LeBron James really wants people to know that he is not friends with Brian Windhorst.
The ESPN personality Windhorst caught a stray this week from the social media page of James’ podcast “Mind the Game.” The podcast page posted a video promo to X on Tuesday that featured a roast of Windhorst.
Windhorst had previously made some comments on ESPN about the state of basketball analysis shows. While specifically referring to “Mind the Game,” Windhorst said that people were more interested in the drama side of basketball rather than pure Xs and Os analysis.
“When people talk about the game of basketball, they want to talk about the drama,” said Windhorst “If you do a full show that’s all Xs and Os, that’s not going to be any good either … If [LeBron] sits down with [‘Mind the Game’ co-host] Steve Nash and all he does is Xs and Os for an hour, people aren’t gonna like that either.”
“Mind the Game” posted a video of Windhorst’s comments and interspliced them with the listener statistics for their podcast as well as comments from users complimenting the podcast on its purely analytic style. Ultimately, the apparent point of the post was to puff their chests out at Windhorst and show him that he was actually wrong.
And we're not done yet. pic.twitter.com/2I8sKIfNXl
— Mind the Game (@mindthegamepod) June 3, 2025
The “Mind the Game” podcast launched in early 2024 and has quickly become a fan favorite as James and Nash (sometimes joined by special guests such as Luka Doncic) break down the game from a hoops nerd standpoint. That is obviously a very different style from the hot-take-rich, narrative-focused style of basketball coverage that viewers usually get from Windhorst’s employer ESPN.
Meanwhile, the social media shot at Windhorst comes just a couple of months after James took a profane swipe at Windhorst during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.” Though James almost certainly did not author this week’s “Mind the Game” post himself, it would be hard to believe that James did not offer at least some kind of approval of the anti-Windhorst message.
