It’s 2,200 miles from Los Angeles to the small town of Van Wert, Ohio. And for Allie Clifton, her roots in the rural northwest corner of the Buckeye State are what have anchored her journey to national prominence as a basketball voice.
“To be where I’m at now, I don’t take it lightly. I don’t take it for granted,” Clifton said in an interview with Awful Announcing this week. The Amazon host and reporter is one of the rising stars in sports media for 2026, thanks to her work across national platforms and with SportsNet LA, where she covers the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Dodgers.
“You put in so much work, and there’s some sacrifice to it, too. I live so far away from my family. To do something that I love, but there’s give and take there. To see it going the direction that it is, and knowing how much I care and love doing it, it’s been awesome. It’s been so great,” she added.
One thing that she had to get adjusted to in Los Angeles was just how expensive everything was. She joked that she also surprised her mother with her ability to parallel park while visiting the West Coast. But the biggest adjustment was just how much the sun shone each day compared to the gray skies of the Great Lakes region.
“I was mad that the sun was out every single day,” Clifton joked. “Coming from Ohio, where we don’t have that eight-to-nine months out of the year. I felt like when I first got out here, because the sun was up, I needed to be out and doing things, which meant I was spending money. Culture shock. But I slowly eased my way in and worked it out.”
The road less traveled
Clifton’s travels through the sports media industry have taken both expected and unexpected turns, but she is also the prime example of what a modern media career looks like.
It started when she was a three-time captain of the Toledo Rockets in college basketball. At the time, she was an education major. But a chance meeting on vacation in South Carolina changed her career trajectory.
Clifton bumped into fellow Van Wert native Natalie Taylor, a longtime Fox Sports host who currently works for WTFS in Tampa Bay, while vacationing with family in Hilton Head. And it was in that moment, wondering what would come next, that Taylor encouraged Clifton to give sports broadcasting a try. She hasn’t looked back since.
After a stint breaking into the industry in the Toledo market, where she attended college, Allie Clifton was hired to be a reporter covering the Cleveland Cavaliers for Fox Sports Ohio in 2012. Given her love of basketball and sports, it was the perfect assignment. “For four years I didn’t have an office,” she recalled. “My office was the gym. I was there every single day.”
While covering her home-state team was a thrill, everything changed when LeBron James announced he was coming home in 2014.
Riding shotgun with LeBron James
Covering LeBron James winning a championship for the city of Cleveland was a special moment in 2016. Allie Clifton was courtside when the Cavs completed their epic 3-1 series comeback in the 2016 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors. When she went on the floor to interview the players, she and her team decided to step back and let the players enjoy the moment and just how incredible it was, as she reflected on the journey of her own career.
But by 2018, her contract was up, and she was ready for more opportunities. It also just so happened to coincide with James moving across the country to live out his destiny with the Lakers. That’s when a call came from Spectrum executives on what it was like to cover LeBron up close for four years. A couple of days afterward, a second call came offering her a job with the team.
Clifton realizes the weight and responsibility of covering LeBron James day in and day out for a decade. She freely admits that his star power is somewhat responsible for her career’s ascent. But from Day One in Cleveland, she knew that his trust had to be earned.
“He doesn’t have to say anything to me, but the way in which he carried himself those four years in Cleveland set a standard for me,” Clifton recalled. “He will invest in you if he sees that you are giving just as much to your craft as he does his.”
As for the LeBron James she has seen every day with the Lakers and the Cavaliers, Clifton says the most surprising thing is how big a kid LeBron tends to be. She credits his ability to connect with players from his son Bronny’s generation just as well as with the veterans. But the biggest takeaway she has is just how much he cares.
“The one thing that people wouldn’t know or recognize in covering him for over a decade now is how much he actually cares, how much he truly cares,” she said. “It’s not just about his craft, but it’s about his people that have been a part of his journey. The care factor is second-to-none, and it’s so parallel to what he does on the floor as well.”
That relationship with James and with other NBA players has been crucial to the road Allie Clifton has traveled. And it was another former Cavaliers player who introduced her to podcasting.
The ultimate road trip
Road Trippin’ started as a podcast with Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye while the two were teammates with the Cavaliers. It’s now billed as the longest-running athlete podcast in sports. Jefferson asked Allie Clifton to host. At the time, she was skeptical of even saying yes to the invitation. But now she credits the show as the medium through which she gets the most recognition from fans.
“People only really recognize me from Road Trippin’. ‘Allie, you’re the host of Road Trippin.’ Wait, are you that Allie Clifton that hosts Road Trippin?’ I didn’t understand the value of it until the years really went on. I’m so forever grateful for that. I thank them often in how it changed the trajectory of my career. Without even knowing it, it gave me this underlying confidence to take that leap from Cleveland to LA,” Clifton said.
Cynthia Cooper, @SwinCash, and @RealAClifton weigh in on who will be the 2026 WNBA MVP 🏆 pic.twitter.com/qpX7H5ofr0
— Sports on Prime (@SportsonPrime) May 15, 2026
And it’s not just the leap from Cleveland to Los Angeles, but the leap from regional television to the national stage. This year, Clifton got the call from Amazon to join their new basketball coverage. She now works as a host and reporter covering both the NBA and WNBA. Her first game with the streamer was alongside one of the titans of sports broadcasting, Kevin Harlan, whom she admits she was nervous to work with but who was an overwhelmingly welcome presence. It was a call that meant everything to her, given the work she had put in at places like Van Wert, Toledo, and Los Angeles along the way.
“I got off the phone, and I just sobbed,” Clifton revealed. “I’m not in this business to be famous. I want nothing to do with that. I’m just here to be successful. And I think one of the ways you can measure that is to do it on the national scale. I’m so grateful for my stops at Fox Sports Ohio, here with Spectrum and the Lakers, the growth opportunities, the people who have surrounded me to put me into positions to succeed, that when this final call came to get my foot in the door, I wasn’t sure. I’m 38. I was 37 when the call came. I didn’t know what that looks like, what the landscape was going to be for opportunities just because of my age. So I cried. I was so glad and excited and appreciative.”
When it comes to hosting, reporting, podcasting, or even the business side of sports media, Clifton credits her basketball career for her versatility. She was a do-everything player for the Rockets. In her four years at Toledo, she started 83 games, averaging 8.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, 1.6 assists, and 1 steal per game. Now she is doing everything she can in sports media, even being a game analyst with the Los Angeles Lakers, as she made history alongside Bill MacDonald, being the first woman to call a game in the history of the fabled franchise. In her media career, she found inspiration in another versatile female talent covering the game she loves.
“I took to Doris Burke,” Clifton said. “Every single time I turned on the television, I didn’t know what she would be doing. Is she in the booth? Is she in the studio hosting? Is she sideline reporting? And as a player, I prided myself on versatility. It was then that I was like, I can do this same thing if I put my mind to it for my career.”
Buckle up for a Girls Tripp!
We are officially hitting the road with our brand new show Girls Tripp, hosted by Allie Clifton and Jordan Robinson. To kick things off, we’re joined by none other than the 4x WNBA Champ & W LEGEND, Cynthia Cooper! 🏀✨
Don’t miss the premiere this… pic.twitter.com/eDl5fmvj6u
— Road Trippin’ Show (@RoadTrippinShow) May 19, 2026
But in many ways, the trip is just beginning for Allie Clifton. Not only has she expanded her work into the WNBA with Amazon, but Road Trippin’ just announced this week that Clifton will host a new Girls Tripp podcast on the WNBA. One day, she aspires for Road Trippin’ to be its own media and podcast empire, continually adding more shows under its umbrella.
As she looks to her present, Clifton knows that it’s hard to balance all of her roles and responsibilities. But her sense of peace comes from doing what she truly loves. And in looking to the future, there’s plenty of open road left to travel.
About Matt Yoder