ESPN host Stephen A. Smith is again opening up about his feud with NBA superstar LeBron James. This time, he’s revealing deep-seated resentment stemming from James’ alleged attempts to sabotage his career.

The tension boiled over last year during a Los Angeles Lakers game, when James confronted Smith courtside over the host’s televised criticisms of the team’s handling of his son, Bronny James.

Smith’s sin was in pointing out that Bronny is not an NBA-caliber player and begging LeBron to pull the plug on the experiment that has held the Lakers back since. James responded by confronting the much smaller basketball analyst on the basketball court, trying to intimidate him into better coverage.

They almost came to blows.

Smith later accused LeBron of hiding “behind his son.”

Now, Smith is still clearly ticked off about the entire situation, as evidenced by his recent comments on “7 PM In Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony.”

Did LeBron James try to sabotage him?

Smith dipped a bit into conspiracy theory waters, suggesting that LeBron James’s attack was orchestrated. He pointed to the suspicious camera angles on the day his ESPN contract renewal was announced.

“The day that he rolled up on me courtside, it was the day my contract was announced that I had stayed with ESPN,” Smith told listeners. “Go back and look at the camera angle…This is 2025. We got technology everywhere. TNT is a nationally televised game.”

“How is it we got one angle, and the only angle you see was of him and his face, but you see the back of my peanut head?” he wondered. “There’s no way that you’re in an arena, you’re LeBron James, and the only angle that somebody sees is a straight-up shot of you getting in my face.”

When asked if he thought he had been set up, Smith pulled no punches, saying, “Damn right I did.”

While the two have gone back and forth ever since the incident, the ESPN host made it clear that there is still a lot of bad blood between him and LeBron.

“I don’t like his a–, not a little bit,” said Smith. “This dates back more than a decade. I’m not gonna go into detail at the stuff this man has tried to do to me. You do not understand the lengths this man would go to.

“If it were up to him, I wouldn’t be where I am today. It’s some low, low stuff.”

READ MORE: LeBron Mocks Stephen A Smith With Boxing Video After He Said He Almost Swung On Lakers Star

The ‘King’ should have been fined

This isn’t the first time Smith has alluded to some behind-the-scenes maneuvering by LeBron James to mess with his career.

“All I would say is people don’t know the things that have happened behind the scenes,” Smith said during an appearance on former NBA All-Star Gilbert Arenas’ “Gil’s Arena” podcast back in August. “Things that have been said, who they’ve been said to. The kind of things that have been engaged in in an effort to hurt me, along with contemporaries and others.”

“There’s a lot of s— that I don’t say. And there’s a reason that I feel the way that I do,” he added.

Whether or not it was a set-up to ruin Smith’s career, LeBron should very easily have been fined or suspended for his behavior in trying to intimidate a reporter into glowing coverage of him and his barely basketball-capable son.

Had any other player in the league angrily confronted a reporter to the point where it could have become physical, they would have been fined.

LeBron went after Smith in a highly contentious public moment because the basketball analyst pointed out that Bronny isn’t, nor will he ever be, a real NBA player. Something he has every right to opine on.

What’s to stop him from doing this to another reporter?

LeBron’s cowardly attack should have been met with more disdain than it was by other media members. And frankly, it should have resulted in some punishment from the league.

James’s effort to get in Smith’s face, towering over him in a threatening manner, would have received a second look by the league if it were anybody else.