Alex Ovechkin breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL goal record wasn’t enough to convince ESPN’s First Take it could take a break from talking about LeBron James.
NHL history was made Sunday afternoon, Ovechkin was on the chyron Monday morning, P.K. Subban was in studio and the stars were aligned for ESPN to do that hockey on First Take. And then they did it. First Take made Ovechkin breaking Gretzky’s record about LeBron James. And what is a LeBron James segment without bringing Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant into the discussion?
“LeBron’s great, but he ain’t Kobe, he ain’t Jordan…yeah I did, I put Kobe ahead of him!” – P.K. Subban joins First Take for some hockey talk pic.twitter.com/2lfYaeS5Pw
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 7, 2025
“LeBron’s great, but he ain’t Kobe, he ain’t Jordan for me,” Subban said to quickly garner pushback from Stephen A. Smith and Shannon Sharpe. “Yeah, I did, I put Kobe ahead of him! Kobe’s ahead of LeBron for me.”
Sharpe went on to compare a black mamba with the common brown snake before embarking on a John Wick and James Bond reference, prompting Subban to explain Kobe instilled more fear into his opponents than LeBron does or did. All the while, any NHL fans watching the segment were surely left disappointed by First Take’s attempt at doing that hockey.
“I’m sorry, there’s nobody in basketball, other than Kobe and [Jordan] that has ever instilled fear in their opponents like those two guys,” Subban continued before claiming it’s “one million percent” fair to say players feared Jordan and Kobe more than LeBron. “He ain’t ahead of Kobe for me.”
Let’s ignore the fact that Subban’s NBA hot take of ranking Bryant ahead of James is unfounded, and highlight First Take’s inability to just focus on the NHL for full segment. Ovechkin broke a sports record that most hockey fans and analysts believed could never be broken. There was no need to enhance that by making it about LeBron’s legacy.
The NHL must have loved the fact that this is how one of its most notable records being broken was portrayed on its media partner’s preeminent daytime studio show. Would First Take have bothered to pose the same question if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still the NBA’s all-time leading scorer? Did Gretzky’s name get mentioned after James broke the NBA’s scoring record two years ago?
There’s a time and place for comparing records, usually in the middle of July when the sports calendar is quiet. But on the day after Ovechkin broke Gretzky’s record, it seemed like First Take was trying harder to get LeBron’s name onto the show than they were trying hard to appease any hockey fans tuning in. It does little to reverse the narrative that First Take only talks about LeBron, the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Cowboys.
Stay tuned for the next segment of First Take, where they debate whether the Dallas Cowboys will be better this year than last, a continuation of a question that was posed last week.
