the user that the platform has “real players” and placing the blame on “rare cases where players use automated systems.” Recognizing that customers noticing bots on the platform was a growing issue and impacted “trust in our fairness,” Papaya executives modified its bots’ performance to make bot profiles appear more human so that fewer users would detect their usage going forward.
So users see Stephen A. Smith—so enthralled by this solitaire app, he can’t look up from his phone at work—download to play, for money, against other users—only to be robbed by bots beating their ass and then lied to about the existence of these bots.
America sucks right now.
Everything is a rigged casino.
A national gold rush but instead of anyone ever actually getting their hands on gold—we’re all hot-potatoe-ing Herbalife back and forth.
This ESPN solitaire partnership is gross.
Israel is starving Palestinians and proud, loud zionists not only face zero consequences but they are improving their businesses.
Kim Kardashian announced the opening of Skims stores in Israel.
Across the border, soldiers intentionally strip doctors of baby formula, their prime minister gleeful to blow up the entire Middle East—and Mina Kimes wants me to give Oriel Bacher my money so he can dangle it in front of a kid who sees a bloodbath from his bedroom window.
Remember when there was like, ethics and morals?
Stephen A. Smith Understands Something About Sports Media That Max Kellerman Never Did
Thanks for reading.
Let me know what NFL stories you want to write about next. Shoot me an email at Deadseriousmailbag@gmail.com. Let’s yap.
Follow ya boy on social media: Facebook. Twitter. Bluesky. Instagram.
