Kendrick Perkins encouraged LeBron James to join ESPN day before layoffs
· Yahoo Sports
LeBron James is still weighing all of his options in regard to where he will finish his NBA career. ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins, who does not know where that will be, made a unique pitch to the future Hall of Famer on Monday’s “NBA Today” that hits a bit differently considering the events of the last 24 hours.
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“How about I make a pitch for us at “NBA Today” and ESPN,” Perkins said. “Hey, Bron, you don’t really need to play anymore. You’re really good at breaking down the game. You have a high IQ for the game of basketball and I’m pretty sure that over here at the Worldwide Leader, the mouse, we can pay you more than [the] vet minimum.”
Perkins was just trying to have some fun. But his timing couldn’t have been worse.
ESPN layoffs
A day after his lighthearted comments, ESPN conducted layoffs with a significant number of on-air personalities impacted, including Ryan Clark and Karl Ravech. The network, like so many other places in media, has not been immune to cuts through the years. Fair or otherwise, there’s belief that there are a few megastars who have seen their salaries explode while those deeper on the depth chart lose security.
To make it absolutely clear, this is not intended to dunk on Perkins or suggest anything other than a bit of terrible timing. At huge organizations at ESPN the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing and occasionally it leads to some awkwardness in terms of messaging.
It’s no secret that any outlet associated with basketball would pay dearly for James’ services should he opt to get into media when he eventually retires. Candidly, it would be well worth it for ESPN to go after him even if there were to be some pushback because how often does such an opportunity come up?
Just an unfortunate sequence of events to have the show’s official account promoting this mere hours before bad news for some of their colleagues hit the wires.
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