The fallout for ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith continued on Tuesday, after he apologized for making bigoted remarks about Angels star Shohei Ohtani and the Nigerian national basketball team.
ESPN national MLB writer Jeff Passan appeared on Smith's "First Take" show to address Smith's controversial remarks about Ohtani's use of an interpreter when dealing with English-speaking fans and media.
Passan seemed to chew out Smith, the show, and the Worldwide Leader as a whole in defense of Ohtani, describing the incident as a case of "trafficking in ignorance."
"[Ohtani] is the sort of person who this show, who this network, who this country should embrace," Passan said. "We are not the ones who should be trafficking in ignorance."
The show opened with Smith apologizing to "the Asian community and Asian-Americans." He had previously apologized on social media on Monday, after his comments from that morning's show came under scrutiny.
"Let me be the first to stand up and say I want to express my sincere apologies to the Asian community and the Asian-American community," Smith said. "I am a Black man. I religiously go off about communities that are marginalized."
Smith also briefly apologized to the Nigerian basketball team, whose players he had seemed to casually dismiss simply because he couldn't pronounce their names.
Later in Tuesday's show, ESPN baseball writer Joon Lee appeared on First Take, lamenting the overall unpreparedness of the western media to cover the Asian-American experience in a "nuanced" way. He made similar comments on ESPN's "Baseball Tonight" on Monday night.
However, Smith's apologies didn't sit well with everyone, including past critic Kwame Brown. The former NBA journeyman recently blasted Smith for frequently referring to him as a bust despite his long and lucrative career, and for what Brown characterized as selectively ignoring his charitable work in his post-career life.
On his own podcast on Tuesday, Brown suggested Smith was made to apologize specifically to Ohtani by ESPN's bosses, while Nigeria was basically ignored.
"Stephen A., you're a punk," Brown said. "What the fuck? You apologized to everybody else. I thought you said you'd apologize to the groups you offend. What about us? ... Now, he apologized to everybody else but us." (h/t Black Sports Online)
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