Nigerian Basketball Team Blasts ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith For Mispronouncing Their Players’ Names On ‘First Take’

• ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith mocked Team USA for losing to Nigeria with players whose name he couldn’t pronounce
• Nigeria’s social media account called out Stephen A. after the team beat Argentina by 23 points
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Stephen A. Smith annoyed several people with some of his comments during the latest episode of ‘First Take’.

On Monday, Smith made some offensive comments about MLB all-star Shohei Ohtani when he said Ohtani was “hurting the game” by using an interpreter.

“The fact that you got a foreign player that doesn’t speak English, that needs an interpreter, believe it or not, I think contributes to harming the game to some degree, when that’s your box-office appeal,”

“When you talk about an audience, gravitating to the tube, or to the ballpark to actually watch you, I don’t think it helps that the No. 1 face … needs an interpreter to understand what the hell he’s saying,

During the same episode, Smith mocked Team USA for losing to players from Nigeria whose name he couldn’t pronounce.

“There’s no excuse to lose to Nigeria… [To lose to] some dude Gabe Nnamdi, who goes by Gabe Vincent and plays 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.”

The Nigerian basketball team saw Smith’s comments and blasted him after the team beat highly ranked Argentina in an exhibition game on Monday night days after beating Team USA.

Update: Players on the team are responding to Stephen A’s comments.