Sports media has changed a lot over the years. What was once a treasured profession built on analytics and meaningful conversations has turned into a carousel of loud-mouthed content creators, resorting to extreme and questionable tactics just to be heard. Denzel Washington has had enough, and LeBron James, who is often a target of these so-called personalities, agrees.
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Washington, an Oscar winner, recently sat down for an interview with Sports Illustrated to promote his new Spike Lee film Highest 2 Lowest. What started as a film promotion, turned into the Oscar winning actor spitting bars about his dislike against the sports media talking heads.
Washington called them out for being too opinionated. To make matters worse, most of those voicing these opinions haven’t achieved even a fraction of what the people they target have accomplished.
“Everybody’s got an opinion. We live in a world of opinionnaires. That’s what I call them, opinionnaires,” started Washington. “All the shows are a bunch of guys, couple of them that have played but most of them who haven’t who have an opinion about what something should be when they haven’t done it.”
“People need to shut up. Learn how to do something. Be actually good at something. Try that,” screamed the Training Day superstar, who couldn’t be more right. Want an example? The biggest story at the end of the 2024/25 season wasn’t the Oklahoma City Thunder winning the league. It was Stephen A. Smith’s beef with James.
Speaking of the King, he noticeably liked Washington’s rant on Instagram, as did NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett.
LeBron likes Denzel’s take on sports media pic.twitter.com/pAz5XQQ1u1
— tragicpatek (@tragicpatek) August 14, 2025
It seems players are growing tired of people who have never picked up a basketball in their lives running their mouths. It’s not that Denzel said anything new about sports media, as these criticisms have been around for years. But only Denzel can deliver a passionate speech with that vibrato, putting fear in your eyes and hope in your heart at the same time.
James himself tried to call attention to this during the NBA Finals. On an episode of Mind The Game, the Los Angeles Lakers star told co-host Steve Nash that the media used to promote the league during the championship series, and now all they do is spread nonsense.
“It’s just, ‘what can I say without truth or without knowledge’ or ‘this is what I want to say’ and there’s no accountability behind it. That now goes to our fans,” stated James. “We have to protect our players and protect our product, and also bring awareness. I think our game is also about storytelling.”
Takes, whether good or bad, get clicks. Clicks turn into views, and views turn into monetization and power. It’s not hard to spot. But sports media used to mean something. Stuart Scott was one of the most respected names in all of sports because of his dedicated coverage and unique analysis of what he was covering. It had nothing to do with personality or self-promotion. It was about the game.
Unfortunately, those days don’t seem to be coming back anytime soon. Fortunately, Highest 2 Lowest will be in theaters on August 15.
