ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith has said he wasn’t in agreement with Shannon Sharpe purposely missing Undisputed on FS1 last Tuesday.
Sharpe skipped the show as he was presumably upset over co-host Skip Bayless’ insensitive tweet regarding the Damar Hamlin situation.
The Buffalo Bills safety was allowed to leave the hospital this Wednesday, having recovered from a shocking cardiac arrest during last Monday’s Week 17 fixture against the Cincinnati Bengals. But, at the time Skip tweeted about the NFL suspending a game carrying playoff implications, the player’s status was still unknown and he was yet to regain consciousness.
Shannon, like most of the country, felt Skip was out of line – so much so, he didn’t show up to work the following day.
Smith claims to have understood Shannon’s reasoning yet he believes the NFL Hall of Famer should have been in his chair that day, even if he chose not to speak.
“I can only imagine the kind of position that he found himself in in light of Hamlin’s injury,” the First Take host said during an appearance on The Draymond Green Show.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral NFL stories via Google! Follow Us
“That’s your chair. You don’t give it up for nobody,” Smith said of Sharpe. “That’s yours. I don’t give a damn if you were in the chair and had nothing to say and you just wanted Skip to talk. You don’t miss sitting in that chair. Because there’s an audience out there that expected to see you. But I understood him, like every single NFL player present and former that I’ve spoken to, heart was in the right place, going through a lot.
“When some real stuff hits, you turn on First Take, you expect to see Stephen A. And Stephen A. is going to show up. I’m gonna show up. And that’s what I would encourage Shannon, Kenny Smith, Shaq, Barkley, or anybody else. We fought for centuries to have our voice. You got it. You don’t give it up. That’s my point.”
Sharpe’s recent disposition has sparked rumors of him being on the verge of quitting Undisputed. He was recently involved in a heated argument with Bayless after the latter downplayed his career because he rightly criticized Tom Brady’s play this season.
