LeBron James heard you talking — all of you — and now he’s partnering with the one guy who polarizes everyone in the sports analyst broadcast category: J.J. Redick.
Reddick already hosts a podcast called “The Old Man and the Three,” but this project trumps all with his co-host, LeBron James. The two will jointly produce “Mind the Game,” a disruptor looking to focus more on the game of basketball and how they think about the game. LeBron is tired of the GOAT debates and the daily topics he sees disseminated over the airwaves.
Think tactical conversations about on-court strategies with guests focused on breaking down the game.
“It’s meant to be a very free-flowing conversation about the sport and about the game,” Redick said in a phone interview with The Athletic. “If you look at it in a very simplistic way, it’s just about basketball.”
For LeBron, it was about making the main thing the main thing, the game.
“I thought we were losing the essence of the game of basketball and the true meaning behind the game of basketball, and teaching our youth and teaching people what the game of basketball truly means,” James said in a video to Jovan Buha of The Athletic.
“I was getting very frustrated with the daily comparisons, every single day,” James continued. “Who’s better or how does this affect your legacy? Or if this played in the ’50s, would he be this? Or if this guy in the ’50s played in the 2000s. It’s not good for the youth. Obviously, if you want to hear that you can go to the barbershops, but you’re hearing it every day on national television, and I felt like our audience needed a different approach to understand the true essence of the game and how I fell in love with the game.
“You have someone like J.J., who has kind of the same mindset about the game of basketball, very smart, fell in love with the game for all the right reasons,” James added. “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while, but it just felt like perfect timing.”
Ironically, Redick used to have battle of the eras conversations on “First Take” against Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, where he famously called players from Bob Cousey’s era “plumbers and firemen.” Still, James expounded further in a statement to The Athletic.
“I’m really proud of what we’ve done to innovate in sports media. When I do a project, the only thing I think about is whether me and my friends would watch it. That is definitely the case with ‘Mind the Game.’ Everything doesn’t need to be designed for internet culture and clicks.”
Make no mistake: With this show, LeBron James is taking a shot at the current state of both old and new media and tapping in J.J. Redick, a nod to a fundamental basketball player ethos that comes with every former Duke player.
LeBron is approaching his entrance into new sports media, acting more acutely as an analyst of the game and not a culturally opinionated steward who moves within basketball.
