Le Batard & Friends Presents: The Step Back - Lebron Inc. (feat. Pablo Torre)
6/16/202637 min
The Step Back is back — and this time, it's personal. Or at least, it's financial. After a brief hiatus, Dan, Amin, and Izzy return with Pablo Torre to dig into his landmark 2017 ESPN feature on LeBron James — not the player chasing rings, but the architect quietly building an empire. What Phil Jackson famously dismissed as a "posse" — a word that told you everything about who was really threatened — turns out to have been a boardroom in disguise. Maverick Carter, Rich Paul, Randy Mims: ridiculed first, respected later, inevitable in hindsight. This is the episode where The Step Back steps sideways — from flashpoints to foresight — to ask how a kid from Akron turned loyalty into leverage, and a group of friends into a seat at the table that nobody wanted to give them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAmin Elhassan· Host0:00
Boy, I'm tired of this man being celebrated. For what?
Izzy Gutierrez· Host0:04
This is The Step Back.
Speaker 2· Soundbite0:06
James drives, steps back, puts up a three. And LeBron James from downtown.
Amin Elhassan· Host0:11
The Cleveland Cavaliers select LeBron James.
Izzy Gutierrez· Host0:15
LeBron, what's your decision?
Speaker 2· Soundbite0:16
I made a difficult decision, but I understood what my future was about. I believe our president is trying to divide us. My first response was, "You bum."
Izzy Gutierrez· Host0:24
Welcome to episode four.
Speaker 2· Soundbite0:26
They got a bunch of old, White men owning teams, and they got that slave mentality.
Izzy Gutierrez· Host0:33
LeBron Inc.
Speaker 2· Soundbite0:34
You know, hate in America, especially for African American, is living every day.
Izzy Gutierrez· Host0:39
Okay. Well, let's fast-forward to when, I think looking back, you might have been on top of the world probably the most was after that 2016 championship. Cleveland's long sports nightmare is over. We've got LeBron crying on the court. We've got, "Cleveland, this is for you." What did we think of LeBron at that moment? Was he, after looking back at Steph Curry that way during that series, after Block by James, after that game seven performance on the road, just about as a mythological figure as you could get?
Dan Le Batard· Host1:17
It's always wonderful when you know that what you're watching is totally excellent. You are demanding more and more of it, and then it exceeds the expectations by giving you the storyline