ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins Was the Big Winner of the Weekend: TRAINA THOUGHTS
1. The U.S. men’s basketball team won the gold medal at the Olympics this weekend. Whatever. [Insert shoulder shrug emoji.]
Much more interesting, to me, is that right after winning in the Finals, Draymond Green and Kevin Durant went on a livestream to bash ESPN NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins.
“Kendrick Perkins, you talk a lot of s---. A lot of s---,” yelled Green. Durant, meanwhile, was complaining about meaningless power rankings.
Perkins, to his credit, had the absolute perfect reaction to being called out.
You couldn’t have played it any better than Perkins did. He was 100% correct.
Durant and Green had just come off the court from winning Olympic gold, and they have Kendrick Perkins and power rankings at the top of their minds? That’s a huge win for Perkins.
When you have the job Perkins has, where you appear on studio shows to give your opinion, your No. 1 goal is to get attention. That’s what the higher-ups care about. They don’t care about an analyst being right. They care about attention.
And Perkins got attention right after the gold medal game from one guy who might be the best player in the entire league and another guy who is a three-time NBA champion and three-time All-Star.
Based on this weekend, Perkins should be in line for a raise at the Worldwide Leader.
2. NBC's Al Michaels joined the ESPN booth for Sunday Night Baseball last night for a nostalgia play because the game aired on ABC. During his appearance, Michaels told this outstanding story about Howard Cosell and Bob Costas.
3. A fan ran onto the field at yesterday's Dodgers game and was chased by security before being taken out by the team's ball girl. Some genius added play-by-play to the video and the result is this gem.
4. "What's up with that? What did I do wrong?" Great stuff by Tom Brady after getting booed during Peyton Manning's Hall of Fame speech yesterday.
5. Fox Sports' Joe Buck will be the Jeopardy! guest host this week.
6. The latest SI Media Podcast features a conversation with Ian Eagle of CBS Sports and Turner Sports. We talked about the possibility of Ian's replacing Marv Albert as TNT's lead NBA voice and whether he'd want the gig calling Thursday Night Football for Amazon.
Other topics and highlights:
- Imitations and stories about Bill Raftery and Chris "Mad Dog" Russo
- Ian is addicted to TikTok
- How will he say Travis Kelce's last name this season?
- Getting shamed by Tom Brady for drinking soda and eating donuts
- His famous food quirks
- Covering Kevin Durant
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher.
You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.
7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: This guy @gibberishjc is one of my new favorites on TikTok. He just goes into stores and asks for help but in the most nonsensical way, completely confusing the hell out of the poor salesperson.
Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.
