A current ESPN employee is feuding with a former one this week.
Bill Simmons of The Ringer issued a criticism over the weekend about ESPN, particularly regarding their coverage of the Boston Celtics-New York Knicks second-round NBA playoff series. Celtics guard Payton Pritchard starred in Game 3 of the series at Madison Square Garden in New York, N.Y. on Saturday, scoring 23 points off the bench. In a post to his X page, Simmons shaded ESPN for not mentioning Pritchard enough during the game broadcast.
That led to a fiery response from Richard Jefferson, who was doing the color commentary for ESPN during Celtics-Knicks Game 3. Jefferson wrote that he personally did a highlight package on Pritchard during the contest and said that Simmons’ claim was “an actually [sic] lie or maybe a bias [sic] opinion.”
Indeed, footage soon surfaced online of the highlight package in question that Jefferson had done for Pritchard during the game.
Simmons, a Boston native and vocal Celtics fan, worked at ESPN from 2001-15. But he continues to have bad blood with the network and called them out earlier during the NBA playoffs over their treatment of his former colleague Jalen Rose.
It is clear that Simmons never misses an opportunity to throw shade at ESPN. But Jefferson, who was working Saturday’s game broadcast alongside play-by-play man Mike Breen, wanted to ensure everybody had their facts straight when it came to ESPN’s coverage of the newly-crowned Sixth Man of the Year Pritchard.
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