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🏀 Indiana explains. The Indiana Fever were not punished after making Caitlin Clark a very late scratch for a game last week due to a back injury. While Clark was not listed on the injury report before missing the game, she took full responsibility for the decision and the timing. Head coach Stephanie White questioned why the WNBA issued the organization a warning.

🎤 Stephen A. (kind of) responds to Wright. After FS1’s Nick Wright likened his ESPN colleague to a “mobster” over Smith’s frequent threats toward the athletes he covers, Smith pulled a very similar move on Wright, referencing a supposed plan coming from Klutch Sports, which reps Wright, rather than engaging with the criticism directly.

⚽ More World Cup interviews. Fox Sports confirmed its plans to use newly approved World Cup hydration breaks for additional interviews with players and teams, but has yet to announce whether it will air additional commercials during these breaks. FIFA has already approved both interviews and commercials; networks must determine their plans.

⚽ Lloyd cautiously optimistic. Fox’s Carli Lloyd told Awful Announcing her expectations are high for the USMNT at this year’s World Cup, but that confidence could be a double-edged sword for the men’s team, as Lloyd explained her optimism also means her critiques will be that much harsher if they exit early.

🏀 Another WCF record. The NBA’s viewership has stayed incredibly strong early in the Western Conference Finals, as NBC’s broadcast last Wednesday was the most-watched Game 2 in history, averaging more than 10 million viewers.

Is this really the best Stephen A. Smith can do?

The First Take host’s online skirmish with Jaylen Brown has not only roped in Boston media or Brown’s Twitch chat, but a good portion of the sports media community. The uniquely modern elements of the situation have made it into a debate far larger than a typical media beef: Brown’s omnipresent commentary via livestream, Smith’s editorial control over ESPN’s late-morning block, and the evolving ethics of modern journalism.

While Brown is not fully a victim in any of this, Smith clearly crossed a line when he threatened to “expose” behind-the-scenes details about Brown. The manipulative, conspiratorial tone of Smith’s comments not only breached whatever is left of the journalistic code on sports television but also reached a level of big-timing that felt at the very least far more menacing than a daytime sports studio show should be.

Smith stopped merely analyzing Brown as a Celtics player and has been trying to intimidate him personally.

It’s not the first time Smith has tried this, but it feels far darker this time. Perhaps Smith learned a few ugly lessons from his clash with LeBron James early last year.

But rather than re-evaluating where he draws the line with the athletes he covers, Smith was thinking of the James feud for a different reason this week. When FS1’s Nick Wright called Smith out for other sports commentators look bad by making things personal with athletes so often, Smith somewhat surprisingly took the time to respond. Usually, Smith only fights battles he can easily win.

In this case, Smith pushed back on Wright by unsubtly accusing Wright of fighting a proxy war on behalf of Klutch Sports, which represents both Wright and James. The substance of Wright’s criticism got only a half-hearted mention, with Smith insisting that what he is doing when he threatens to reveal details about a foe is still fundamentally journalism.

Watching the battle unfold, I thought back to Smith’s previous debates with Dan Le Batard over whether he and First Take had diminished the standing of sports media by embracing debate. At that time, Smith clearly emerged as the winner by calling Le Batard a hypocrite. How, Smith asked, could someone like Le Batard throw stones when he uses lowbrow humor and pranks to spice up his show in the same way Smith yelled at Skip Bayless to provoke the audience?

Here, though, Smith doesn’t have such an argument. Because, as Wright stated originally, nobody does this precise sort of thing besides Smith. You won’t catch even the foulest sports TV hosts looking directly to the camera and teasing the reveal of sensitive information about the athlete they are discussing. For all of Smith’s genuine talent and tremendous work ethic, he has backed himself in a corner by doing this one thing too many times.

You can tell Smith may feel it, too by how he performatively refused to say Wright’s name and resorted to ad hominem nonsense. Even if we can all agree that perhaps Wright’s feelings toward Smith have been colored by an allegiance to James or Klutch, the argument Wright put out against Smith was very personal and relevant to the professional field they share.

It would do Smith well to engage with it. Many people see Wright as the epitome of hot takery on TV, a descendant of Smith’s style. Yet even Wright’s biggest haters would never accuse him of being hostile to the people he spouts off about on First Things First.

Smith’s reason for sidestepping the diss is likely that his bosses continue to reward him in spite of (or perhaps because of) this approach to television, and that the viewership for First Take and his online content remains strong. The potential immorality of Smith’s approach is not hurting the business.

And Smith may believe he is not long for the sports world, that whatever Wright or any other foe does to harm his reputation as a sports host won’t matter once he replaces Jimmy Kimmel or runs for office or gets a nightly news show for some streaming service. He could be right.

Still, the one thing Smith always quietly maintained, even as people called him “Screamin’ A” and all the rest, was that enough people took him seriously. Smith’s career aspirations revolve around even more people taking him seriously in the future. If he doubles down on this battle, it could very well be another major L in that quest.

As part of our 2026 Rising Stars package last week, Charlotte Wilder and Madeline Hill of The Sports Gossip Show joined our talk show The Play-By-Play to discuss the latest sports gossip news on Aaron Rodgers, Caitlin Clark, and Taylor Swift… plus their show, their careers, and their exciting partnership with The Athletic!

Watch the episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple!

Not what you want from a head coach down 3-0!

A touching tribute from Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the late Kyle Busch:

Checking in on the Boston radio vs. Pardon My Take beef we’ve all been anxiously watching

Jaylen Brown has seemingly challenged Stephen A. Smith to a live debate…

“…there are times when I watch OKC play, I don’t feel like they respect the process of the game.” - ESPN’s Jay Williams, explaining why he “can’t root” for the way the Oklahoma City Thunder play basketball as they push for a second straight NBA championship.

“So I don’t think it’s as bad as electing Trump to fix your country, but that’s the idea.” - Max Kellerman, apologizing for his take that acquiring media punchline James Harden is akin to the U.S. electing President Donald Trump.

“I think 24 is preposterous and 16 is bordering on it.” - ESPN’s Rece Davis, arguing the college football product would be hurt overall by a 24-team College Football Playoff, and that it will not save coaches’ and AD’s jobs.

“…I’ve been chasing that success and that type of partnership, to be fair, ever since I blew it up.” - Craig Carton, praising former WFAN cohost Boomer Esiason as Esiason enters the National Radio Hall of Fame.

“I have been for sure frustrated at a lot of people talking about what they think the job of an insider is without actually knowing.” - NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport, defending his profession after the Dianna Russini scandal.

“I kind of feel like I’ve done it from afar, and lived through it his eyes and voice and friendship.” - Kevin Harlan, with a touching explanation for why he is just fine with ESPN’s Mike Breen calling the NBA Finals the past two-plus decades.

During the 2024 presidential campaign and in the second Trump administration, athletes have taken a lesser role in advocacy and activism than they did during Trump’s first term.

Many have offered theories for why: Trump’s more dominating victory in 2024 compared with 2016; the lack of a galvanizing issue related to these athletes and their lives; the diminishment of social media as a tool for activism; on and on.

At the same time, pro-Trump voices have stepped to the fore across the sports world. Athlete hosts like Bryson DeChambeau and sports-adjacent content creators such as the Nelk Boys and Jake Paul were eager participants in Trump’s very online campaign. Jon Jones and other stars gave the “Trump dance” moment in 2024 and 2025. The MAGA hat made a brief comeback, most notably thanks to Nick Bosa on Sunday Night Football.

However, in these situations, Trump and his movement are better understood as an internet trend than a political force. During the campaign and early in the presidency, the Trump side was the cool, counter-culture side to be on. Athletes and sports figures were simply chasing cultural capital by associating with him. They were not fighting for change or even aligning with Trump as a means to an end. It was just for clout.

As Trump’s popularity tanked, the influencers left him, both inside and outside sports. But it appears nobody told Jaxson Dart.

This weekend, Dart introduced Trump at a speech in New York after failing to incite “Go Big Blue” chant. The speech prompted Dart’s teammate Abdul Carter to joke that he thought the video was AI, asking on X, “what we doing man”?

The internet had about as much energy for that culture as it had had since the early part of this decade, which is to say not much. That’s not the interesting part of Carter’s post.

What is interesting about Carter calling out Dart is that it got attention. Two teammates clashing over the president? That’s a beef format the algorithm hasn’t seen before.

It’s no secret that social media is built around conflict and call-outs these days. Athletes are increasingly consumed by casual fans and even some diehards as content characters rather than competitors or figureheads of a community. It makes sense that people might engage more with the marketplace of ideas through a conflict like this rather than a 2010s-era Instagram graphic from an NBA star giving the party line.

As explained above, Trump-supporting celebrities have gone quiet again. Dart just gave another example of what happens when you fail to read the room.

But for the rest of this term and going forward in a post-Trump political moment, Carter has given a template for an athlete who wants to make noise: Go at your teammates. The criticism of Carter actually centered on this dynamic, not on his apparent distaste for the president. Some argued that Carter had broken the locker-room code by publicly mocking Dart.

Maybe he did, but in so doing, he offered one of the more prominent anti-Trump messages from an athlete of this second term. Crossing that line and creating conflict for the internet to vacuum up was just the recipe for this moment.

Of course, if athletes come together in the future the way LeBron James and Co. once did at the ESPYs or the WNBA did to campaign for Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate race in 2020, the impact will likely still be felt. On a more granular, day-to-day level, it can be much harder.

If anyone really wanted to make a scene in the future, they know how to now.