Stephen A. Smith is still flying high after his beloved Knicks won the NBA title. But when he tried to connect Victor Wembanyama to France’s World Cup chances, San Antonio fans and a whole lot of other people decided he’d officially stepped out of his lane.
Thursday on First Take, Smith tried to tie the NBA Finals to the biggest event in soccer. His logic was a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly.
“I’m thinking about France because of Wemby and how he just went home in the NBA Finals,” Smith said, before asking whether the World Cup and what France’s national team would do. “I’m wondering what France is going to do, could this be the year that they finally get it done and they win the World Cup?”
For anyone who has watched a World Cup in the last decade, that sentence hit like a bad pass. France won the whole thing in 2018. They were runners-up in 2022. Smith acted like Wembanyama’s NBA Finals loss was somehow a fresh wound for an entire country. The internet was not having it.
“Huh? ‘Finally’ get it done? France has gone one whole World Cup without winning it,” one fan replied on X, formerly Twitter.
Another fan was less charitable: “France won the cup in 2018 and were finalists in 2022. Maybe keep SAS on basketball topics because he’s embarrassing when he steps out.”
The irony here is that Smith clearly wanted to draw a line between Wembanyama’s Finals exit and France’s soccer fortunes. But the two things don’t connect the way he thought. Wemby had nothing to do with the national soccer team, and France’s soccer team has been dominant for years. They didn’t need a basketball player’s Finals loss as motivation.
Smith is a brilliant basketball mind. That’s not really up for debate. But every time he wanders into other sports, it gets dicey. This was maybe the most glaring example yet — a major national TV moment where he assumed France was in some kind of drought. They’re not. They’re arguably the best national team in the world right now, and they’ve been terrific for a while.
To be fair, Smith was probably just excited. His Knicks just beat Wembanyama and the Spurs in the Finals. He’s been on a victory lap ever since. He even showed some remorse about the soccer take later, saying he meant no disrespect. But the damage was done online.
Spurs fans piled on because it’s fun, sure. But the point they made was valid: if you’re going to talk about the World Cup, maybe check who won it the last two times. It’s not like it was 40 years ago. It was 2018. That was last decade, not last century.
Smith will be fine. He’s the loudest voice on ESPN for a reason. But this moment became a good reminder that even the best talking heads can swing and miss when they leave their comfort zone. France, for the record, is just fine. Wembanyama is just fine. And Smith is probably already planning his next Knicks-related rant. The rest of us will be here, fact-checking as needed.
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