Watch a professional Basketball player stick up for eSports

Remember Colin Cowherd? He’s the broadcaster who berated eSports and claimed he would resign from ESPN if they ever covered it? Well, he’s back but this time he seems to have come to his senses and instead is chatting to Gordon Hayward, who plays for the Utah Jazz Basketball team in the NBA.

Gordon Hayward is not the first professional sportsman to advocate professional gaming. NBA Star Jeremy Lin featured on Valve’s Free to Play documentary where he spoke about his passion for eSports and Dota 2. In the documentary Lin draws comparisons to Dota 2 and Basketball, which in a sense would give players a slight advantage.

“So I would say Dota and basketball are actually kind of similar in the fact that they’re 5 on 5 games. In basketball you have the point guard, the wings and forwards. In Dota you have three categories too; agility, strength, and magic/intel. You definitely have to understand the game and work on it, hone your skills.” – OnGamers

NBA is not the only American sport breeding gamers. Ricky Lumpin, a Defensive Tackle for the Oakland Raiders, streams and plays CS:GO competitively. He’s also part of Team Karma, the same team South African Sharon ‘ShazZ’ Waison is a part of. He also defies most stereotypes being a large six foot wall of muscle who enjoys playing Counter-Strike.

In the true spirit of show business, because let’s face it nobody is this ignorant, Cowherd shows a game of League of Legends, and asks Hayward to explain. Only, it isn’t League of Legends which Hayward immediately points out. The next important point, which was touched on by Jimmy Kimmel, is streaming – watching other people play. The conversation quickly moves to the League of Legends World Championships, which began yesterday.

While watching this I couldn’t help but put my tinfoil hat on and think the timing of this rebuttal was perfect. We all know Riot has a ton of money, and what’s better PR than to have an NBA star chat to an ignorant host and hype up League of Legends?

Last Updated: October 2, 2015