Back on October 4, Los Angeles Lakers’ star LeBron James sent out a tweet asking to appear on the New Heights podcast (presented by Wave Sports+Entertainment) from Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce and Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce. That led to a lot of speculation that James was trying to get in on the waves of interest around Travis’ reported relationship with pop music superstar Taylor Swift. And on Wednesday’s episode of New Heights, the Kelce brothers discussed that, and said they’d previously reached out to James with an invite long before he asked for one:
That discussion of James’ tweet starts around 3:03 there, with Jason saying “We got tweeted at by LeBron!”, and Travis saying “Yeah, that was pretty wild. I wasn’t expecting him to be listening into the show or at least seeing the social clips,” and Jason saying “Yeah, there’s no chance he’s listening to a full episode, but the social clips are good enough.” Then, after Jason discusses how media brought James’ tweet up to him after the Eagles’ game Sunday, he says (around 3:49) they’ve previously invited James on the podcast:
“But LeBron knows, we’ve been trying to get him on the show for a while. I know he’s acting like he’s just coming on now, but we’ve been trying to get him up here for a minute.”
Travis then says “There’s no way we haven’t sent LeBron James the invite,” and Jason says “If we haven’t, intern Brandon and intern Jake are going to hear it from us.” And Travis says “Yeah, they know who’s at the top of our list to try and get on here. They know who’s out there.”
And Jason then says “And King James has been number one for a long time. Listen, LeBron, you’re welcome, whenever you want to come on, brother.” Travis says “Please, please, we will make it happen, Cap.” Jason then says “Grew up watching you play, have watched your career as Cleveland and Northeast Ohio guys all the way from St. Vincent-St. Mary until now. …I think it’s safe to say it would be an honor to talk to you.”
Travis then talks about watching James in seventh grade, and they talk about him a bunch further. Jason then says (6:00) “It’s a weird realm to be in now when you get tweeted at by somebody who’s so big, and was so big when you were a kid, that you’re still kind of nervous of ‘I don’t even know how to respond to that, I’ve got to think something up here, I can’t willy-nilly throw a tweet back at this dude.’ You know what I mean? I feel like a school kid again, a little schoolgirl. …I don’t know what to say other than we would take LeBron James.”
This isn’t the only celebrity encounter discussed on this New Heights. And there’s quite a discussion of the Amazon-distributed Kelce documentary (on Prime Video, largely focused on Jason, but with some appearances from Travis) at 38:55, around discussion of tight ends. There Travis says “You’ve never seen a tight end do a documentary about himself.” Jason laughs and says “It was about our family! You’re in the documentary! You’re in the documentary!”
Jason then goes on to jokingly say “By the way, number one documentary of all time…all because of you and me. It doesn’t have anything to do with this Taylor Swift drama.” Travis laughs and says “Yeah, man, everybody’s just so interested in the family dynamic.”
The Kelces’ humor and self-deprecation is a big part of the appeal of their podcast, which has risen to incredible (new) heights and even spawned a merch line. And it is notable that they did find a lot of attention long before the (NFL-promoted) Swift connection, including Travis hosting Saturday Night Live (with Jason and their mom Donna in the audience) and hosting his own music and food festival around the NFL Draft this year. But it’s certainly interesting to see them discussing the attention they’ve received from James and Swift.
[New Heights on Apple Podcasts]
