Colin Cowherd explains viral ‘LeBron, Ben Simmons is here’ take: ‘I got a little hot that day’

Colin Cowherd has had some failed takes and projections during his career as a sports opinionist, but perhaps none worse than his claim that Ben Simmons surpassed LeBron James.

It’s amazing to think it’s been eight years since Cowherd tried to take the keys away from LeBron James and hand them to Ben Simmons. And in the eight years since Cowherd gave that take, James won another championship on his way to reaching a level of longevity and sustained greatness that no one thought was possible. Simmons, meanwhile, played his way out of the league in a fall from grace so stark that it will forever remain one of the NBA’s biggest mysteries. But if there’s one person who will forever be linked to Simmons, it’s Cowherd.

“Hey, LeBron, Ben Simmons is here. We’re all good,” Cowherd said back in 2018, citing a gut feeling. “For the first time in 10-12 years, I look at the NBA, which I’ve watched for four decades, and I say this now with Ben Simmons, ‘Hey LeBron, we are good, bro. You can go. You don’t have to. You can hang around. Still great, but you can go. We’re all good here.”

Joining a recent episode of The Volume’s Club 520 with Jeff Teague, DJ Wells, and B Hen, Cowherd was asked about that hot take.

“I got a little hot that day,” Cowherd admitted. “I overheated on the air.”

Cowherd explained that his college basketball sources were comparing Simmons to Magic Johnson if Magic was a better defender. And after watching Simmons have some early NBA success, Cowherd took that scouting report and ran with it. Only, he ran farther than any of his college sources probably would have advised him to run with it.

“He’s 6’ 9”, he’s kind a of rim protector, he doesn’t need to shoot, he scores mostly at the rim,” Cowherd continued in explaining why he was willing to go out on that limb. “Nobody matched up with him. And then all of a sudden, he didn’t love the game. He loved what the game provided, but he didn’t really love the game. And then he had an injury, then he lost his confidence, and you’re like, ‘wow, this is bad.’”

The NBA will have a void to fill whenever James decides to retire. But with players like Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić, Anthony Edwards, and Cooper Flagg, the NBA is certainly in a better position to transition away from LeBron than if it were relying on, say, Ben Simmons to be the next face of the league.

Cowherd noted that he didn’t buy into the hype around Blake Griffin, Anthony Davis, or Russell Westbrook. And for good reason. Because, as great as Griffin, Davis, and Westbrook have been at times, they were never close to matching LeBron. There was just something about Simmons that was different for Cowherd.

But as bad as this take was, being burned by Ben Simmons hasn’t seemed to sour Cowherd on making bombastic declarations. While most hot-take artists like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith will dig their heels in on a take, Cowherd is the only host capable of giving a detailed opinion one day and the complete opposite the next.