There are times in sports media when someone puts their foot in their mouth, and the repercussions are endless. That is currently happening to Richard Jefferson. The retired NBA star is facing a wave of backlash regarding an opinion he shared about Karl Malone.
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The 2016 NBA Champ was having a friendly debate with Kendrick Perkins on his Road Trippin podcast about who they thought was the best basketball player that never won a title. RJ’s boldly chose Utah Jazz legend Karl Malone. However, his choice of words is what has gotten him a bit of heat.
“The reason why I would pick Karl Malone over Charles is because of the level of professionalism that Karl Malone always approached,” he stated. This was in response to Kendrick choosing Charles Barkley as his pick. Jefferson slightly criticized Chuck for being in and out of shape during his run in Philly before doubling down on Malone as his pick.
“So when I look at the best player to not win a championship, I’m going to put Karl Malone as No. 1 just because his professional approach was trying to maximize every bit of his talent for a lot of years. That’s why his longevity was greater.”
Why is this an issue? Well, Malone’s character has been put in the limelight over the last few years due to the off-court legal troubles. It centers around him having a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl when he was 20 in Louisiana. Malone actually fathered a child with the girl, which constitutes statutory rape, but he was never charged.
Malone did settle the case out of court, and for years never had contact with the child, who would grow up to become NFL player Demetress Bell. So when RJ used the term professionalism, it rubbed a lot of people online the wrong way, especially considering the NBA Hall of Famer never faced any real consequences.
Well, Perkins is unhappy that people are unhappy. He explained on the latest Road Trippin that the entire saga is due to people taking Jefferson’s initial take out of context.
“People now take that out of context. We never discussed what a mother f****** doing outside of basketball,” stated the controversial analyst, who then took shots at social media accounts for making the issue a much bigger deal. “You have these young mother f******, especially on X, that take clips and chop it up and reword how they want to word it and put it out there and they can get their clicks,” he stated.
The King of Bad takes then fired back with probably his swan song of horrific takes. “We never bought that up, and that was allegedly. From what I know, Karl Malone was never charged with anything for us to even go that route. But we can’t talk about this man’s greatness on the floor? He’s a top Power Forward to ever play this game.”
The absolute lack of empathy or awareness from Perkins is almost impressive. To say the words, “never charged,” does not change the fact that what Malone was accused of doing was unforgivable.
RJ’s take was certainly in poor taste on its own, but it is believable that he was just speaking about Malone’s basketball skills. But for KP to not only pretend that what Jefferson said wasn’t controversial, and added that Malone “allegedly” did these things even though there’s a paternity test that proved he was Demetress’s father, is grounds for some consequences.
Will ESPN take them? Most likely not. The moral compass of this current timeline is at an all-time low, so Perkins will continue to give takes as long as it gets clicks. Maybe one day the right person will catch wind of these awful takes by Perkins. Let’s just hope that they don’t skip over the one where he defended an atrocious crime.
