Stephen A. Smith can't help himself. Even when he's trying to protect someone, he manages to pour gasoline on the fire.
Videos by FanBuzz
Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images for Fanatics
The "Speakeasy" podcast crew — Emmanuel Acho, Kieran Hickey-Semple and LeSean McCoy — had some fun at Smith's expense after he addressed Molly Qerim's sudden departure from First Take.
Qerim, who's been a popular presence on the show since 2015, confirmed Monday night she was leaving ESPN after Sports Business Journal broke the story.
But when Smith weighed in, things only got messier. "The details, quite frankly, are none of y'all business," Smith said on his YouTube show. "It was a contract negotiation that was going on. ESPN certainly did not want to lose her. But in the end, she made her decision to walk away from the show effective immediately."
That line of "none of your business" got plenty of laughs from the Speakeasy panel.
"Your tone and then you saying, 'You know, the details are none of y'all business, I don't even know.' What? You're just making it so much worse," Hickey-Semple cracked.
Acho piled on: "He said she abruptly resigned. That's a detail. And then you're going to say, 'But don't ask me the details because I'm not going to tell you, and also I don't know.'"
Smith also hosted Tuesday's First Take without Qerim, giving an emotional sendoff while refusing to dive into specifics.
"I don't like it. I'm not happy about it," he said, adding that Qerim has been invaluable to him, the show and the business as a whole.
For now, viewers are left with questions. Was this purely about contract terms? Or, as Smith's tone suggested, is there more to the story? Only Qerim can answer that — and she hasn't yet.
