Since the NBA regular season doesn’t matter, the news instead revolves around the off-court slop, like Charles Barkley calling Kendrick Perkins an idiot, and then Perkins more or less telling him to say it to his face:

But wait, there’s more!

LeBron James went over to talk to Stephen A Smith at the Lakers/Knicks game and then Stephen A responded on Friday morning’s First Take:

Typical NBA drama, but a classic case of “more than one thing can be true” in regard to the Stephen A/LeBron stuff. Of course LeBron is going to defend his son from criticism, and if he thinks the criticism is unfair, he has every right to confront Stephen A over it. Stephen A has basically spent the entire year saying that the only reason that Bronny is getting NBA minutes is because of his dad. There’s nothing wrong with that take and most people would probably agree with it. Bronny is not ready for the NBA. If you watched the Sixers/Lakers game in January, you saw him go 0-5 from the floor while he turned the ball over three times in 15 minutes. He gets some mop up minutes here and there, maybe shows a flash every so often, but he is a G League player at this point in his career and has played well there. He looks like, well, the 55th pick in the draft, but the father/son thing has put so many eyeballs on him that it’s created a path that is much less linear than the typical developmental project. That’s why the commentary about him has been all over the place, and gets into personal territory, but ask yourself how normal it is for a player to be teammates with his son while the coach is his former podcast host. It’s not normal, but it also doesn’t matter because the Lakers are 40-21 and second place in the west. Bronny playing a few minutes of mop up duty hasn’t hurt the team at all, but his level right now is the G League and there’s nothing wrong with that.

RE: Charles Barkley and Kendrick Perkins, basically two knuckleheads being knuckleheads. Charles isn’t wrong though when he talks about national NBA media only focusing on a handful of big market teams. Yeah? Okay. That’s just how it goes. The Cleveland Cavaliers don’t move the national needle. The OKC Thunder don’t move the national needle. They’ve been great stories this year for basketball junkies, but casuals don’t care. National television plays the hits the same way hard rock radio does. We’re gonna hear about the Lakers, Yankees, NFL, and GOAT debates in the same way we’re gonna hear Pearl Jam over and over again, until our brains melt into a pool of liquid flannel. We’re not gonna get Cleveland Cavaliers talk on First Take the same way we’re not gonna hear Iron Maiden deep cuts on 102.9 WMGK. It is what it is.