By Quincy San, April 15, 2025
The NBA is one of the most exciting leagues to break down and discuss. In 2025, however, it feels like league-related topics have been sidelined for talking points that are more about what players and teams do off the court. Today’s basketball media coverage is spearheaded by former NBA players, who don’t even watch games, and loud journalists and analysts who don’t even bother to hide their bias.
Basketball discourse seems to have taken a step backwards. Sports media giants like ESPN and NBA on TNT shell out hundreds of millions of dollars to people who should have no business talking about today’s NBA.
Shaquille O’Neal, who’s widely considered as one of the most dominant players in NBA history, leads the charge when it comes to talking down today’s NBA players and how they play the game in the present.
Earlier this month on O’Neal’s own podcast, “The Big Podcast with Shaq,” he called the Detroit Pistons “boring.” He then went on to falsely claim that the Pistons were four wins under a .500 record in that same podcast episode. When informed by co-host Adam Lefkoe that the Pistons were actually 10 games better than he had claimed, O’Neal proceeded to move the talk over Lefkoe and say the Pistons were not going to be winning the championship.
In that same week, O’Neal once again bashed the Pistons, this time while being live on national television. While giving praise to the Pistons, he gave a shoutout to former Pistons guard Chauncey Billups, who he believed was the head coach of the team. When one of his co-hosts stepped in mid-sentence to correct him, O’Neal appeared to sound irritated before saying, “First of all, I don’t watch Detroit.”
Many NBA fans don’t have time to sit down and watch entire NBA games and talk show segments that break down games. Instead, many consume their sports content from social media, and they usually only see viral clips of scathing comments made by analysts like O’Neal. Even though there isn’t credibility to what O’Neal said, the average fan might not know that and take his word for it because he’s considered an NBA legend.
Aryan Mitharwal, a computer science student, said he believes being a former NBA player doesn’t always make someone qualified to talk about basketball.
“Shaq is a major part of NBA history and deserves his flowers, but I think his time as a host should come to an end, unless he decides to change his way of discussing the game,” Mitharwal said.
Despite constantly ragging on current NBA players and teams and openly admitting to not watching NBA games — which he’s getting paid $15 million a year to talk about — O’Neal continues to drive basketball media toward chaotic discourse instead of insightful analysis.
Former players aren’t the only people with major platforms who try to tear down NBA athletes. Stephen A. Smith, a sports television personality who appears frequently as an analyst on ESPN and SportsCenter as well as his own podcast, has done more harm than good over the last decade.
Smith is known for his fiery personality and ability to say demonstrative things about players when in front of a camera. Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James has long been one of Smith’s favorite players to go after and try to tear down during Smith’s two-decade television career.
When James made it clear a few years ago that he wanted to share an NBA court with his oldest son, Bronny James, Smith was right there to show his distaste with that idea. Last June, the Lakers selected Bronny James with the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, making history as the first team to have a father and son on an active roster. Bronny has been a bench player all season for the Lakers, averaging 2.3 points per game on 32.7% shooting in just 5.9 minutes per game. He usually plays at the end of blowout games.
“I am really, really trying to be as respectful as I possibly can be to LeBron James,” Smith said on an ESPN segment in January. “I am pleading with LeBron James as a father: Stop this. Stop this. We all know that Bronny James is in the NBA because of his dad.”
Instead of focusing on the fact that the father-son duo made history or that Bronny James has been playing well in the NBA G League, Smith chose to call out James as a father and not as a basketball player.
Mitharwal thinks that analysts like Smith should be talking about basketball instead of talking about players’ personal lives.
“No host should ever be discussing another person’s parenthood or questioning their status because of NBA controversy,” Mitharwal said. “That was an incredibly lowball move and should have never been uttered by Smith. “Smith is not on TV to be a moral compass, or to tell others what the way of life is. He is on there to speak about sports. He should be ashamed for even discussing LeBron James’ fatherhood.”
During a March 6 matchup against the New York Knicks in Los Angeles with Smith in attendance, LeBron James was seen on video confronting him. Smith would go on air the next morning and confirm that LeBron James approached him to talk about how Smith had been discussing his son.
As the month progressed, Smith continued to talk about his encounter with LeBron James in a fiery manner, and he’s gone on multiple podcasts to try and ridicule the 40-year-old superstar. When featured on former NBA player Gilbert Arenas’ podcast, Smith called James “weak” for talking to him during the game.
When fans like Mitharwal tune into NBA talk shows and podcasts, they expect to see discussions on the slate of games going on, the MVP race or best contenders for a championship title.
Media figures like O’Neal and Smith, simply put, are detrimental to the NBA’s media landscape. They say outrageous things that aren’t true for views, they don’t cover teams and players who deserve more media coverage, and they attack players for who they are as people instead of how they play on the court. The sooner people realize how negative these critics are for the sport; the sooner change can happen.
Feature image by Connor Lālea Hampton
