Stephen A Smith Says NBA Players Have Told Him They Would Feel Unsafe Playing In A City Like Memphis

[The_Sheff]

Memphis is segregated and poor with a lot of poverty areas. But there are nice areas in Memphis...

Yall keep saying this and the nikkas who actually lived in Memphis keep asking where.

Where?

What do you consider nice? Keep I mind we ain’t talking 3 bed 2 bath and a yard nice.

Where is this nice area that a young black male with access to money should be happy living in. Cause if it was there, I’d still be living in Memphis.

 

[AlbertPullhoez]

SAS still tripping off how they did Dolph

 

[Shadow King]

These are 17 cities that are all, more or less, the same size and weight class as Memphis:

Albany, Birmingham, Buffalo, Fresno, Grand Rapids, Hartford, Louisville, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Norfolk, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Providence, Raleigh, Richmond, Salt Lake, Tucson

Many of these cities are not near Memphis in size, comparing it to them kinda works against your point.

The bolded are comparable.

Edit: You're likely using total Metro Areas but the flaw is the non-bolded don't have a hub near the size of Memphis or the others as a true anchor, i.e. Greater Hartford being like 3 dozen towns of 10-50K aggregating to 1M+. Hartford is just the largest of a cluster of suburbs.

 

[murksiderock]

Memphis is physically in Tennessee, but it's a Mississippi city to its very core. Just south of it is the Mississippi Delta region which is poor, neglected, with not much industry at all. And Memphis is basically the capital of the Mississippi Delta and takes on the same economic and mental characteristics of "The Delta" but in a bigger form. -Y'all seen the movie "Sinners". Its set in Clarksdale, Ms. which is 70 miles south of Memphis. If you drive south of Memphis on the 61 Freeway into the Mississippi Delta, all the small towns look like smaller versions of Memphis with the same issues of crime, unemployment, population loss, etc. Tunica, Clarksdale, Cleveland, Greenville, etc.

The majority of the city is entirely hood. Its the home of Fed Ex, Auto Zone, and with the Grizzlies coming to town they should have had a nice trajectory upward over the past 15 years, but its been nothing but a downward spiral since. St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc. have the same issues, but they're still respected more overall and offer way more than Memphis. Memphis has its charms but the moral and vibe is really low and dark there. Nashville passed it up like crazy and is the crown jewel of the state. Like I said, they had the bones and foundation to grow -Fed Ex, Auto Zone, Grizzlies, The Blues/Beale Street, Graceland, Memphis State, the Riverboats, BBQ, etc. But nothing ever materialized and has gotten significantly worse each and every year. I grew up in Fresno and if they had Fed Ex alone the city would turn into some other "up next"-everybody is moving there sh*t.

SAS need to cut this sh*t out asap. Speaking on the downfall of a city with that type of platform and reach is dangerous. He's basically starting the relocation process for the Grizzles if we're going to keep it a buck. Either Sliver has no control over his broadcast partners or he's encouraging SAS to speak this in existence because they wouldn't mind the Grizzlies packing up and head to Seattle. If SAS attacks New Orleans next then Silver definitely wants those teams to move. Get Seattle and Vegas taken care of by relocating franchises then go international with during expansion time.

Memphis is very much a Mississippi city in spirit. Most black people who are from Memphis, trace their roots to the Arkansas Delta or Mississippi Delta...

Memphis has been run by poor leadership for a long, long time. And while everywhere in this nation has a legacy of racism against black people, Memphis' political leadership has had open racism publicly many times for many years and its effected the development curve of the city...

Fresno is similarly a poor Central Valley town in the same sense Memphis is a poor Mississippi River city, but Fresno is in a richer state and that alone by proxy, limits how low a city the size of Fresno/Memphis would be allowed to sink. Also without as deep a racist legacy that affects the politics of the city...

Nashville was historically smaller than Memphis but was always valued from a political and economic standpoint as it's the state capital. Nashville has always been much whiter than Memphis (plenty of blacks in Nashville though), so the racial animous was less strong there (though it definitely exists, its just "more" black people in Memphis bred "more" racial animosity)...

Memphis is a city that appeals to a certain type of person. If you are from true "small towns", Memphis is big enough to look really popping. If you love deep southern culture, its your place. If you like to be around mostly black people all the time, it doesnt get much blacker than Memphis. If you're a religious person, Memphis is super religious. If you're politically conservative, like an easy, chill pace of life, etc, Memphis could be for you. I could give more examples on the kinda person Memphis appeals to...

The people these characteristics don't apply to, wouldn't tend to like Memphis. If you're a millionaire into the splurging and lifestyle a millionaire tends to be into, Memphis just simply doesnt have enough motion. If you're a millionaire who is more a homebody or has a tight circle and low key lifestyle, that kinda millionaire could like Memphis...

Violent crime has been a conversation with Black Memphians as far back as I can remember. People are used to it, but its an issue people talk about. Unfortunately its one of those Baltimore, St Louis type cities that violence is culturally embedded in the city and has been since before anybody alive today was around. It'll take a specific kind of leadership to turn that around for Memphis, its doable, but Memphis hasn't attracted that kinda leadership...

I've only been to Memphis once and I enjoyed my time there but it does feel like outside of Beale Street there isn't much.

I liked it tho and want to visit again. I went to Game 5 of Grizzlies-Warriors back in 2022 and it they had a thing called Memphis in May so there was a lot going on. There was a BBQ fest. I had an amazing time.

I think there's something dope in every city honestly.

Memphis in May is fire!

I’m saying.
Like when have you heard players say “I wanna go to Utah cause it’s so safe there”, “I wanna go to Portland” etc.

Most young athletes might just prefer major markets or legendary teams.

How can anyone look at Jimmy Butler and say, well if there was no gang violence in Memphis he probably would have chosen Memphis over being the top 5 best paid man in basketball playing with fellow old heads in the SF.

Exactly, athletes aren't generally talking about these cities in terms of who is most safe or not. Mf's love going to NY and it isnt because its the safest big city...

Boston isnt a destination but you never hear people say, "players would love to be there because of how safe it is"...

Portland is actually pretty dangerous so is San Antonio but nobody says those are reasons not to play there. San Antonio has barely more going on there than Memphis, its really just a bigger, Hispanic version of Memphis, a poor Hispanic South Texas city with violence problems

Jimmy didn't even wanna go to SF until he realized they were like the only people who wanted him. And SF's hoods are dangerous as fukk...

Just creating the narrative that Memphis is too dangerous for players to wanna be there, is wack...

 

[murksiderock]

If sas gon do this bullshyt then we need to hear about how dudes ain’t trying to be in no white ass Mormon ass Salt Lake City to play basketball

Mf's don't wanna play in Salt Lake for the same reason they dont like Memphis, too small and not enough happening. Though I'm probably the biggest Salt Lake defender on this board. It's hard to get over how white it is but if you can, its way more popping than Memphis...

The Mormon shyt aint a big deal in the city like that, not the way it is in the suburbs anyway. And it would be really hard to ignore the lack of Black faces and spaces...

I used to travel to Memphis for work and its the only city I felt unsafe in. shyt is ratchet as a mutha fukka.

You live in Atlanta for years but Memphis makes you feel unsafe? I've noted zero difference in the hood areas of both cities. Atlanta has more money so maybe it appears safer but I wouldn't say it "feels" any more safe than Memphis...

Ok let’s say move to team, what about the pacers, thunder, San Antonio, Portland, Cleveland

Exactly. Indy is a notoriously dangerous city, so is Cleveland. Portland and SA are really bad too...

 

[murksiderock]

Yall keep saying this and the nikkas who actually lived in Memphis keep asking where.

Where?

What do you consider nice? Keep I mind we ain’t talking 3 bed 2 bath and a yard nice.

Where is this nice area that a young black male with access to money should be happy living in. Cause if it was there, I’d still be living in Memphis.

Its dangerous to say a place the size of Memphis has no nice areas. We aren't comparing "nice" to the standards of other cities, what sense would that make? "Nice" in DC is different from "nice" in Memphis, so I'm speaking relative to Memphis...

Cooper-Young and most of Midtown is nice, and safe, and walkable. Its nice areas over in East Memphis around UM and the botanical gardens...

Black people who own their homes and make good money live in various areas in North and South Memphis like over here in Westwood:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

If you trying yo compare it to nice areas in Atlanta you tripping. Atlanta is way bigger with a far larger corporate base, that has been injecting more money into Atlanta for a long ass time. Salaries are higher in Atlanta, poverty is less, you combine all these factors, of course nicer areas in Atlanta are nicer than the nice areas in Memphis....

It's a majority black city, saying there ain't no nice areas there, whether you're being intentional or not, is an indictment of black people and how nice we upkeep, how nice we are, etc...

Many of these cities are not near Memphis in size, comparing it to them kinda works against your point.

The bolded are comparable.

Edit: You're likely using total Metro Areas but the flaw is the non-bolded don't have a hub near the size of Memphis or the others as a true anchor, i.e. Greater Hartford being like 3 dozen towns of 10-50K aggregating to 1M+. Hartford is just the largest of a cluster of suburbs.

They are all comparable to Memphis in metro size...

Hartford isn't really a suburb either, its historically got the cache in Connecticut, that Memphis had in Tennessee, and has been afflicted with much of the same social ills as Memphis, namely white flight and disinvestment. Its an important city in its state and walking around both cities, its not really smaller than Memphis...

You could use your "Hartford is a suburb" example in reverse against Memphis, which is over 300 mi² of land in the "city" of Memphis; Memphis covers the same amount of land as New York City with 14x fewer the population because there are large chunks of Memphis that look like this:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

That's "city living" this is in the "city" of Memphis. All the areas like this in Connecticut, are not in Hartford, so if you cut all the fat and empty land and area in Memphis, it essentially is Hartford's size. Somewhere like Capleville is so far out from the center of the city in Memphis, it would be a suburb in Hartford:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

Memphis has hella areas that are effectively suburbs, that are in the city limits, because of how large the city borders are...

If you took Hartford and its surrounding suburbs together you'd get to Memphis' ~611,000 people, much quicker than you'd get to its 300 square miles...

 

[dontreadthis]

For all you coming in here to defend Memphis ask yourselves this. What type of culture must exist in a city for Black men who are LAW ENFORCEMENT to have such hostility and ignorance in their heart to beat another Black man to death in the middle of the street?

PPD, BPD, LAPD, NYPD…..it’s actually harder to think of a major law force that wouldn’t?????

 

[Ironman]

There’s no reason for any of this

This is straight up What about Chicago type shyt

 

[Thavoiceofthevoiceless]

Yall keep saying this and the nikkas who actually lived in Memphis keep asking where.

Where?

What do you consider nice? Keep I mind we ain’t talking 3 bed 2 bath and a yard nice.

Where is this nice area that a young black male with access to money should be happy living in. Cause if it was there, I’d still be living in Memphis.

They don't realize that whatever nice area or neighboorhood you think exist in Memphis, the hood is right across the street from it.

Even the white running lady that got killed years ago crossed paths with someone in the hood even with what is considered the nicer area of Memphis.

 

[Shadow King]

Its dangerous to say a place the size of Memphis has no nice areas. We aren't comparing "nice" to the standards of other cities, what sense would that make? "Nice" in DC is different from "nice" in Memphis, so I'm speaking relative to Memphis...

Cooper-Young and most of Midtown is nice, and safe, and walkable. Its nice areas over in East Memphis around UM and the botanical gardens...

Black people who own their homes and make good money live in various areas in North and South Memphis like over here in Westwood:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

If you trying yo compare it to nice areas in Atlanta you tripping. Atlanta is way bigger with a far larger corporate base, that has been injecting more money into Atlanta for a long ass time. Salaries are higher in Atlanta, poverty is less, you combine all these factors, of course nicer areas in Atlanta are nicer than the nice areas in Memphis....

It's a majority black city, saying there ain't no nice areas there, whether you're being intentional or not, is an indictment of black people and how nice we upkeep, how nice we are, etc...

They are all comparable to Memphis in metro size...

Hartford isn't really a suburb either, its historically got the cache in Connecticut, that Memphis had in Tennessee, and has been afflicted with much of the same social ills as Memphis, namely white flight and disinvestment. Its an important city in its state and walking around both cities, its not really smaller than Memphis...

You could use your "Hartford is a suburb" example in reverse against Memphis, which is over 300 mi² of land in the "city" of Memphis; Memphis covers the same amount of land as New York City with 14x fewer the population because there are large chunks of Memphis that look like this:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

That's "city living" this is in the "city" of Memphis. All the areas like this in Connecticut, are not in Hartford, so if you cut all the fat and empty land and area in Memphis, it essentially is Hartford's size. Somewhere like Capleville is so far out from the center of the city in Memphis, it would be a suburb in Hartford:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

Memphis has hella areas that are effectively suburbs, that are in the city limits, because of how large the city borders are...

If you took Hartford and its surrounding suburbs together you'd get to Memphis' ~611,000 people, much quicker than you'd get to its 300 square miles...

Breh I don't care about physical size. Hartford has a population of 120K and has never touched 200K. Memphis has held over 600K for 6 decades.

The whole state itself is basically a NYC suburb. Hartford cannot be the same size as Memphis because the state is tiny. Hartford is not literally a suburb but it does not hold the same cache on a national scale as a cultural hub. It's not a good comparison.

When the suburbs of your main city are rivaling the main city in population, it doesn't belong in categories with hub cities of 4/500K.

As far as the "nice compared to who" thing you said to breh, that does make sense because we're not talking about "worked hard now I'm middle class" nice that most black folks get to. We're talking 8/9-figure net worth nice.

 

[EzekelRAGE]

Makes Sauce Walka and that fat goofy Mexican rapper even more stupid trynna stunt in a place like Memphis.

1. That wasnt "stuntin" shyt. It's believed that the sayso dude had beef in memphis(allegedly ran off on 200k from someone) and that was getback from someone he fukked over
2. He wasnt mexican, he's apparently a full fledged cac, I thought it was a mexican at first too . Someone in that "Sauce Walka got shot" thread said they saw pics of his mom's side of the family and she may be half black though

 

[murksiderock]

Breh I don't care about physical size. Hartford has a population of 120K and has never touched 200K. Memphis has held over 600K for 6 decades.

The whole state itself is basically a NYC suburb. Hartford cannot be the same size as Memphis because the state is tiny. Hartford is not literally a suburb but it does not hold the same cache on a national scale as a cultural hub. It's not a good comparison.

When the suburbs of your main city are rivaling the main city in population, it doesn't belong in categories with hub cities of 4/500K.

As far as the "nice compared to who" thing you said to breh, that does make sense because we're not talking about "worked hard now I'm middle class" nice that most black folks get to. We're talking 8/9-figure net worth nice.

"Nice" is one of those eye of the beholder things. There are dozens of thousands of people in Memphis who are millionaires, they live somewhere, and they not all out in the suburbs. Historically Poplar and some of those Midtown boulevards and cross streets were full of mini-mansions. Whether thats nice or not, I really don't care enough to debate it, homie said aint no nice areas in Memphis and thats why he left...

That's cool for him. It's mf's who have way more money than him and will never leave Memphis, so saying aint no nice areas is a him thing. And its also inflammatory because we know black cities are stigmatized, so running around saying a black city as large as Memphis directly plays into the image of Memphis that mf's are defending themselves against...

I would never live in Memphis again but as someone who has and spent ample time there, I ain't letting nikkas get off with "there's no nice areas there" because its obvious that its not true. Its not fukking Tupelo

Fair point on CT being an NY suburb but Hartford is closer to Mass than NY and is historically the most relevant city in that state, same way Memphis was historically the most important city in Tennessee. It's cache is muted being between Boston and New York but Baltimore's is also muted being between DC and Philly, it happens. If Memphis, New Orleans, and St Louis were all 100 miles or less from each other, you'd view Memphis in the same light you view Hartford, because as it is its lost cache within its state and has never had the cultural resonance St Louis (which hosted the first World's Fair or some shyt 110 years ago) and New Orleans (one of the first and largest immigration ports in the US dating to the 18th century)....any clout or cache Memphis has, has never been on the level of Nola or StL, and that's woth it a good distance from those cities...

Reverse Hartford and Memphis' locations and they have the same story, Memphis wouldn't be a bigger deal in New England and Hartford wouldn't be a bigger deal on the Mississippi...

I don't really care about physical size either but when you pointed out Hartford's size, you gotta point out that Memphis in the same land area as Hartford (18 sq miles), has the same population as Hartford, and probably less. Memphis has that large population for generations because southern cities have always liberally annexed all available land around them to generate population. Areas that would be suburbs on the coasts or the Midwest, are "in the city" in southern cities, because they are all hundreds of sq miles, many of that mileage lightly populated...

 

[Buckeye Fever]

And this is how the Nashville Grizzlies would come to be

Especially how Nashville is steadily growing and becoming more expensive.

 

[Buckeye Fever]

Was in Memphis for a couple of hours on a road trip. The only mid sized to major city I had to keep my head on a swivel… and I was in the business district before evening hours. New Orleans is like DC or Chicago compared to Memphis.

It’s not a pro sports city at all.

Their lease is up in 2027 so I can see Nashville, Seattle or Vegas for them.

Apparently, you have never been to Columbus, Ohio

 

[jwonder]

Memphis is like a Bama extension but worse with the crime. Them nikkas are ignant to a whole new level out there. Some real dumb mofos. Like they do crimes that scream please catch me.