Stephen A Smith apologizes over racist comment

American television personality, Stephen A smith has apologized for the racist comments he made against the Nigeria Basketball Team for beating the USA this last weekend.

On Monday, The sports journalist and sports radio host who was making a comment concerning the United States loss to Nigeria in a friendly match referred to the Nigerian players as unimportant dudes while mispronouncing their names in a condescending and disrespectful manner.

There’s no excuse to lose to Nigeria,” Smith said on ESPN before tweeting the clip out himself. “To lose to some dude Gabe Nnamdi, who goes by Gabe Vincent for the Miami Heat. Or Caleb Agada. Or Nma … however the hell you pronounce his name. You give up 60 points on 3’s? Excuse me, you can do better than that.”

Many Nigerians and the national basketball team and many of its players took to Twitter to slam Smith for his take shortly after he posted it.

Not only did Smith receive intense backlash for mispronouncing the names of players on the Nigerian basketball team while mocking Team USA, but he also drew the ire of the Internet for making some incendiary remarks about MLB All-Star Shohei Ohtani on Monday

On Tuesday, He took to the weekday morning sports debate show First take to apologize to Nigerians and the entire Asian communities.

“I also don’t want to escape on a different note the Nigerians as well because the Nigerian team that beat team USA when I didn’t pronounce someone’s name apparently they took offense to that and I’m a guy who’s a huge fan of Francis Ngannou, Israel Adesanya, Usman…I love that brother the Nigerian nightmare…and to listen to them over the years highlight what they’ve had to endure to achieve what they’ve achieved in this nation and throughout the world certainly, I would like to apologize to them as well,”  He said.

I had to start off today’s show by apologizing to the Asian and Nigerian communities. pic.twitter.com/m2Jlu9UQxH

— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) July 13, 2021