Stephen A. Smith issued a public apology to Teyana Taylor and Iman Shumpert after claiming on his show that Teyana walked away from their divorce with $25 million while Iman was left with about $2 million and nowhere to live.
Video:
The claim came from an October episode of The Culture Table, Smith’s show under his Straight Shooter Media company, titled “Can Men Trust Women with Their Finances?” On the episode, Smith said Teyana got $25 million, $10 million in properties, luxury cars and other assets. He called Iman his brother, noted that Iman now works with him at ESPN, and said he wouldn’t blame him if he never got married again. He also said Teyana could have handed Iman half of what she received for the sake of their children, even though the court had already decided the split.
Now Smith is walking it all back. Those statements were inaccurate, and I want to sincerely apologize to both Iman Shumpert and Teyana Taylor,” he said in a video.
Smith said he knows the numbers were wrong because he spoke to Teyana directly, and she told him the information circulating online was “patently false.” He said he has already apologized to both of them privately, and he took responsibility as CEO of Straight Shooter Media for putting out information that wasn’t properly sourced. “We didn’t meet that standard here,” he said.
The numbers Smith repeated match a viral post that spread across social media in December 2025, listing $10 million in cash, four houses worth $10 million, a Maybach, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and a tour bus. Celebrity Net Worth reported that it found no evidence supporting the claim that the former couple ever owned $10 million worth of homes.
Teyana has pushed back on the money narrative before. She has said the court awarded her four of the seven properties she and Iman owned, that both of them put work, time and money into those homes, and that Iman kept a Miami condo she said he had previously given to her. She has also said she paid for every car she walked away with, including the Maybach, after Iman crashed her Rolls Royce and never replaced it.
The details of the divorce, which was finalized on July 1, 2024, are supposed to be confidential. A judge later found that Teyana violated that confidentiality with an Instagram Live video about the split and ordered her to pay $70,000 toward Iman’s legal fees. Teyana and Iman married in 2016 and share two daughters, Junie and Rue.
The apology is Smith’s second in a week. Days earlier, he faced backlash over his comments about Philadelphia Eagles star Lane Johnson’s retirement for mental health reasons. Jalen Rose, who is back on ESPN’s airwaves through Inside the NBA, didn’t let it slide. “Been doing a lot of tap dancing, I mean apologizing,” Rose wrote on X.
Ray J also stepped in to defend Iman, his longtime friend from college.
