Colin Cowherd’s fact checker must have had the day off. During Monday’s episode of The Herd with Colin Cowherd on FS1, the radio veteran gave his top five NBA players 25 and under, headlined by reigning Finals MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. Also included were Celtics phenom Jayson Tatum, MVP frontrunner Nikola Jokic, Mavs star Luka Doncic and Sixers big Joel Embiid. It’s a fine list, except three of the five players named are over 25.
Even with ad reads to fill time and a cohost, Joy Taylor, to share the spotlight with, mistakes are inevitable when you’re on the air as much as Cowherd, who sits behind the microphone five days a week at three hours a clip. For casual fans, the difference between 25 and 27 is negligible and, if we’re being honest, most of us aren’t going to Cowherd for facts and accuracy. As with most voices in the shock jock genre, we’re not looking for Cowherd to be measured and reasonable. We want feigned outrage, hilariously misguided betting advice and ridiculous analogies, all Cowherd staples.
Building a segment around players 25 and under and only having Tatum and Doncic satisfy that criteria is a sure way to lose credibility, but in the hot take business where the goal is to go viral by any means necessary, even if it’s for being wildly wrong, Cowherd probably won’t lose much sleep over this. Like his ESPN counterpart Stephen A. Smith, who is much more akin to a professional wrestler cutting a promo (think Attitude Era Dwayne Johnson) than a grounded journalist, Cowherd is more or less Teflon, impervious to mind-numbing mistakes that others might never recover from.
Thinking Cowherd, a Jedi master in the art of trolling, botched this bit intentionally to score a win on social media is probably giving him too much credit, though it’s fascinating to see how low the bar has been set for our sports personalities, with entertainment and bluster too often substituting for insight and analysis.
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