LeBron James Jokingly Recruited Podcast Co-Host Steve Nash 14 Years Before ‘Mind the Game’ Partnership

LeBron James had plans of teaming up with Steve Nash even in the 2011-12 NBA season, or so his tweet from October 2011 reads.

LeBron James Jokingly Recruited Podcast Co-Host Steve Nash 14 Years Before ‘Mind the Game’ Partnership

LeBron James and Steve Nash have helped Mind the Game garner 16 million views (Image via Open Source/X)

LeBron James has signaled that he will likely be in action for a record-breaking 23rd NBA season. The Lakers star has become the poster boy for consistent dominance over any sport with his high-level play late into his career. People believe he can play as long as he wants to. After all, he’s a 100th percentile athlete in league history, and his lowered athleticism still puts him in the NBA’s top tier.

James has also taken great care of his body over the years. He invests sizeable amounts of money in using cryogenic chambers to recover, hiring physical trainers and masseurs to decompress him after games. James is renowned for reaching the arena up to five hours before tipoff for his game on the day. He then gets his lifts in, his shots up and his warmup done before moving on to game-specific visualization.

All of this aside, James has also been making moves off the court. He recruited JJ Redick to work as his podcast co-host for Mind the Game, started last year. His fruitful discussions with the 15-year NBA veteran helped him land the Lakers’ head coaching role in 2024. Darvin Ham’s firing opened up the scope for Rob Pelinka to hire him, and Redick seems to have settled into life with the most popular NBA franchise.

James resumed Mind the Game in the 2025 season, this time working with Steve Nash as his co-host. The two-time MVP was previously a shooting consultant with the Warriors before becoming the Brooklyn Nets’ head coach. Nash and James could possibly have lit up the game had the duo teamed up during their primes. James seemed to even have floated the idea to the basketball world in a 2011 tweet.

The situation caused a lot of mirth among NBA circles even back in the day. While it was clearly an ironic joke from James considering the superteaming allegations, it also shows that he is indifferent to what the public and basketball fans think about his moves on the court. James had a few choice words for his haters after the Heat’s Finals loss in 2011. It seems he took those words to heart and embraced the villain role in the months that followed it.

LeBron James broke basketball with his Miami Heat superteam in 2010

LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh formed a superteam with the Miami Heat in 2010. This was a plan they had been cooking since the FIBA World Cup in 2006. They all signed four-year rookie extensions during the offseason, allowing them to be free agents in 2010. The move to South Beach combined three prime superstars with complementary skills and made for an unseen level of hype.

LeBron’s all-around dominance, Wade’s scoring and clutch play, and Bosh’s versatile big-man game were unmatched in the NBA. They shifted the NBA’s competitive balance, creating a powerhouse that won 66 games in 2012-13. The team secured four straight Finals appearances (2011-14), and won titles in 2012 and 2013.

This forced rivals to form their own star-heavy teams, accelerating the era of player-driven superteams and diminishing small-market competitiveness. It was responsible, indirectly, for Kevin Durant being empowered to sign with the Warriors as a free agent in 2016.

The Kevin Durant move may have made him the newest poster boy for superstars superteaming in their prime. But make no mistake, James may still be the most hated player by basketball fans in league history after accounting for KD. His move was earth-shattering and paradigm-changing for his time. It wasn’t viewed kindly at the time, and though James has had a bit of a redemption, likely won’t age well either.

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