The Most Stacked Sports Summer in Years Has a Black Podcast for Every Conversation
The Knicks are champions. Jalen Brunson just ran through a playoff bracket that had no business going the way it went, and Victor Wembanyama walked off the Finals loss at 22 with the entire basketball world mid-argument about what his career becomes next. Meanwhile, the FIFA World Cup (48 teams, with the US, Canada, and Mexico as co-hosts) is happening right now in stadiums some of you can drive to.
This is not a normal sports summer. If you want Black podcast voices that are actually in the conversation, not observing it or reacting from the outside. Here's where to start.
All The Smoke
Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson built All The Smoke into the premier players-only sports podcast in a format that had already been tried many times before their version became the one that stuck. The reason it works: both of them played long enough, in enough different locker rooms, to be genuinely trusted by the people they sit down with. That trust produces different conversations.
The NBA Finals coverage this year delivered. Barnes and Jackson broke down Brunson's championship run with the kind of specificity you only get from people who played the game: the adjustments that changed the series, what Wembanyama looked like when he was getting dominated and when he was about to take over, and whether San Antonio's future should still terrify the rest of the league. Barnes also dropped a separate All The Smoke: Unplugged episode with an extended Finals breakdown worth pulling up on its own.
If you're not subscribed, this is the summer to start. The archive alone earns the follow.
Club Shay Shay
Shannon Sharpe is one of the loudest, most recognizable voices in Black sports media, and Club Shay Shay is where you hear him away from the debate-show format, doing long-form interviews with athletes and cultural figures who actually have something to say.
The format is simple. Sharpe sits with people and lets the conversation breathe. Recent summer guests have included Iso Joe Johnson and Chad "Ochocinco" Johnson, conversations that went places sports talk TV never has time to go. Want to understand why Sharpe's reach extends beyond the sports audience he built at First Take? An episode or two of this show will answer that immediately.
Good summer to catch up on the back catalog too. The range of guests (athletes, entertainers, public figures) means there's an entry point regardless of what you came in looking for.
I Am Athlete
Brandon Marshall and the I Am Athlete team built something harder to describe precisely: a podcast that feels like a locker room when no cameras are supposed to be on. Unscripted, athlete-led, no script. The show covers sports but moves into wellness, mental health, music, culture, and business without breaking stride, because those are the conversations athletes actually have with each other when the job isn't the center of the room.
The mental health component is real, not performative. Marshall has been open about his own mental health journey, and guests feel that going in. The conversations that come out of that openness are different from what you get at most sports pods.
The World Cup makes this a good summer to be in the feed. The sports calendar is wider than usual and the show's range matches it.
Black in Sports
EJ Cutliff and Myles Hayes are Las Vegas-based sports business professionals, and Black in Sports is what you listen to when you want to go underneath the games and understand the structures around them. UK Sports Podcast Awards named it Best Sports Podcast, and the recognition landed for a reason: the show does something most sports pods don't bother with, which is analyze the business side of professional sports from a perspective that centers Black athletes, executives, and communities.
Season 7 launched with episodes on NBA expansion (Las Vegas and Seattle are the leading candidates for the league's next two franchises) and what that expansion means for the cities and people in them. This conversation matters beyond the scoreboard, and it's happening now while Vegas is hosting World Cup matches and building toward potentially landing an NBA team. A lot of threads converge in one city this summer, and Cutliff and Hayes are paying attention to all of them.
If you've been watching sports for years and haven't found a podcast that takes the business seriously, start here.
Knuckleheads
Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles both came up in the early-2000s era that produced a lot of the players who are now coaches, executives, and guests on the biggest sports shows in the game. Knuckleheads works because Q and D-Miles are talking to their actual peers. These are not admiring fan interviews. They're catch-ups between people who came up together, and that distinction changes the whole energy.
New episodes run during the NBA season, so summer is the time to dig into the back catalog. Conversations with players from multiple generations, consistent vibe, loose and funny and honest, and worth two hours of a commute or a road trip without trying.
One Ask
Pick one of these shows, find a starting episode, and text the link to one person who would appreciate it. Black podcasters are doing some of the most original sports commentary happening right now, not because they have more access than everyone else, but because they're bringing context and community that changes what sports conversations actually sound like.
This is the summer to be in that conversation.
Podcast news, creator spotlights & picks from the blackpodcastdirectory team — four times a year.