Stephen A Calls Steve Kerr ‘hypocritical' For Asking Nba To Shorten Season

Stephen A calls Steve Kerr ‘hypocritical' for asking NBA to shorten season originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Warriors coach Steve Kerr has never been shy about voicing his opinions about issues around the NBA or even politics.

The 12th-year coach recently floated the idea that the NBA needs to shorten the season by 10 games, which seems to be a popular view in the sport. However, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith didn’t seem to appreciate the sentiment from Kerr, calling it disappointing on a recent episode of “First Take.”

“Incredibly disappointed to hear Steve Kerr say what he said,” Smith said. “I think that one of the things that bothers me is when I think about Steve Kerr, he says a lot of profound things. Contrary to what people want to believe. You know, they accused him of getting on his soapbox. When Steve Kerr speaks, we should listen, because he always has something substantive to say. Just because you’re substantive doesn’t make you right.”

Smith also highlighted the fact that the NBA recently signed a media rights deal worth around $80 billion, but nowhere in Kerr’s plea to shorten the season did he suggest the league give up pay to players and coaches to accommodate the request.

“Your argument would be far more profound if Steve Kerr came out and said, ‘You know what, let’s give back some of these money’s. Let’s calculate it, let’s see what the aggregate is and let’s subtract 10 games worth of pay for this.’ You would have a more substantive argument if you did that. When you never talk about giving the money back, but you talk about giving some of the workload back, that is more than hypocritical.”

It isn’t shocking that players and coaches aren’t voluntarily announcing they’d take a pay cut to shorten the season, but the length of the NBA season has become a major issue of late. As Kerr hinted at following the Warriors’ 129-126 loss to the Utah Jazz on Monday, the NBA is currently dealing with an epidemic of injuries to star players, load management of star players and what seems to be an all-time high number of teams tanking.

“I know this will not be a popular opinion in the league office, but I will continue to say it because it’s obvious we need to play fewer games, we need to take 10 games off the schedule,” said Kerr. “I think it would be a more competitive and healthier league if we played fewer games.”

The NBA likely doesn’t want to lose out on any money in its future media rights deals, but commissioner Adam Silver certainly has quite a few issues to address this offseason and in the near future.

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