I promise, I’m not a hateful person at all. I try my best to spread as much positivity and goodness in the world as I can. But I am also very hyper-critical and possess a smidge of hate for some individuals in this world. One of the people I do have a tad bit of dislike for, although I respect his career and journey to the fullest, is Stephen A. Smith. For me, he is a very polarizing figure because on one hand I tend to find him to be funny, and then I remember exactly what he does and damages to sports media every time he comes on ESPN.
And no, this is not a piece on Stephen A. Smith solely; if anything, I give nothing but praise for Stephen A. Smith for being a trailblazer for black and African-American youth looking to get into any mass communication field. But the problems created by Stephen A. Smith and a lot of his peers like Skip Bayless are something I can’t ignore.
Modern sports “analysts” on TV have completely shifted from actually objective reporting to being passable entertainment platforms that only focus on getting clicks through constant hot and wrong takes.
Despite my frequent criticism of this style of sports media. I would absolutely like to say this model and content style is absolutely genius. The model thrives because high-energy rants and viral clips reliably drive ratings and ad revenue. On the biggest sports platforms, these clicks may not seem like a lot to the average watcher, but in reality, this is millions of dollars these analysts and TV personalities generate per video with ease.
These programs, like ESPN, not only make millions from it but reward provocative debates rather than showing any analytical care or focus on factual reporting at all, especially in the basketball sphere. These shows are just corrosive and destructive to the media, and for many, the perspective they have as many fans of these shows take these hot takes from the host and analyst and regurgitate them as fact.
And it’s not just ESPN; sports brands themselves push this media and content. Shows like Inside the NBA constantly aim to create this type of bashing and hot take content style using NBA legends as a platform to generate clicks and views regardless of the damage it does to the current sport because monetization is king above all.
That being said, the shift to hot take culture has been negative for all sports but in the last 2 to 3 years many newer talk shows and analyst have come up in the industry that actually focus on factual and positive conversations around the sport and not just generating clicks, like the Numbers on the Board podcast/show as well as Amazon Prime’s analyst team hosted by Taylor Rooks consisting of several basketball legends like Dirk Nowitzki, Blake Griffin, Udonis Haslem, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Candace Parker, and Swin Cash who focus on analyzing the sports and games rather than producing the daily hot clip.
