Stephen A. Smith and Kevin Durant are rarely on the same wavelength. But this time the ESPN analyst has thrown his full support behind the 16-time All-Star’s pointed critique of the narrative surrounding American versus European basketball. He chose to open the latest episode of his self-titled show by jumping right into KD’s recent comments in an ESPN interview.

The Houston Rockets star suggested that the constant praise for the “European style” of play is often at the expense of American grassroots basketball. He implied that the hype around European basketball carries a deeper, racially coded subtext. It’s a statement his most notorious critic backed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you I’m 10 toes down on this with Kevin Durant. He’s a thousand percent right,” Smith declared to his national audience. He argued that the criticism of the American game often serves as a proxy for targeting the primary demographic of the sport in the United States.

“If you think for one second it doesn’t involve a hesitancy to support the black athlete or it doesn’t involve a tendency to point the finger at the black athlete, make no mistake about it. That’s exactly what Kevin Durant was alluding to.”

Shortly after Kevin Durant explicitly singled out Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic for not upping the effort in the All-Star Game, KD got backing from All-Star MVP Anthony Edwards on the same sentiment. Days later, Slim once again called out the bias in an interview with ESPN’s Vincent Goodwill.

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SAS addressed the same points on First Take before speaking at length about it on his show. The media veteran emphasized that as a sportscaster in a prominent media position, he feels a “personal responsibility” to speak up when players like Durant highlight these systemic narratives. KD’s comments, with the likes of SAS chiming in, underscores a potential 2028 Team USA return.

Kevin Durant calls out bias against American basketball

One of the most prolific scorers in Team USA, Kevin Durant, recently confirmed his intention to represent the country again in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. While making that intention clear, he pushed back against the idea that the rest of the world has “caught up” to American dominance on the hardwood.

“It’s a lot of bulls— with that. I can read between the lines on that. It’s a shot at Black Americans. We’re controlling the sport. They’re tired of us controlling the sport.

Durant specifically took aim at the frequent disparagement of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) circuit, which is often blamed for a perceived lack of fundamental skill in young American players. “I just don’t like the talk around the USA versus European style of how you approach the game,” Durant told ESPN. “All I hear is ‘AAU is destroying the game. The Euros do it right while the Americans do it wrong.'”

Even the idea that France, led by Victor Wembanyama, could beat him made him laugh. “France is coming for you.’ Really? We smacked them boys.” Indeed the host country of the 2024 Olympics couldn’t stop Slim in the gold medal game.

Stephen A. Smith’s defense of Durant’s comments included a historical perspective on how the NBA has been marketed since the 1992 Dream Team era. He claims that while globalizing the sport was a financial necessity, it also served as a way to ‘whitewash’ a productto maintain mass appeal in a changing American populace.

“If you wanted to be successful, if you wanted to have mass appeal, if it’s important even now in this day and age in the year 2026 to have it, imagine how important it was in the year 1992,” Smith said.

As the debate over the “globalization” of the NBA continues, marked by the fact that an American player has not won the MVP award since 2018 and Adam Silver’s active push for NBA Europe, Durant and Smith’s comments have shifted the focus to the social implications of the sport’s evolving identity.