Stephen A. Smith hasn’t been on First Take for about six weeks now as he has been recovering from shoulder surgery. It was a tough situation for Smith who is single-handedly keeping the lights on over at ESPN these days. He is someone that fans are always excited to hear from, and with all of the drama going around in the sports world, his absence has been felt quite a bit over these last couple of months.
For instance, Smith has not been able to give his opinion on the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving drama. These two players move the needle when it comes to the NBA news cycle, and normally, Smith would be going off on them every single day. Unfortunately, we just haven’t been able to get that as of late.
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Luckily, Smith made his grand return to the air today, and as you can see in the clip below, ESPN pulled out all of the stops. The start of the show began with NFL insider Adam Schefter who pretended to give some sort of NFL update but then flipped it and introduced Stephen A.
From there, we got a shot of Smith on a boat on the Hudson River, where he could be seen wearing an incredibly loud orange suit with brown pants. Smith was as energetic as ever, and you could tell that he was excited to finally be back.
With Smith back on the air, First Take will finally be watchable again, which is a huge win for all of the sports fans out there.