Howard Stern: “I thought your book was fabulous, it just came out on paperback. You talked about your history, you talked about your experience with basketball, you personally when you played when you were in high school, and then you got a break in college. This guy, I don’t even know who he is, I’ve never heard of him before, Jason Whitlock, I don’t know him. He basically went on and said ‘Oh, Stephen A. Smith is lying’... LYING. No evidence that you’re lying and it’s sh*tty, like you don’t want to be involved in that. You’re like 'f*ck this guy'. But eventually you came out and made a statement.”
Stephen A. Smith: “I have friends, I have teammates – high school, colleges, go to the hospital, look up their records. Look at teachers, professors, coaches, etc. My book that I wrote, let’s be very, very clear about this. Simon and Schuster has editors. One is Aimee Bell. Another guy with an imprint is Charles Suitt. Ask them. Ask Rushion McDonald, a dear friend of mine who’s been in my life, is still in my life, and a part of my business, and a close confidant of mine. Ask my sisters. Ask my colleagues. Ask the folks that are on NBA Shootaround, which is now NBA Countdown on ESPN, where in-between, when we were watching the games, I was writing my book.”
Jason Whitlock: “These are two liars [Howard Stern and Stephen A. Smith], two plants, two installed people swapping lies. Howard Stern throwing up softballs for Stephen A. to hit lies over the fence. It starts with Howard Stern -- ‘I DON’T KNOW HIM, I NEVER HEARD OF HIM’... Stop it, Howard. I think the first or second day Howard Stern was on Twitter, he feuded with me over Twitter. Howard Stern has talked about me on his show before. Stop it. Stop lying. Howard Stern does a show out of New York, there was one person in the country that was like ‘hey, man, this Don Imus thing is BS’, over this Rutgers basketball thing, and the entire country -- every network had me on talking about Don Imus, and ‘nappy-headed hoes’. This was 2007, I’m on Oprah Winfrey, I’m on every news network in the country but yeah, ‘I’VE NEVER HEARD OF HIM, DON’T KNOW HIM’... It’s irrelevant. Fine, Howard, you don’t know me, I couldn’t care less... You almost made Stephen A. Smith sound a tiny bit honest, but that can’t be done. Stephen A. starts out with his now-third ‘I’LL NEVER TALK ABOUT HIM AGAIN!’... Well, you’re talking about me again, Stephen A. When you went on your little childish tirade, cursing tirade – never answering any of the legitimate questions I raised. There’s a little cliche joke about how you know when someone’s lying, their lips are moving – it was written for Stephen A. Smith. At some point, Stephen A. Smith starts rattling off ‘ask this person, ask that person’ about his book. It’s like, why do I got to ask all these different people? Why can’t I ask you? Why can’t YOU answer the question? Why can’t YOU explain why you would be on ESPN television saying you played ‘one game’, then 6-7 months later go on your podcast and say ‘I’ve never played in a game’. And why the stat-sheet lists a ‘Stephen Smith’ playing nine or ten games? Why can’t YOU answer that question? Why do I need to go ask your sister? Or teammates? Or friends? That seems like a really simple answer for YOU to give. Stephen A., stop it, man. With Howard, or whoever he does his next interview with, just answer some simple questions. Post some pictures of you in college. Candid shots. Not the Wilt Chamberlain photoshop, or whatever it is. The ‘instant scholarship’ after hitting 17 straight shots in a February scrimmage at the end of someone else’s college basketball season. Explain THAT. We don’t need to get ten million other people, this thing could be answered in an instant. You could put a major clown suit on me. Just show a handful of receipts. Get your little midget friend, Gary Stephens, who allegedly was a ‘6’3” guard’, but now today, 5’9”-5’10” tops, that you run around with, that you parade around the country with as your best friend from Winston-Salem State, and ya’ll are former teammates... Bring him on. Let the midget explain what happened. Was it a skateboard accident and he lost five inches of height? Just provide a few receipts and this all goes away. You’ll shut me up. I’ll have to come on air and apologize. Because I would. ‘Hey, I was dead wrong. Stephen A. did have an illustrious career at Winston-Salem State, he did go out in February of 1988 and do a 1-on-1 tryout with a former Winston-Salem State basketball player on a playground in New York in February. And then the next weekend he did drive down, and hit 17 straight shots in a scrimmage. And ‘Big House’ Gaines DID give him a scholarship on the spot. And you know what? ‘Big House’ Gaines IS a father-figure to Stephen A. Smith EVEN THOUGH ‘Big House’ never references Stephen A. in his own memoir,’ This whole thing could just go away. Winston-Salem State, some of their officials – come out ‘you know what, we got some footage’, ‘here we got video’, ‘here we got pictures’, ‘here’s Stephen A. as a student at Winston-Salem State’... This thing could be over within an instant. You could put a sword through my entire story or all my questions very easily. Why won’t you? People keep asking ‘WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? SO WHAT HE EXAGGERATES!’... Because the dude lies about everything, or appears to. Virtually every story is just incredible. I have mostly just stuck to his athletic career, but I’m telling you, you go read that book... NONE OF IT MAKES SENSE. Things I haven’t even brought up. They just don’t make sense. It’s all an exaggeration, or a lie and fabrication. ALL OF IT.”
Watch Jason Whitlock of Blaze TV’s Fearless discuss ESPN studio host Stephen A. Smith's recent appearance on the Howard Stern Show promoting his new memoir titled ‘Straight Shooter’, with Stephen A. using another major media appearance to not only market the release of his book, but also to directly blast Whitlock who has outright labeled Smith a 'pathological liar' when it comes to discussing his mysterious and potentially fabricated college basketball career at Winston-Salem State.
Whitlock has spent the last few weeks unpacking Smith's account of his basketball career at his alma mater, which was publicly mocked when it was first revealed that Stephen A. supposedly averaged just 1.5 points per game his first and only year on the Winston-Salem State basketball team. There has been a widely circulated picture allegedly from the 1991 Winston-Salem State basketball yearbook confirming a ‘Stephen Smith’ to have scored 15 points of 5/23 shooting in 9 games during the 1990-1991 season.
After the graphic picked up steam on social media, it turned into a sore subject of ribbing for Smith, as ESPN’s NBA Countdown show with Malinka Andrews, Jalen Rose, and JJ Redick even featured a ‘blind resume’ graphic featuring the three players’ college statistics during their final seasons of college, with the ‘1.5 points’ becoming embarrassingly obvious that is was Stephen A’s.
Smith didn’t look too entertained during the awkward segment as his discomfort was evident, with Smith saying he appeared in just one game that season because he ‘cracked his kneecap in half.’
In later interviews, however, including monologues on his own podcast, Smith says he didn’t appear in any games at Winston-Salem State, and said the knee injury he suffered as a freshman prevented him from ever playing in a game, and thus costing him a chance to ‘excel’ at the Division-2 level as he put it.
Smith claims that he made 17 consecutive three-point shots in a basketball scrimmage during an individual tryout at Winston-Salem State while visiting the school, and got a full-scholarship the same day.
Smith has reprimanded Whitlock during almost every interview appearance he's made promoting his book, but has overwhelmingly just taken personal pot shots at Whitlock, labeling him a 'fat piece of sh*t', and saying Whitlock is 'worse than a White supremacist', but has never directly offered a rebuttal to any of Whitlock's claims that his recollections on the basketball team could be highly exaggerated or made up altogether.
Whitlock challenges Smith to set the record straight about his time on the Winston-State Salem basketball team, and says he will 'apologize', and admit he was wrong if Smith can 'bring the receipts.'
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