Andre Iguodala took less than 30 seconds to illustrate just about everything wrong with NBA fan culture in his latest interview.
Advertisement
There’s no doubt that basketball talk shows have grown progressively worse over the years. We would have Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith on for only a couple of hours every day.
But Stephen A has now become the staple ESPN personality to plug into segments about every sport. In addition, much of the rest of the discourse around the NBA has moved away from on-court stuff.
FS1 and ESPN are now farming clicks from fans who’re addicted to watching their latest hot takes. And Andre Iguodala has been the recipient, if unwittingly, of a lot of love that originates from there.
‘I want Iguodala’ is still perhaps the most outrageous, yet the best segment of First Take with Max Kellerman.
Andre Iguodala pithily explains how NBA discourse has devolved to hot takes, cites Max Kellerman
Andre Iguodala talked about a bunch of things in his latest appearance on The Breakfast Club. He ventured into talk about how Steph Curry has influenced the players after him, their playing style and mannerisms.
He also seemed to want to insinuate that the Warriors’ 3-1 loss in 2016 was partly because of ‘external factors’. But perhaps his best take on this radio appearance was regarding how NBA culture has become so high on hot takes:
“You gotta understand how different shows work, entertainment works, like ESPN. Disney has a large TV deal with the NBA, they do our games. So there’s a lot of coverage around basketball ’cause they wanna draw in viewers, they wanna draw attention.”
“So you’re gonna get somebody saying something crazy. There’s a discussion behind it and now lives on forever and then now I walk around in public.”
“You got a bunch of white kids that repeat ‘I want Iguodala!’ all the time. That’s just a cool thing about it. But when you break down like that’s real basketball talk, no.”
