Credit: Kirby Lee – USA Today Sports; Nightcap
Former ESPN NBA analyst Jalen Rose dropped a surprise post this week calling modern NBA coverage “weak,” leading Nightcap host and Pro Football Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe to set the record straight.
Rose, who was laid off by ESPN in 2024, posted on X that there are too many “men/women who didn’t play” and former teammates or “stans” of LeBron James covering the league these days. The post caught the attention of many basketball commentators and athletes in media, reigniting the endless debate over whether athletes are the best analysts to cover their sport.
In an episode of Nightcap on Monday, Sharpe sharply disagreed with Rose’s take.
“Everybody that played a particular sport that was great. We’ve seen that,” Sharpe said. “When I say talk it, I mean put it in the context [for] the lay fan, the casual fan. Not the hardened fan. Because the thing that people fail to realize, it’s the casual fan who spends their money. Regardless of the sport.”
Sharpe listed the legendary John Madden and Charles Barkley (whom Rose frequently works with as a fill-in panelist on Inside the NBA) as quintessential examples of the fact that being entertaining and relating to the audience are more important than delivering the most incisive analysis.
Casual fans, Sharpe argued, do not know the intricacies of a given sport.
“So why would you try to put that on them?” he asked. “Because you want to show how intelligent you are?”
Rose argued with a few X users who disagreed with his argument, but didn’t elaborate much despite the pushback he received. While Sharpe said Rose is a “great guy” and “very knowledgeable” about the NBA, he wondered what Rose wanted. Though NBA coverage on television may lean more toward personality-driven former players, there are plenty of people online who break sports down more deeply for the diehards.
“I like the fact that there’s so many more platforms and it gives so many more guys an opportunity. And normally, when guys don’t pan out, they move on and give somebody else an opportunity,” Sharpe said. “I just want to know what he wants the coverage to be. Because if you just start Xs and Os, ain’t nobody tuning in for that.”
Sharpe did not address Rose’s point about the support for James across NBA media, but he has a point. At ESPN, there are three members of James’ second run of Cleveland teams (Kendrick Perkins, Richard Jefferson and Iman Shumpert) and another from the 2020 Lakers squad (Danny Green) prominently involved in the network’s coverage. Some of the network’s top reporters, including Shams Charania, Brian Windhorst and Dave McMenamin, have risen in the industry through covering James.
Still, it is hard to parse Rose’s exact criticism and whether it isn’t merely sour grapes toward his old employer. Across all sports, players from the best teams trickle into media, and it isn’t exactly a hot take to speak glowingly about the generation’s greatest player.
For his part, Rose is back on air at TNT Sports, and was plenty effusive in support of Michigan — his alma mater — during its championship run this past spring.