Nevertheless, the award program also included O.J. Simpson, the Pro Football Hall of Famer and Hollywood star who was accused and later acquitted of killing his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in the mid-1990s, who died earlier this year at 76 years old following a battle with cancer.

Stephen A. Smith recently went on his podcast and shared his frustration with the BET awards for honoring O.J. Simpson in one of their segments. In a clip that is currently going viral on X, Smith can be heard questioning why Simpson would be honored when he didn’t care about the black community.

During last weekend's BET Awards, O.J. Simpson was included in an "In Memoriam" segment for entertainers and luminaries that died over the previous year. Public tributes for Simpson have been rare since his death,