Longtime sports commentator Skip Bayless thinks the newly assembled Los Angeles Lakers have a chance to be very good — even if they’re building around three, gasp, white dudes.
Bayless posted a video to social media on Monday responding to his former debate partner, Stephen A. Smith, who mocked the Lakers for trying to win with “three white dudes.” Smith argued that NBA history shows it takes multiple “black brothers” to win a championship.
He doubled down on those comments last week.
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“I ain’t backing down,” Smith said. “In NBA history, when has a team led by three White dudes ever gone to the promised land? Somebody gotta say it.”
Is that so?
Bayless defended Smith, insisting the comments “were not racist,” though the premise of Smith’s argument is undeniably based on race. Still, Bayless rejected Smith’s conclusion.
According to Bayless, it isn’t about whether a team has three white players. It’s about whether it has the right three white players. He believes the Lakers could have exactly that with Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Walker Kessler.
“This isn’t a group you can dismiss as just three typical white dudes because there’s nothing typical about any of these three,” Bayless argued.
“Could these Lakers be the third-best team in the Western Conference? Sure, they could. Look at how these three fit together.”
He concluded, “As right as Stephen A. is about history, it’s also possible these three snowflakes have the potential to shatter that mold.”
The fact that this is even a legitimate sports debate says plenty about the current state of sports media. It also exposes an obvious racial double standard.
Imagine a white broadcaster asking whether an NFL team could ever win a Super Bowl with a black quarterback, black head coach and black general manager simply because it hadn’t happened before. Stephen A. Smith would almost certainly be among the first demanding consequences for that commentator. ESPN should hold Smith accountable for applying the same racial logic here, but no one expects that to happen.
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Smith’s argument also falls apart on its own merits.
The NBA is roughly 75% to 80% black. Naturally, there are fewer elite white players available to build around. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
Nikola Jokic has arguably been the best player in basketball for the better part of six seasons. Luka Doncic is one of the league’s premier superstars. Cooper Flagg looks like the NBA’s next great young player.
Pair Jokic and Doncic with a high-level complementary player like Austin Reaves, and that team would instantly contend for a championship. Jokic already carried Denver to a title in 2023 with far less talent around him than that hypothetical trio would have.
The issue isn’t that teams cannot win with three white players, as if black players possess some unique championship gene. It’s simply that, because of the league’s demographics, no franchise has yet assembled three white stars of that caliber at the same time.
The same statistical reality explains why the NFL has never produced a Super Bowl-winning trio of a black quarterback, black head coach and black general manager. Representation matters when the pool of candidates is smaller.
The notion that race alone determines who can win championships, which is the underlying logic behind Smith’s comments, is simply false. Judging athletic potential through a racial lens is, by definition, racial stereotyping.
That doesn’t necessarily make Stephen A. Smith a racist. More often than not, he comes across as someone willing to say almost anything to dominate the news cycle. That’s especially true now that Pat McAfee has overtaken him as ESPN’s biggest personality.
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Smith wanted attention. His routine about the Lakers’ “three white dudes” certainly got it. It also made him look like a buffoon.
Credit Bayless for pushing back. In today’s sports media landscape, there aren’t many commentators willing to challenge racial narratives when the target is “white dudes.”
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