Stephen A. Smith Admits He Has One Regret When It Comes to His Ayesha Curry Rant

In a recent interview with BET, Stephen A. Smith claims he doesn’t regret calling out Ayesha Curry and comparing her to Savannah James.

He just regrets not bringing Bill Clinton into his argument.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

During the NBA Finals, people called you sexist for criticizing Ayesha Curry’s place over her tweeting that the Finals were “rigged.” You compared her to LeBron’s wife Savannah and took heat for comparing how they each handle themselves in the public eye. People felt like you were setting a wife’s place and gender roles.

First of all, let me interject, let me get this over with. I have one regret — and only one regret — about the Ayesha Curry thing and that is this: in the middle of my diatribe on First Take, what I should have said when I mentioned LeBron James’s wife and how great she is and how she never says much because she understands that she’s representing him, is, ‘Do you know who else should do that? Bill Clinton.’ Even though, he’s the former president of the United States, who was running for president at the time? Hillary Clinton. Had I mentioned that, then my point would have been made better.

My point was not about gender. My point was about you being a spouse, whether a husband or wife. When you’re involved with someone who is in the public eye, you are an extension of them and by virtue of that, the things you do are a reflection upon them. That means, you might need to guard what you say and do because it might have a detrimental effect on them.

Ayesha Curry is by all accounts a wonderful woman, wife, mother and fan of her husband along with the game of basketball. Inside of three hours, she talked about security messing with the family team bus, she alluded to racist cops in Cleveland and then called the NBA fixed. My question is simple — how does that help your husband at that particular moment in time, which happened to be the same game he got ejected from, threw out his mouthpiece and accidentally hit a fan?

In Game 6 of the NBA Finals, he was there talking and answering questions about his wife. How is that supposed to be helpful? It’s the same thing if Bill Clinton opens his mouth, started talking about stuff that gets Hillary in trouble while she was running for office. Had I used the Clinton example, it would have made my overlying point. I wasn’t talking about gender. I didn’t say that about [Ayesha] because she’s a woman.

If this was the WNBA championship and she was playing and Steph Curry was her husband and he got in the news in three separate instances inside of three hours during the WNBA Finals, I would have said, ‘You’re the husband. What are you doing? She doesn’t need that right now because she’s performing.’ You’re an extension of one another and you have to watch each other’s back. That’s the point I was trying to make. That’s the only point I was trying to make.