Former ESPN host Max Kellerman made headlines this week after criticizing Los Angeles Clippers guard James Harden for another disappointing playoff performance by comparing him to President Donald Trump.
“Bringing in James Harden to win a championship is like electing Donald Trump to fix your country,” Kellerman said Wednesday on his “Game Over” podcast.
Kellerman is now apologizing for the remark. According to him, comparing any athlete to Trump crosses the line.
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“I shouldn’t have said that because it’s not fair to James Harden. I did not mean to insult him publicly in a way that was going to go viral. It was too severe,” Kellerman said Friday on his Netflix podcast.
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“I don’t think it’s as bad as all that. I don’t think it’s as bad as electing Trump to fix your country, but that’s the idea. That’s the opposite of what you’d do if you’re trying to get a certain result.”
Notably, Kellerman never compared a disappointing athlete to Joe Biden during his disastrous presidency.
As we argued earlier this week, whatever one thinks of Trump politically, he has won the presidency twice. Harden, meanwhile, has never led a team to a championship or even reached the NBA Finals as the primary star. The Thunder reached the Finals in 2012, but Harden came off the bench.
If Kellerman wanted a more fitting analogy, comparing Harden to Kamala Harris, another figure who has never won the big one, would have made far more sense.
More than anything, Kellerman’s Trump comparison served as a reminder of why he became so unpopular during his run alongside Stephen A. Smith on ESPN’s “First Take.” Kellerman routinely used the platform to lecture viewers about politics while belittling Trump and his supporters.
In 2020, Kellerman claimed Trump voters in the South were “susceptible to very low-quality information, easy to propagandize, and almost immune to facts.”
Kellerman, while undeniably talented, has long embodied the image of a limousine liberal. With homes in New York and Los Angeles, he often comes across as someone who views Americans outside elite coastal circles as intellectually inferior simply because they do not share his politics.
According to reports and comments from Stephen A. Smith himself, Kellerman’s increasingly left-wing commentary contributed to his eventual exit from “First Take.” Put simply, even Stephen A. appeared to grow tired of the constant political grandstanding.
Kellerman now hosts a Netflix podcast alongside LeBron James’ agent, Rich Paul. Judging by the tone and content of the show, it seems aimed less at everyday sports fans and more at the cocktail-party elite crowd Kellerman has spent much of his career trying to impress.
