Things got awkward during ESPN commentator Sage Steele’s interview with Win Butler, the MVP of the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game on Friday.
Butler, the lead singer of Arcade Fire, scored 15 points and grabbed 14 rebounds during Team Canada’s win and was named MVP of the game. Afterwards he was interviewed by Steele, and he talked about his Canadian heritage. Then he tried to get political and make a statement about health care but was abruptly cut off by Steele.
“We’re talking about celebrity stuff not politics! Congratulations on your MVP!” she said.
Steele then went to Drake, the coach of the Canadian team, for a quick question before ESPN rapidly cut to the UCLA-Arizona college basketball game.
Here’s a transcription of Butler’s interview:
Full text of Win Butler's MVP acceptance speech before ESPN cut him off. Video inside. https://t.co/CjqbHeNejW pic.twitter.com/xjC6gaCyBO
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) February 13, 2016
And here is video of the interaction:
It’s clear that ESPN was in a hurry to switch to the Arizona-UCLA game, but the way Steele handled that was poor. Perhaps she was getting direction from producers in her ear telling her to move on and that was her reaction. However, you never want to make viewers wince, which is what happened in this case. Yet based on her Twitter, it seems like Steele has strong feelings on the ESPN platform only being used for sports purposes:
Comical hearing @BarackObama pimping his health care plan on @ESPN_Colin 's show… It's ESPN!! Let's stick to his take on hoops!!!
— Sage Steele (@sagesteele) March 20, 2014
This was just the latest example of awkward TV involving Steele, although it wasn’t quite as weird as the last one.
