As I write, Madison Square Garden is preparing to host a competitive playoff game, the Lakers are attempting to upset a team without any centers, Kawhi Leonard and Kevin Durant are going shot-for-shot, and the Warriors remain 100% fallible on the road. All this will be remembered as pageantry when the real NBA champion is crowned after the Celtics and Bucks face off in the Eastern Conference Finals. Until then, we’re refreshing our list of the 10 best NBA podcasts to keep you focused, locked in, and ready for the opening rounds.
If you count the old ESPN BS Report, Simmons likely holds the title for the longest-running major NBA podcast. His late-season weekly podcast with Ryen Russillo is his best current offering, though Simmons tends to post three NBA shows a week during the playoffs. Simmons has assumed the role of the NBA’s highest-profile historian, and his individual game recall remains unrivaled.
Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux’s podcast ranks as the most serious, unsentimental NBA podcast. This serious unsentimentality has a lot to do with the fact that it’s a rare daily sports podcast of quality, posting game recaps consistently from October-June. It cannot be stressed enough that the two writers talk about basketball for 90 minutes, five times a week. That’s a level of productivity typically reserved for sports talk radio, and unlike sports talk radio, Dunc’d On is all analytics. This is the show to turn to for the deepest analysis.
Lowe hosts his ESPN podcast nominally alone, supported by a rotating cast of fellow reporters and occasional player interviews. Lowe’s gift both as a writer and a podcaster is his ability to communicate his deep understanding of the game casually. He can explain a screen or a defensive rotation without a visual aid, and without losing you. The Lowe Post ultimately strikes an excellent balance between analysis and personality. The show doesn’t stray too far from game talk, but Lowe’s jovial enough to let each episode wander into less-NBA-Head territory as well.
Dozens of players-only podcasts have emerged over the last two years, and since October 2019, All The Smoke has proven itself the runaway winner of the category. Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson were scrappy NBA wings, both picked in the second round, both title winners. Their excellent relationships with players across the league make for affable and lengthy interviews. Episodes with Kevin Garnett, Baron Davis, and Metta Sandiford-Artest are among the most entertaining interviews you’ll hear.
Among the defining qualities of Danny Leroux’s weekly show is the fact that it brings together many of the hosts and regular guests who appear elsewhere on this list. RealGM Radio is where a host like Open Floor’s Ben Golliver or a news-breaker like Tim Bontemps can go to have the hyper-focused basketball conversations characteristic of the Dunc’d On/RealGM Radio universe sculpted by Leroux and Duncan.
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Ricky is the only team-specific podcast on this list, and certainly the most cultish. Spike Eskin and Mike Levin have been piloting their Sixers ship since the depths of The Process, when the show existed to celebrate the shrewd, many-years-in-the-future-inclined trades of then-GM Sam Hinkie, and the occasional successes of scrappy NBA professionals (the Ish Smiths of the world). Ricky has always been about fandom, about how to make rooting for a team, whether decent or god-awful, worthwhile.
This 2020 series contextualizes the Tim Donaghy scandal, in which a single ref was disgraced for betting on NBA games. More than a decade after the fact, host Tim Livingston gives the most complete history of the scandal, and calls into question the always murky story put forth by David Stern at the time. Whistleblower offers some of the best NBA journalism in recent memory.
Draymond’s natural charisma translates well to interviewing, as he has incredible familiarity and chemistry with every guest he brings on his show. Recent episodes with Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid are highlights of the best interview show hosted by any (active) NBA player. Green and Embiid going back and forth about whether or not Green can take Embiid one-on-one is about as good as it gets.
Every year we add another player interview program to the list. Knuckleheads isn’t a newcomer, but the duo of Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles has become the greatest legacy of the early-2000s Clippers. Like All the Smoke‘s Barnes and Jackson, they’re often at their best speaking with players of their own era.
Nekias Duncan and Steve Jones Jr. can be relied upon for full-game reactions. They have an easy rapport and get credit for pumping out several shows a week. Nekias Duncan is not related as far as I know to Dunc’d On host Nate Duncan, but Steve Jones Jr. is the son of beloved ABA star and Portland broadcaster Steve “Snapper” Jones.
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Jake Greenberg is a culture writer based in Brooklyn. He has written for The Guardian and Mac Weekly. Feel free to email him at [email protected]