Stephen A. Smith “Didn’t Like Working With’ Max Kellerman

During the last years, First take distanced himself from two main debate partners and Stephen A. Smith going back and forth with a rotating cast of characters. Before that, the show featured Smith and Max Kellerman facing off against each other, but in 2021, Kellerman was removed from the series and in other roles at the network before being fired earlier this year.

Smith clearly stated in the past, he wanted Kellerman to leave the show, expressing his belief that something needed to change with First take. But on the most recent episode of the Joe Budden Podcast, Smith went further to explain why the breakup happened.

“I heard some of it, I would take full responsibility for it,” Smith said after being asked about people noticing tension between the two before Kellerman left the show at 2:15:09 of the video above. “It’s totally my fault, and the reason it was my fault is because I didn’t like working with him, man. It’s as simple as that. I didn’t like it. I thought the show was outdated. I thought we had stagnated as far as the general public was concerned.

As Smith explained, he’s long feared that the show could fall from the top spot in the ratings after Skip Bayless left, and “that shit wasn’t going to happen.” And even though he made it clear that the ratings weren’t dropping enough at the time, he felt like something was wrong.

“For me it is, not just creatively, but the consistency of the numbers,” he said. “In other words, it wasn’t okay [up]it was right [flat]. And not only that, it’s like we’re in this room right now. Come on, you know the difference between something that’s stale and something you’re motivated to do.

Smith was quick to express that he had a lot of respect for Kellerman, but even so, he thought the fact that Kellerman’s background did not include an athlete or journalist “left people wondering why should We listen to you.”