JWill RIPS Stephen A. for underachiever take on Giannis 👀 ‘It’s an asinine comment’ 🗣️ | First Take

JWill RIPS Stephen A. for underachiever take on Giannis 👀 ‘It’s an asinine comment’ 🗣️ | First Take

okay after another disappointing exit from the playoffs questions have risen jay’s taking a deep breath about Giannis’s future that means I need to buckle up sources tell ESPN that Giannis is expected to remain a Buck next year however that is far from a certainty and things may change this off season last week on First Take Stephen A shared his thoughts on how he’d view Giannis without winning another championship let’s flash back achiever i’m going to tell you why it’s one of the greatest players to ever play the game nine all NBA selections in his career nine allstar selections and top 10 finishes in league MVP voting nine times and he has more of that than postseason series wins that’s unacceptable you don’t look at somebody that dominant that fantastic with that kind of fire in his belly to compete on a night in night out basis and all you have is one championship to show for it paging J will say well he’s sitting next to me on TV it looks like I pointed the paging to me I’m old that was one of your worst takes I’ve heard in a long time man that was horrible mhm i I um I I I I had to you know like I’m the little brother that has this filled with the venom sometimes when you and I go at each other and it’s all love cuz I I always it’s always love but uh I I think we really need to do a better job of reframing some of these conversations right and if you were to say that the franchise the Milwaukee Bucks have underachieved or are the biggest underachievers with the talent of Giannis fair but a guy who has a 50point closeout game a guy who’s never chased any of these dream team scenarios a guy who is a finals MVP a guy who’s a multi-time all-star all NBA all everything global face of the game the fact that he brought an NBA championship to Milwaukee to Milwaukee in the midst of the fire that he did to call him an underachiever I just think is an asinine comment because then if we go through history we’re calling a lot of these other great players who have won one NBA championship which by the way you know how hard it is to win a championship it’s one of the hard It’s like okay my college career I’m an underachiever because my freshman and my junior year we lost to Florida in the sweet 16 and we lost to Indiana in the sweet 16 and both of them went on to lose in a national championship game but I got one my sophomore year so I’m an underachiever because I should have more so you’re calling Allan Iverson an underachiever you’re calling Dirk an underachiever you’re calling KG an underachiever you just called Oscar Robinson an underachiever because they’ve all got one championship and because their talent is so great that in your mind if they don’t win more than one if their career ends with only one championship which just sounds crazy to say that that would have negative connotation in it which I think frankly is part of your job having the seat that you have having the career that you’ve had right we got to frame these conversations because there’s no way in hell anybody body who watches basketball who knows the level of greatness that comes along with Giannis would say that he’s underachiever now maybe Giannis might think to himself quietly hey I wish I could have got more championships but I think anybody who’s won a championship knows how everything needs to align perfectly from front office to coaching to personnel to the ball bouncing the right way every single time for it to pivot for you to win a championship couple of things a couple of things well first of all you’re entitled to your opinion i’m entitled to call your take assign a matter of fact it’s a bit worse than that because you’re ill informed because clearly you didn’t listen to what I had to say maybe you were stuck in traffic maybe you were negotiating another business deal maybe you were doing another one of your shows because you are a very very busy and successful man but you didn’t listen to my full take i specifically stated that Giannis is one of the greatest players to have ever lived giannis is phenomenal giannis is going to go down as one of the all-time greats but when you’re that great and you have one championship on your resume people are not going to look at you the same perfect example case in point is Aaron Rogers aaron Rodgers has won a league MVP three or four times in the National Football League aaron Rogers has been to several conference championship games aaron Rogers is destined for the Hall of Fame aaron Rogers won one Super Bowl and has appeared in one Super Bowl and hasn’t been to the Super Bowl since 2010 and look at how people are talking about him why because you look at a guy like Brady you look at a guy like like him and Patrick Mahomes and others and you’re saying that Aaron Rogers talent was on that level there’s no questioning his greatness and what he brought to the table but you still find yourself saying just one we look at Josh Allen who doesn’t have one yet we look at Lamar Jackson who doesn’t have one yet and what do we say there’s an immense amount of pressure you got football players current and former that look at them and they say “Yo what are you going to do?” Why because they’re asking for you to knock down the door you look at those kind of situations you brought up Allen Iverson well Allan Iverson carried at 6 feet 165 carried a team on his back and the only thing that prevented him from winning a championship was Kobe and Shaq in their prime but Patrick didn’t win a championship hold on hold on hold on hold on patrick you didn’t win a championship carl Malone didn’t win a championship john Stockton didn’t win a championship it doesn’t stop them from being Hall of Famers it doesn’t stop them from being appreciated but when you think about a conversation and what it entails about a player when you’re talking about their epitap professionally and what they brought to the table while recognizing their greatness you do lament the fact that it was one title jerry West was the silhouette jerry West went to like eight or nine NBA finals but he had one championship there were people who appreciated his greatness and then there was others who questioned why was he the silhouette and they brought those questions into into focus because you knew they were so great that you expected more so sometimes when we look at it we look at Kevin Durant whether it’s fair or unfair oh he departed from OKC he goes to Golden State he wins two championships two NBA Finals MVP would have won three if he hadn’t torn his Achilles because I believe they would have swept Toronto what do we do we lament what hasn’t been achieved i’m not saying it’s fair i’m not saying it’s right i remember when I came on the air when Boston won the championship and and and the Durant and the Durant crew was very upset at me because what I said was “Yo it’s not fair it’s not right but if Steph Curry wins the championship in Boston what’s going to happen is is that Kevin Durant you left that for Kyrie Irving and people were gonna bring that up what happened in the immediate aftermath of them went beating Boston people were bringing that up i didn’t say it was right i didn’t say it was fair but knowing the public the way that I do being a journalist for 30 plus years understanding what the narratives are going to be etc me pointing that out is not me throwing shade on them you’re taking it as if I threw shade on Giannis and I’m doing no such thing i’m recognizing his greatness i’m simply saying if he only has one championship to show for it and you’re going home in the first round every other time like they have the last two or three years people are not going to talk about him in the way he deserves to be talked about because the one championship is all he has to show for it that’s just reality i’m not saying it’s right but it’s reality but see you drive these narratives you drive the narrative that’s not true i’m not the only one i I know you’re But hey I’m not the only one but I think we both will agree though you’re the one though you’re the one you You’re the man you sitting the seat but time out but time out but But can’t you decipher the difference can’t you decipher the difference between me saying I’m just asking a question Jay i’m just asking a question can’t we decipher the difference between me saying “Yo this is what’s going to happen.” And me saying it’s totally fair i didn’t say it was totally fair just like I didn’t say it was totally fair about Kevin Durant but I said it was going to happen and I was right but Stephen A you a couple of things in what you did first of all like I I can’t even put Giannis and and Aaron Rogers in the in the same breath i I I I can’t do that uh just because of all the other I hear what you’re saying but I think there’s a lot of other factors that would make people talk about Aaron Rogers and some other things more so than Giannis and the way Giannis has done it on the court totally totally when when you when you talk about when you talk about AI and some of the teams that he’s run up against like also I I think one of the things that we’ve turned this whole shenanigan into is like players are also supposed to pick who’s on their roster players are supposed to be de facto GMs players are supposed to make personnel decisions and coaching decisions in all time and that’s not how every player is built that doesn’t mean that a player is less so I think the way we frame some conversations sometimes too and think about what the media did like look we sat in it and I’m not saying that he didn’t have anything to do with the conversation but it almost felt like the media was trying to drive a wedge in between Steph and Katie i wonder if they had stayed on the same team for that they would have won every damn championship but that wasn’t good enough for people cuz people drove the narrative about KD can’t do it his own way and like that stuff affects people so of of course Giannis is going to feel they drive a wedge between Steph and KD they were just talking about KD and his decision to go to Golden State that wasn’t driving a wedge between Steph and KD here’s the problem giannis agrees with Stephen A giannis has pretty much said these exact words that if he only won one championship i don’t know if he used the word underachiever i don’t have the quotes in front of me but he’s pretty much said it now you can argue that maybe he feels that way because of a narrative but the reason he’s undecided right now is because of this pushpull he loves Milwaukee he again has said this he’s talked about how he came to the United States and was embraced in his whole family and it is his home and he loves it and he is conflicted because he knows that he wants more that’s one of the things that he’s going through every day right now and so I am actually tend to agree with you Jay because one of the things me personally I am one of these people who have stood on the front lines watching what it takes to win a championship and so I know that winning one I I I would never denigrate anybody a championship anybody puts an asterisk on it I immediately get get upset about right but I have heard Giannis say that he needs to have more than one so I am compelled by that as well but but but Wendy it’s fine to want more than one i it’s fine to recognize that hey with my talent we should been knocking on the door differently like I I I want that but like when when you talk about the greatness of somebody’s career you you you almost gives off the illusion that everything is in Giannis’s control when Wendy you and I and Stephen you know this too there are so many other factors that go into these type of things that happen for players to win championships so many other factors is coaching one of them yes coaching is one of them um didn’t Giannis have something to do with the coach that succeeded and and what happened and then gave up on him okay so if that’s the case has Giannis made every decision for the franchise and all their miscommunic okay so like all I’m saying is every player is built differently and I just can’t let you Stephen A talk about the totality of his career if he ends up as a guy who won a championship that that’s underachieving i’m not asking you to feel differently i’m not asking you to feel differently i’m asking you to contextualize what I said accurately that’s all I’m asking and what I mean by that is when I say underachieving what I mean by that is that he’s so phenomenal so great the expectations with him particularly when he beat Phoenix was multiple championships if he walks away with just one never having won a championship again that is going to be something that is deemed unsuccessful even to him he has said so he is contemplating departing from a city that he loves because it’s not enough for him to sit back okay and be and have just one championship on his resume and you can’t bring up colleges as as as as a comparison there’s a limitation on the amount of college time you got four years max if you are professional if Duke was a professional basketball team Jay and you were playing for Duke the way that you were rolling you know good and damn well you would have said to yourself “One ain’t enough based on your production what you brought to the table and how what a powerhouse your program was if that was a professional franchise that would not have been enough for you.” That’s all I’m saying you guys are having different arguments i think I think Jay is speaking philosophically yeah so he always is and that’s fine and that’s that’s you raise your eyebrow like that philosophy it’s a philosophy it’s a philosophy this is a moment this is an action moment we’re not speaking on the philosophical meaning of one championship or not we’re talking about Giannis in an action moment where he it’s not just philosophy it’s about whether what he’s going to do and that’s why it matters a little bit more but on a philosophical level Jay I’m on your side i’m But so am I jiannis is phenomenal and I love his and I love his mentality i love everything about him i’m just saying with him and his greatness 30 and 11 over the last four years one championship that could be enough [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

On First Take, Jay Williams and Brian Windhorst weigh in on Stephen A. Smith’s bold take that Giannis Antetokounmpo has underachieved if he doesn’t win another title in his career.

0:00 Jay Williams calls out Stephen A. for his Giannis take
3:59 Stephen A. responds to Jay Williams
10:00 Brian Windhorst says Giannis has agreed with Stephen A.
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