Michelle Beadle knew what she was doing. And she knew she was going to receive some backlash.
That’s part of the game.
The former ESPN personality turned SiriusXM Mad Dog Sports Radio co-host has let it rip as far as her opinions go since departing the Worldwide Leader. She recently said she would’ve cheered her ass off regarding how the general public received Deshaun Watson’s injury. Beadle also weighed in on the second biggest story beyond the embattled Cleveland Browns quarterback — Bronny James.
She claimed that the son of LeBron James’ NBA debut was a manufactured moment of history. Now, she isn’t the only one to believe this, but because it’s Michelle Beadle, she’s received a lot of vitriol on social media for how she characterized Bronny’s NBA debut — which she addressed Thursday.
🗣️ @MichelleDBeadle addresses the trolls on social media.
🔗https://t.co/GCyc3Qn6By@Decker6 | @SiriusXMSports pic.twitter.com/XmTEn9alvf
— Mad Dog Sports Radio (@MadDogRadio) October 24, 2024
Beadle wanted to tackle the notion that a particular excerpt from her Wikipedia page was being used by trolls to call her a hypocrite.
“With her father’s assistance, Beadle got her career start as an intern for the San Antonio Spurs and was later given a shot at being a reporter.”
“I would like to address a few things that occurred on the interweb last night,” she tells her co-host, Cody Decker. “It’s a business of opinions this thing we do. We’re not sideline reporters. We’re not there to be neutral — this is what we do. We observe and consume what everyone else is observing and consuming, and then we just come out here and talk about it. Deshaun Watson was a big one last week; I said what I said. The Bronny-Bron thing was a big one this week, and I said what I said. And I stand by all of it.
“And these are two different topics, by the way. I’m in no way lumping LeBron James with Deshaun Watson at all. They’re just opinions. And so, you get attacked — which is fine. It comes with the territory. I have no problem with it. But it’s crazy to me some of the things that get said out loud. And I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it’s because I’m a woman, because they do it to everyone, and I don’t really see all of it, I’ll be honest with you.
“I saw a couple yesterday, and then I was reminded, ‘What are you doing?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, not supposed to look at these, nor do I care.’ Yes, I’m going to talk about athletes. I don’t care what color they are. And I’m gonna have opinions, and you’re not always going to like them — and I’m OK with that as well. I don’t like everybody’s opinions I hear; that’s part of the gig. But I also don’t go out and say horribly dumb, hateful, borderline threatening at times, things. That’s probably the difference between me and the trolls.
“And then, it’s like, they take something off the internet and Wikipedia. I want to just clarify something for anyone who thinks you’re going to Wikipedia and you’re going to get me — you’re not. When it says in my early career that with help from my dad, I went to the Spurs, that is a very not-detailed sentence. I dropped out of college, he sent me to a guy he knows, a guy that was his friend back in the day, who happened to be with the Spurs at the time.
“And this meeting that he made me go to was so that guy could yell at me to get my crap in order. ‘What are you doing with your life?’ That’s what that meeting was. After this meeting, I proceeded to call (San Antonio Spurs Director of Broadcasting) Mike Kickirillo, who is now still in the broadcast department, heading all of it. I called him almost every day. ‘Can I be an intern? I don’t have any skills. I don’t know what to do with my life, but can I be an intern?’ After, like, I want to say eight or nine of these calls, he finally got back to me and was like, ‘Fine, you can be an intern. It’s unpaid…’
“And I did that. That’s how I had help from my dad. 20 something years later, I’m doing OK. And I wanted to clarify that because you’re not gonna get me.”