When Paul George asked Stephen A. Smith on Podcast P whether he regrets any of his takes. Smith pointed to Kwame Brown and said he wished he could do that rant over. He has now gone further.
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Smith says the “Bonafide Scrub” moment is one of the biggest regrets of his career, and he never imagined it would outlive the broadcast by nearly two decades.
“I will always regret the impact that I had on Kwame Brown. I never meant for that to happen,” Smith said on his YouTube channel. The comments date back to 2008, when Smith reacted to the Lakers trading Brown to Memphis for Pau Gasol. Smith has said he was covering the sport at the time and was talking about a younger player.
“I was covering the sport and I said what I said at the time that he was playing and he was younger and I never thought that it would materialize into being a meme 16, 18 years later. I never knew that. So I do regret that. That’s number one,” Smith said.
Stephen A. Smith added that he stays quiet when Brown criticizes him. “That’s why I never no matter what he says. I really don’t say anything. I don’t bother him because I’m like, you know, people bothered him for I can understand. I really really do but I respect the brother as a man and I don’t I didn’t I didn’t wish that on him.”
The remarks matter because Smith’s original rant has been the most repeated one of his career. He called Brown a “bonafide scrub” who couldn’t play a lick of basketball. The rant happened before social media was part of everyday life, yet it is still widely shared and referenced.
Stephen A. Smith’s Regret Follows Years of Public Back-and-Forth With Kwame Brown
The feud heated up in 2021. Brown went after Smith in an expletive-filled Instagram rant in which he invited him to “meet me in Seattle, where you can have mutual combat.” Smith responded on his ESPN+ show with a promo-style segment and a one-minute-20-second reel of Brown’s bloopers, arguing that his only criticism was about Brown’s basketball skills.
Brown also launched viral YouTube videos accusing Smith of being a media bully who profited from tearing down a young player for decades.
The regret isn’t new, but it has become firmer. In 2023, Smith said he knew what he had said and meant it. He added that he hadn’t known the comments would become memes and videos 15 years later, and that he realizes how hurt Brown is.
His latest comments drop the heads-up about what he meant. He framed the impact as something he didn’t foresee and doesn’t want to repeat, and he said that he stays out of Brown’s way.