Sportscaster Dan Patrick was an anchor for ESPN from 1989-2006 and also hosted The Dan Patrick Show on ESPN Radio from 1999-2007. He currently hosts his show on Fox Sports Radio. He was not among those enamored with LeBron James and how ESPN handled the news that James would not be retiring from the NBA.
The ESPY Awards were held Wednesday evening. They’ve been criticized for becoming as nauseating and narcissistic as the Academy Awards. That was evident when James — who became the NBA’s all time leading scorer this past season — “broke the news” that he would be returning for his 21st NBA season, the New York Post reported.
“I don’t care how many more points I score, or what I can or cannot do on the floor,” James said at the awards show. “The real question for me is: Can I play without cheating this game? The day I can’t give everything on the floor is the day I’ll be done.
“Lucky for you guys, that day is not today.”
Patrick didn’t think this “revelation” deserved to be treated as breaking news since anyone who knows anything about professional basketball didn’t think that James was retiring.
“I wasn’t waiting for an announcement,” Patrick said Thursday. “I got one. And then ESPN is treating it like it’s breaking news. And I went, ‘You know what’s breaking news? If he retired. Not that he’s coming back. Who thought that he might retire?
“It just … it just is needy, and you don’t need it,” Patrick continued.
Although James has been a critical mouthpiece of the law enforcement community in the post-George Floyd era despite being surrounded by police and former cops working security to keep him safe, the hook that caught our attention at Law Officer regarding this story was the set on The Dan Patrick Show. His broadcast desk displayed no fewer than seven law enforcement uniform patches from various police and sheriff’s departments.
A brief query trying to determine how and why they were present simply brought us to a comment on social media that at least one in particular has “been there for a long time.”
We’ve reached out to The Dan Patrick Show hoping to get additional details.
It a related anecdote, Patrick has made cameo appearances in many movies and TV shows, thanks in large part to his longtime friendship with actor Adam Sandler. Of note, Patrick played a police officer in the 2005 version of The Longest Yard in which he arrests Sandler’s character, former NFL quarterback Paul Crewe.
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