As ESPN cuts familiar faces, its retreat from serious NBA coverage is complete

As ESPN cuts expert voices and rewards viral argument, fans who want to understand basketball are building a smarter conversation elsewhere

After the Phoenix Suns dumped the Golden State Warriors out of last season’s play-in, Stephen A Smith settled behind the First Take desk to explain why Steve Kerr might have coached his last game. Midway through the burial, he claimed the Warriors hadn’t “been to the playoffs since that championship in 2022” – a four-year drought in his telling – before grumbling that Golden State could pay someone far less than $17m a year to miss the postseason.

Cool. Except the drought never happened. Golden State reached the conference semi-finals in 2023 and again in 2025. ESPN anchor Shae Cornette, who had command of the basic facts, tried to smuggle that inconvenient reality into the discussion. It went nowhere. Apparently, nobody on an ESPN set is permitted to correct the franchise “star”. Only weeks earlier, Smith had been inducted into the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame for his work in media.