Whenever an NBA game is on ESPN, chances are you will see Chiney Ogwumike, Malika Andrews and Kendrick Perkins, three of the top Black faces on the four-letter sports network. They are regularly featured front and center before, during and after telecasts.
Last week during the October 15 ESPN NBA Media Zoom Conference Call, MSR asked each of them about their current significance as Black individuals on the ESPN NBA games. Ogwumike, Andrews and Perkins took about 15 minutes of the scheduled one-hour call to eloquently respond to our question:
“The cultural component to me having this platform is absolutely a gift, and I believe that it’s something that we don’t take for granted,” said Ogwumike, a former WNBA All-Star who joined ESPN in 2017. In 2018, she became one of the only full-time pro athletes to also hold a full-time national sports media position as a weekday host on ESPN Radio.
Ogwumike and Perkins are among ESPN’s top NBA analysts.
“It’s an honor to be able to come on television every day and have a platform to be able to be my authentic self,” said Perkins, who joined the network in 2019 after a 14-year NBA career that included a championship with Boston in 2008. His big personality matches his 6’10” frame, as Perkins can praise and pan with equal deftness in his analysis.
Andrews is easily called the face of ESPN’s NBA Today, the network’s daily NBA studio show and other related programming. She joined ESPN in 2018 after several years working as a print reporter.
“I remember when we started doing this show five years ago,” recalled Andrews. “Perk and I were talking, and he said to me, ‘Yo, Malika, I just want to make sure I want to be remembered not as an NBA champion in this space… I want to be so good at what I do on TV; I want my credentials to just be so good and stand on their own.’
“I don’t know that people realize how many games he watches or how much he puts into his craft, and to what he does,” she continued on Perkins. She added of Ogwumike: “I remember Chiney and I were talking early on when the show started up. We were talking about our goals for this show and what we wanted it to be.
“She said, ‘I just want to be able to walk into a room and to make sure that everyone knows that I have become an excellent analyst,” recalled Andrews.
“What gives me the most joy is when I walk into arenas, whether it’s the WNBA or the NBA,” added Ogwumike, “and there’s so many young Black girls that are saying, ‘I want to do what you’re doing, and I didn’t know if it was possible until you did it.’ I love facts and figures, but I also love to speak to the locker room, the authenticity of our players.
“If you got game, you got game,” she pointed out. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or girl, doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter where you come from.
“This is the world that we try to push, and we’re appreciating it, and that is the beauty of what we do,” stressed Ogwumike. “We do have our own different styles and favors and perspectives to be authentically ourselves.”
Perkins recalled, “The first time that it really hit me [was when] I walked into an AAU gym and it was like 1,000 kids there down in Florida. These kids rushed up to me — this wasn’t a bum rush of Kendrick Perkins that was a former NBA champion. This is a person that they see on TV every single day.
“It’s definitely inspiring,” he said. “Malika does a great job of being herself on a day-to-day basis. Chiney does an outstanding job as well being herself. That’s part of our chemistry.”
NBA Pioneers honored
Chuck Cooper was the first Black player drafted into the NBA in 1950. Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first Black player to sign with an NBA team, and Earl Lloyd was the first Black player to appear in an NBA game. This season the NBA will celebrate the 75th anniversary of these NBA Pioneers all season long.
Milwaukee and Boston will play on the first NBA Pioneers Day, in the inaugural NBA Pioneers Classic on Saturday, Feb. 1, 2026 to kick off Black History Month.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.