Stephen A. Smith shouldn’t be talking right now. It’s 6 A.M. the morning of Game 3 of the NBA Finals, and the biggest name at ESPN has come down with a sore throat that ambushed him in the middle of the previous night. As a result, Stephen A. isn’t gonna do his usual radio show today. He’s not gonna even cut a promotional teaser for First Take, the sports debate show that he presides over that is now the crown jewel of ESPN’s daytime TV programming. We’re at the Lake Chalet restaurant in Oakland for a remote taping of that show today, and when a production worker asks Stephen A. if she can borrow him in ten minutes to do a promo, he blanches.

“So they got me teasing, knowing my voice?” he asks her, betraying no hint in his firm words that said voice is anything less than 100 percent. “Why would they do that? I need to save my voice. Don't ask me to speak until I have to. Doesn't that make sense?”

There’s a line wrapped around the outside of the restaurant: people who have been waiting here since as early as 4 A.M., either waking up before dawn or forgoing sleep altogether. There are Warriors fans in this line, naturally—all of them cocky and blissfully unaware of the disastrous Finals endgame that awaits them. There are also Lakers fans, a lone Bulls fan, a Sharks fan, a Browns fan (who told me he likes the Cavs AND the Warriors), parents with small kids, and a Kansas City Royals fan for some reason. They each have their own particular team loyalties, but they’re here because they are ALL fans of Stephen Anthony Smith, and they have little compunction about explaining why:

I love his reactions to stuff. He’s not afraid to look stupid on camera.

He makes it okay to be yourself, to speak your mind.

I like how Stephen A. is very vocal as a black man. He does more than a lot of other analysis on a lot of other platforms like Fox News and stuff like that and don't even be compensated for it. He does it for the love of the culture, and he's one of the few people that actually do it for you.

One guy in line didn’t like Stephen A.’s hardline stance against smoking weed. “You're in the Bay Area. I'm sorry, bro. You should be smoking weed, bro.” But of course, such objections didn’t stop this guy from coming. He’s still a fan of First Take. Also, he’s definitely high.

Stephen A. (and I’m gonna refer to him as Stephen A. the rest of the way here, because it would feel deeply wrong not to) must carefully preserve his voice for these people. His people. He has a lot of them now. It took a long-ass time for the general public to embrace the man; particularly white Americans who were perhaps not used to a black guy on TV being so unapologetically assertive and brash. Tough shit for them. First Take is the No. 1 cable show in its time slot with young men: a total audience of nearly half a million people and growing. Over half that audience is black, but it contains no shortage of white folks, either. In fact, Stephen A. is so popular across the board that when he went to Toronto for the first two games of these Finals, he got a police escort to the arena.

Even the people who love to hate Stephen A. love him, and he loves them right back. ESPN’s VP of production, David Roberts, told me so: “When we go to Dallas for the NFL kickoff, I'm sure there'll be 2,500 people wanting to get his autograph and boo him at the same time.” Fellow ESPNer Dan Le Batard told me Stephen A. is “the closest thing we have to Howard Cosell in 2019.” And many of his contemporaries agree. He is not merely the biggest name at ESPN; he is often the biggest—and perhaps highest-paid—star when he walks into any given NBA arena. (According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, ESPN has made Stephen A. their highest-paid talent ever with his newest contract extension: nearly $8 million a year.) He’s such a big draw now that he can no longer watch games in person from a seat, opting instead to watch from the tunnel, often flanked by arena security guards who happily let him into the joint without a credential. His name and his voice...those ARE his credentials.