Stephen A. Smith - Straight Shooter: A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes

Stephen A. Smith

Straight Shooter

A Memoir of Second Chances and First Takes

This book would not have been written were it not for the greatest woman Ive ever known: Mommy! I shed a tear at least once every day. I miss you so much. But my daughters, Samantha and Nyla, make it easier. They are the reasons Im guaranteed a smile every single day of my life. And of course, theres always my sister Carmenmy ace. No one roots for me harder, no one supports me more than you, sis. Youre my rock. I love you to pieces.

We ride together!

I n May 2017, my mother lay in bed inside her house in Queens, New York, dying from colon cancer. She was seventy-six years old.

Shed been through a seven-year battle, rife with operations, chemotherapy, radiation treatmentsand diminishing hopes. The cancer had metastasized, spreading to her lungs and, eventually, her brain, and the battle was approaching its end.

During her last months, at least one of my four sisters and I tended to her every day. Yet my mother had only one request as she neared the end: that her husband of fifty-nine years, our father, be at her bedside.

She had never left him, despite the fact that hed almost never been there for her. My father drank, smoked, womanized, and gambled. He didnt help pay a single bill for the last forty-five years of their marriage.

So even in those final, awful weeks, it didnt surprise any of us that our dad stayed true to his himself: while our mother slowly slid toward the inevitable in an upstairs bedroom inside our childhood home, he remained downstairs, parked in front of the TV, watching baseball games and old Westerns. While she still could, my mother, with assistance from my sisters and me, sometimes made her way down to the living room to be close to him, hoping to steal some of his attention.

Never happened.

His eyes barely left the TV. The only decent thing he did was to stop asking her to get him something from the kitchen.

A month before my mother passed, my sistersLinda, Arlyne, Abigail, and Carmenand I sat down with our father at the dining room table to tell him that his behavior was unacceptable. My sisters said, Look. Shes in a very bad spot. You need to pay more attention to her.

My father, a stubborn West Indian, shook his head, looked at them, and replied, You dont know her like I do. I know my wife; I know your mother better than you do. Its all an act. Shes not as sick as you all think.

There was a brief moment of stunned silence. You could hear a pin drop. Then, from my seat at the opposite end of the table, I looked my father straight in the eye and asked, What the fuck did you just say?

Then I stood up, grabbed my chair, walked past my sisters, and sat down right in front of him, my face right in front of his. Mommys sick, I said, echoing what my sisters had told him. Shes dying. Her days are numbered.

Incredibly, only at that moment did he say: Okay, I got it now.

What do you mean? I asked. All four of your daughters just said the same thing, and you said you dont believe them.

His response: They aint you. Theyre women!

My sisters shook their heads in utter disgust. Words couldnt describe how I felt.

My mother died on June 1, 2017, just before midnight. Id left the house about an hour earlier to go change and clean up at my home in North Jersey. My sister Carmen texted just as I pulled into my driveway. You need to get back here now. Its Mom, she wrote me. I never left my car, just backed out and made the forty-five-minute return drive to Queens.

Be strong, Steve, I told myself, imagining what Id say once I saw her lying there motionless, her eyes closed for the last time, no longer able to smile, laugh, or cry. Ill be okay. I thought the drive would be plenty of time to get my emotions in check. On his last house call, the doctor had told us she didnt have long left. It was clear she was already transitioning. I thought I had prepared myself for this moment.

But after I parked, before I could even get to the front of the house, I heard cries. I opened the front door and saw my brother-in-law Danny, just sitting in the living room in silence, sadness written all over his face. The same could be said for my future brother-in-law Darren, Carmens boyfriend. My nephew Josh was sobbing.

As I saw this, my legs suddenly got heavy and my heart ached. The eleven steps to the upstairs level of my mothers house felt like a mile.

Carmen, Linda, and our aunt Rita were in the bedroom I grew up in, sobbing, their faces soaked with tears. Arlyne was right next to them, crying. I looked to my right, inside my mothers bedroom, and saw Abigail spooning my mother, hugging her tightly as she sobbed quietly.

Mommy was officially gone. And with her, so went a part of me. I started crying and couldnt stop for a long, long time.

Frankly, everyone was thankful that shed passed before I got there. They knew that seeing her take her last breath was something I could not endure. Thank God you werent there for those final moments, Carmen said. I dont think you would have ever been the same had you been there at that moment. I was never the same anyway.

My dad, however, was unchanged. His attention that night was riveted on the first game of the NBA Finals, between Cleveland and Golden State. The Warriors held an insurmountable lead when my sisters came downstairs to tell him that it wouldnt be much longer, so he finally dragged himself away from the TV set. He sat beside our mother, patted her, and told her everything was going to be okay. Then he got up, went back downstairs, and, with the game over, watched another Western.

My sisters still havent forgiven him for that.

Ultimately, my mothers passing freed me to write this book. Folks had asked me for years to write a memoir, but Id always turned them down for one simple reason: my mother made me promise that I wouldnt do so until after she died. I had told her I would have to write the truth about everything, including my father. She did not want anyone to read about that while she was alive.

So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Until it was time. Its time now.

My story is not always an easy one to tell. If fairy tales are what youre looking for, dont bother skimming through these pages. You wont find them here, especially not in those early years.

But if you stick around, youll find something far more compelling, and inspirational. Youll see how love, belief, perseverance, self-awareness, family, friendships, and mentorship can take you places youve never been. How they all allowed me to see and experience things Id never even dreamed ofsome things I didnt even know existedand attain levels of success and happiness I once deemed unimaginable because, for so long, imagination itself was a luxury I couldnt afford.

This is the story of Stephen A. SmithStephen A. these days, no last name necessary. Its the unlikely tale of how I came to be who I am. Love me or hate meits always one or the othermy story is one about what my world is like and what Ive learned along the way.

This is my truth, based on my experiences, and I believe that everyonefrom the impoverished and hopeless to the rich and famouscan learn from the story of how this little scrawny Black kid from a cramped, unheated house in the Hollis neighborhood of Queens went on to become one of the most-watched, sometimes most-reviled, but ultimately one of the highest-paid TV sportscasters at the biggest sports network in America.