When Chiney Ogwumike joined ESPN in 2018, she became the first WNBA player and the first Black woman to have her own national radio show for the network. Eventually, her role evolved into a full-time NBA analyst and a regular panelist on First Take.
This week, Ogwumike joined Brandon Contes on the Awful Announcing Podcast and discussed a range of topics, including her working relationship with First Take host Stephen A. Smith and how he’s helped her.
“The way I viewed the show was it was amazing. You only see or think of debates in high school, and now there’s a home for where it is in sports. It’s like the barbershop or the nail salon. Stephen A. is one of my closest mentors to this day. He’s done so much to empower me in his space and internally at ESPN,” Ogwumike told Contes when asked what she thought of the show before joining it.
Ogwumike then shared that she loves working with Smith on First Take because they are very familiar at this point.
“It’s always better when he’s there because you know what to expect,” she said. “The first year or so, I was like, ‘Dang, I wanna take it to him, how do I get to him?’ Then I figured it out. Whenever you have a good point, he starts deflecting and throwing some other things… you gotta bring it around. People just want to have fun.”
While Smith has recently been criticized for not using his platform to discuss women’s sports, Ogwumike says it’s an issue that’s not exclusive to the First Take host.
“When I started off at ESPN there weren’t many platforms that would take a woman by my name and have me on talking about the NBA or WNBA when it was not a thing. You may not remember all of those appearances but I was there for them,” Ogwumike noted before relaying a story about the 2020 WNBA CBA being ratified and having to fight to get coverage for it.
“I absolutely think Stephen A. could have embraced a little bit more of what the trajectory was building to ahead of time, but it’s not just him. It was the entire landscape… It’s true he could have, but so could have everyone else,” Ogwumike concluded.
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