Monica McNutt sends clear message to Stephen A. Smith

The way Stephen A. Smith reacted to Monica McNutt calling out the First Take host and ESPN’s WNBA coverage was pretty shocking to the basketball analyst who played at Georgetown. She thought she was merely saying, “Water was wet,” but that wasn’t how her counterpart took it.

In fact, Smith was personally offended that McNutt even dared to question how he and their employer have covered the WNBA (and women’s basketball) over the years. After First Take went off the rails , Smith went off the rails himself on his own show, calling McNutt’s comments “highly offensive.”

In the fleeting moments after their on-air sparring match, McNutt admitted to miscalculating their relationship , as she assumed they had more than enough built-up depth to challenge one another. She felt they could hold more than one truth , even if Smith didn’t quite see it that way.

But in leading to her big break, McNutt took a moment to take it back full circle. At Tuned In last week, McNutt spoke for 30 minutes with Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports about how the whole ordeal with Smith played out.

“Stephen A. and I, we’re totally fine,” she says. “It’s a debate show; we debated. As one of our leaders said, ‘He’s not the only person with strong opinions.’ But for me, it wasn’t disputable, and perhaps saying ‘You,’ as opposed to ‘ESPN,’ crosses some feathers and gets some people in a little bit of an uproar. But three years ago, I mean, there are people internally texting me, like, ‘Yeah, you’re right, less than 10 percent, or less than five percent.'”

Christovich mentioned that McNutt is not afraid to criticize the very institutions she associates herself with. She’s been critical of her alma mater and has made it a point to say that it’s no longer the powerhouse it once was. There are similarities there, but there are also differences.

“For me, that whole thing really blew my mind,” she adds. “But what I will say of it, is I’m thrilled that we’re here, right? I have so much respect for Stephen A., and while one of my good friends that’s NPR is like, ‘Mon, anytime you say respectfully, you’re about to be disrespectful,’ I genuinely was like, ‘I know how hard you work; I know of your influence at this company.’ It was; you probably could’ve been a part of this as I see it, from my perspective.

“Now, he’s said that he disagrees with my stance, and that’s fine. Like you said, First Tak e is not about holding hands and signing ‘Kumbaya.’ But from where I sat, I was under the impression that you could’ve had an impact in that way. If the response was, ‘That’s exactly our point on why Caitlin Clark is so important,’ cool, I probably couldn’t argue with that because the numbers would bear it out. But it really wasn’t supposed to be what it was. It was like, ‘OK, three years ago, we weren’t having this many conversations about women’s basketball, and that’s not really up for debate.'”

As McNutt continues to make waves in sports media, her ability to challenge the status quo — both within ESPN and beyond — shows that uncomfortable conversations are sometimes necessary for progress. In her eyes, this was one of those moments.

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