Mark Jones has some serious explaining to do after he liked a video on Twitter that blasted his colleague Stephen A. Smith, using a racial epithet for defending Dallas Cowboys team owner Jerry Jones.
“I’m pretty pissed off,” Smith began. “I’m pissed off but not for reasons that people would think. I am very, very fond of Jerry Jones, and I’m not hiding that from anybody. Is his record perfect? No, but I’m pissed off because he doesn’t deserve what just happened. He doesn’t deserve it. One report, our report, said he was 14 years old. Another report said he was 15 years old. At minimum, that’s 65 years ago.”
Smith argued that too much time has passed for Jerry Jones to be held accountable.
“You’re going to bring up a photo of him when he was 14, 15 years old? 65 or 66 years ago? This is where cancel culture gets into the mix,” Smith continued. “You’re making an attempt to eradicate him, what he stands for and all he has done.”
Bishop Talbert Swan used a video of dancing raccoons to describe Smith’s defense of Jones. He stated Jones did not “deserve” to be dragged through the mud after a photo showed he was with students trying to keep an Arkansas school segregated in 1957. Jones was around 14 or 15. The incident took place during the same month that the Little Rock Nine attempted to integrate Little Rock Central High School.
The ESPN NBA broadcaster had unliked the tweet by Tuesday, but the damage was already done.
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Jones has acknowledged that it is him in the photograph, but he says he did not participate in protesting the integration and looked on curiously without animosity.
“I don’t know that I or anybody anticipated or had a background of knowing … what was involved,” Jones, now 80, told The Washington Post. “It was more a curious thing.”
Jones is not only employed by ESPN but is also in his third season as the play-by-play lead commentator for the Sacramento Kings.
