ESPN's Monica McNutt and Nick Friedell laugh at Max Kellerman's take that James Harden would lead the Sixers to a win. ESPN’s Monica McNutt and Nick Friedell laugh at Max Kellerman’s take that James Harden would lead the Sixers to a win.
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Many of ESPN’s studio shows often have some fiery takes, but it’s rare for a take to provoke continual laughter from someone else on the show. That’s what happened on This Just In Monday, though. There, Max Kellerman made the case that without Joel Embiid, there was a chance that “James Harden shocks everybody and becomes an offensive juggernaut.” That provoked quite the looks from panelists Monica McNutt and Nick Friedell, with McNutt eventually offering limited support but saying even a big scoring game from Harden wouldn’t be enough for a win, saying Harden would get “dissected defensively” and laughing about that even if he scored a lot, and Friedell just cackling about the idea of Harden having a big game. Here’s how this started:

Here’s the further laughter on it from Friedell, where he’s laughing too hard to even get many of his points out, but does deliver lines like “We all saw the Brooklyn experience!”

This then came up again at the end of It’s Just In, with Kellerman citing a big game from Harden as one of his “Max Facts,” and Friedell and McNutt again laughing about it, with Friedell going “It could happen, but, I mean, really?”

Well, Kellerman wound up looking pretty clever with this one, as it really did happen. Harden had 45 points (including a go-ahead three-pointer in the final seconds) in the Sixers’ win. And that got many looking back at Friedell’s laughter:

https://twitter.com/DidTheSixersWin/status/1653226653672251394

For his part, Friedell tried to downplay this as just one game:

That tweet then got heavily ratioed. Here are some of the responses to it:

The moving the goalposts discussion there is accurate, as anything further in this series doesn’t impact the original take from Kellerman and Friedell’s response. Kellerman wasn’t initially saying that Harden and the Sixers would win the series, or even that Harden would have multiple dominant games. He didn’t even state at first that Harden surely would have a massive game, he just made the case he might. And that provoked that uproarious and repeated laughter from Friedell. Kellerman then went stronger on it at the end of the show, claiming this would happen, and Friedell again broke down laughing.

As for McNutt, she at least conceded the possibility of Harden having a big offensive game, and said that that would be the way for an upset to happen, but was highly skeptical of the chances of that. She also had that line about Harden getting destroyed on defense, and she had some laughter about this throughout these clips as well, even if it wasn’t as prominent as Friedell’s. And so she also took some criticism from fans.

For her part, McNutt attributed Harden’s dominance to Friedell’s reaction to the idea, and called fans “so irrational”:

Meanwhile, Kellerman took a deserved victory lap Tuesday:

This is far from the first case of predictions going wrong. And at least this wasn’t unanimous, with Kellerman making the case that exactly what did happen would happen, but Friedell cracking up over that and McNutt also pushing back.

But if Friedell had just calmly disputed Kellerman’s point instead of laughing about it, this would have gotten far less attention. There was definitely a case this wasn’t to be expected from Harden. But his over-the-top laughter in response to Kellerman’s take was highly unusual for sports TV, and got a lot of attention as a result. And then when that Kellerman take did come to pass, it led to a lot of people noting how very wrong Friedell and McNutt were.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

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