Tim Hardaway: Active NBA players shouldn’t have podcasts

Tim Hardaway is a former outstanding NBA point guard, and he has a podcast. Nothing wrong with that.

But Hardaway isn’t in favor of current NBA players having podcasts. The list, of course, includes LeBron James and Draymond Green.

“I never agree with a guy having his own podcast on a team,” Hardaway said, via Awful Announcing. “I just don’t agree with that… Whether it’s streaming or whatever. While they’re playing… During the season. Like [Draymond Green], I don’t agree with him. You know, it’s alright to them, but I feel that you’re disrespecting these other teams… And Adam Silver just let it go. David Stern would have been like, ‘HELL NO! We’re not doing it.’

“If you talked about a team in the media, and say, like, on a trade or something like that, you would’ve gotten fined by David Stern. He would’ve fined you. You do not talk about nobody else’s team. You talk about your team and your organization. That’s it. That’s all. And you can only talk about the team that you played that night. The next day, you can’t talk about them.”

Hardaway is probably right. Late NBA commissioner David Stern probably wouldn’t have allowed players to host podcasts. But that doesn’t necessarily make Silver wrong for allowing it. Times do change, and fans do love to hear from the players without the (sometimes inaccurate) media translations.

Hardaway’s conversation was spurred by comments from Jaylen Brown, who was traded from the Celtics to 76ers earlier this month. Brown went on livestreams to discuss … well, just about everything. He was open and honest. Perhaps a little too open and honest, at times.

As Awful Announcing relayed, Fox Sports personality Colin Cowherd was among those who was critical of Brown’s livestreaming.

“And livestreaming, and throwing it out there, it’s just not a good space,” Cowherd said. “It used to be ‘nothing good happens after three in the morning.’ Nothing good happens when pro athletes livestream. It’s just trouble. Stay away from it. You need PR people. Even what I do, when you’re emotional, when you’re in a terrible mood, don’t go to livestreaming.”

There is undoubtedly some validity to that. Brown saw it differently.

“He’s saying, like, the livestream and, like, you need to have PR. But I think the world craves authenticity right now,” Brown said in response to Cowherd’s comments. “Everything is so PR. Everything is so scripted. Everything is so fictional or packaged that I feel like people want to see what the real emotion is, what’s real. Rather than this fake political propaganda that we get delivered in a bunch of different industries, including sports, including music, including politics. Right?

“So, me and Colin Cowherd can agree to disagree on that. But overall, I could say a lot about what he just said. I could stand up for myself, which I’ve been doing. I feel like that’s been a narrative people have been using for a long time to try to attack me and my character.”

Hardaway was a standout point guard with the Warriors in the 1990s. His son, Tim Hardaway Jr., just signed with the Heat.