Feud with Stephen A. Smith escalates as Jaylen Brown shares most aggressive attack yet

Obligatory warning that the video below is NSFW and has very racially charged language:

After commenting with the laugh emoji sign of approval on the reel, Jaylen Brown shared it to his Instagram stories early this afternoon. Brown who has 4 million followers on the social media platform has been in a back and forth with ESPN's Stephen A. Smith for more than two years now.

The attacks from both sides escalated again the past couple weeks as Jaylen Brown's ranking in the league and how front offices view him took center stage. Up until now the beef wasn't that ugly, but as much as it pains me to say this as someone who has criticized Stephen A. Smith for decades for his style of reporting, in my opnion Brown crossed the line today publicly endorsing the video.

Some will try to sclaim Jaylen is not in wrong here because he didn't create the content, but that is simply gaslighting. The "Yoooo 😭" comment followed by the resharing is 100% an endorsement of the content. For someone so obsessed with "respect," Brown should know its not a good look for him to share such an aggressive targetted video to his 4 million followers and millions more if it goes viral. If the roles were reversed and Stephen A. shared something similar about Jaylen, Brown would feel extremely disrespected. Again it feels really strange defending Smith, but what's implied in the video is much more offensive than let's say accusing someone of making up "anonymous sources." Hopefully Smith doesn't ramp up his attacks to an uglier level as well now and somehow these two can end this verbal beef.

Jaylen Brown has actually had a tremendous reputation in Boston these past ten years. Hopefully he has people around him who aren't just yes men and someone advises him that demanding respect is valid, but being disrespectful outwardly ruins or at a minimum clouds that message.

Brown seems to genuinley hate Stephen A. Hard to tell if it's a mutual hate for Smith as well, since he spends a lot of time on the air praising Jaylen. Now that could just be for show and fake. And Smith could just be trying to remnain professional, because the bar for what a reporter can get fired for saying is much lower than what a star athlete can get bounced from a professional sports league for.

For his part Stephen A. definitely hasn't excelled at not escalating things prior either. It's taken two to tango here.

Both parties at this point would be better off keeping their spat off places with the most eyeballs and talking man to man.


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