Stephen A. Smith Says He and Kyrie Irving Have Differences on a 'Personal Level'

© Provided by The Big Lead Kyrie Irving | Sean Gardner/GettyImages

Over the last few years Stephen A. Smith has consistently criticized Kyrie Irving's decision-making at just about every turn. It resulted in a few chilly segments between Smith and Jay Williams; their latest clash over Irving featured Williams accusing Smith of getting personal in his rants about Irving. This did not sit well with Smith at the time and he addressed it on The Mike Missanelli Podcast over this past weekend.

In the process Smith revealed that he and Irving do, in fact, have "differences on a personal level" but he does not feel it affects his coverage of the point guard because he only refers to facts when speaking about Irving. Per Awful Announcing:

“Now Kyrie and I have our differences on a personal level, which is none of anybody’s business and I’ll never tell why,” Smith continued. “He knows why. And his daddy knows why. They know how I feel about how they’ve acted towards me and they know how I feel about them and I know how they feel about me. But I can say that to anybody out there because I know that that does not interfere with my reporting on him and my perspective based off of the facts.”

Smith gets so heated when talking about Irving that it doesn't come across as a huge surprise there is some personal beef, but he is paid the big bucks to separate fact from feeling.