The 2022 NBA Finals offers up a chance for Steph Curry to win his first Finals MVP award. It’s the lone trophy missing from his otherwise jam packed trophy case, and there’s been a whole lot of chatter in the lead-up to the Finals about what winning that would mean for Curry’s legacy, because apparently, winning that will confirm for some people that Steph Curry is, indeed, good at basketball.
Anyway, Wednesday’s episode of First Take included some Curry legacy chat, and at one point, Stephen A. Smith went on a rant about how Michael Jordan changed the game of basketball for the worse. His argument was more or less that Jordan made the game less team-centric and more based on the individual. You can watch it here.
It took a bit for one of Smith’s oldest foils, Kevin Durant, to see the clip and respond to it. In Durant’s eyes, players of Curry and Jordan’s caliber are not capable of changing the game for the worse, and the folks who do that are takesmen like Smith, Skip Bayless, and Shannon Sharpe.
My theory is that guys like steve, skip and Shannon have changed the game for the worse. Playas like Stephen and Michael can only push the game forward. https://t.co/0Oc9J2HqxS
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) June 2, 2022
Durant went on to say that, beyond it being damaging to the game, Smith’s take is just not accurate and “beyond insane.”
This take is absurd. Jordan started winning chips precisely bc he made a concerted effort to involve everyone. He could’ve easily averaged 35+ and chose not to for the sake of winning.
— Dan Andros (@DanAndros) June 2, 2022
Lol I was confused for a second but yea that take was beyond insane, damaging to the sport of basketball
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) June 2, 2022
Listen, I’m writing a blog about this instead of something about the NBA Finals so I fully concede that I am part of the problem here. Having said that, this is the latest in a long line of times we’ve seen Durant call Smith out for stuff he says on ESPN, and if history is any precedent, we fully anticipate that Smith is going to say something in response.