Monday Morning Beef Edition, We Have All Thee Tea

…Because everyone wants the smoke for some reason right now. Starting with Coach Jackie J — the best women’s sports content creator in the game — who called out Stephen A. Smith for inappropriate comments to Chiney Ogwumike on air. Then Shaq commented on her video, and her response was a mic drop, to say the least. More prime beef below. 

Jason Kelce is getting $100 million from Amazon to host a YouTube show, and people are saying it’s a big miss for ESPN — I know, it’s a lot to keep up with. Kelce is an ESPN commentator and he hosted a late-night show for the Worldwide Sports Leader, but I guess at the end of the day, Amazon put their money where his mic was.   

The debut of the World Fencing League turned out to be a Who’s Who of culture and sports. Lewis Hamilton, Swizz Beatz, and the event’s founder Miles Chamley-Watson were all in attendance. Plus, it featured some crazy new tech that just went off, like 100 million views off. This rocks, in my opinion, because I do think sword fighting should make you lots of money. 

I really enjoyed this Steve Kerr interview by The New Yorker’s Charles Bethea, which covers everything from the looming retirements of his day ones Stephen Curry and Draymond Green, to his parents being CIA agents. 

While I laid on the couch this weekend, two participants in the London Marathon recorded sub two-hour times (shoutout to Adidas for giving them turbo speed; shout out to Nike for congratulating a rival, kind of). Also of note: Wicked star Cynthia Erivo clocked in under 3.5 hours. Another thing she’s better than all of us at.

This weekend was a contentious one in men’s hoops. I am usually the first person to chant “fight, fight, fight,” when players start doing their little “hold me back” shtick, so feuds in sports are something I live for (to a certain point, of course). 

Here were my favorite beefs of the weekend: 

Jokic vs. Whoever Stole His Underwear. Jason Quick reported that after their tough loss to the Timberwolves on Saturday, someone rubbed salt in Jokic’s wound by stealing his underwear in the locker room. 

Jokic vs. Jaden McDaniels. Because it was chippy and no one got hurt. 

Deni Avdija vs. Stephon Castle (see previous beef). 

Me vs. the people who don’t like Shai’s outfit here. They are wrong. Also, me vs. people who don’t like Shai in general. He’s signing merch here for fans! 

Klay vs. Megan Thee Stallion. I do not delight in this one at all, actually, as I am on the record saying they legally weren’t allowed to break up, but anyway…If you live under a rock, perhaps you missed that Megan posted an Instagram story saying Klay Thompson didn’t want to be monogamous with her. I ran to Reddit immediately, as I do in times of crisis, to discover that many people believe Klay’s infidelity can be linked to Seattle Storm guard Lexie Brown, though such claims are yet to be substantiated, and Lexie denied them on her IG story. 

KD vs. all of Houston, seemingly. Amen Thompson said he doesn’t know how Kevin Durant’s rehab is going. Considering KD’s burner controversy was never fully resolved (or even half-resolved), I’d say this team needs some serious couples therapy. 

Me vs. the number 0 (or letter O, in Dame’s case, of course). When Donte DiVincenzo tore his Achilles heel this weekend, he became the fourth player wearing the number 0 to have that same injury in a calendar year’s time. Maybe we retire this number altogether.   

Let me know if I forgot any big ones. I’ll update my internal records.

The NFL Draft had its fair share of feuding, too, but it had lots of other stuff as well. 

As far as feuds go, during an interview with new Eagles’ wide receiver Makai Lemon, Micah Parsons shaded the Eagles organization, and Le’Veon Bell took issue with that. The former Steelers running back criticized Parsons for making this moment about himself, and the two went at in the quote tweets. For what it’s worth, my timeline shows most people on Team Bell here. 

After rumors swirled that Rams GM Les Snead drafted Ty Simpson because Les and Ty’s father are friends (first-ever might-be nepo draftee?!) fans thought Rams head coach Sean McVay was upset with the pick. So, he squashed that beef this weekend.

We also had Ravens guestpickers talking sh*t to the city of Pittsburgh, in front of a record breaking crowd of 320,000 attendees. 

The Eagles took a guy who has never played football before. Nigerian-born Uar Bernard is listed as a defensive tackle, but I’m not sure how they know that, considering the first sentence of this paragraph. 

The fashion featured everything from Abercrombie & Fitch cropped jackets, to Alo Yoga suits (words I never imagined being strung together in a sentence). 

And we had a little bit of heartbreak for Diego Pavia. The Vanderbilt star became the first Heisman Trophy finalist since 2014 to go undrafted.