The New Yorker Radio Hour - The World Cup, the Knicks, and LeBron James’s Fate: An All-Time Summer in Sports

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

With all the sports news at play this summer, from the New York Knicks winning the N.B.A. Finals to Donald Trump having a direct impact on FIFA’s decisions during the World Cup, it’s time for a deep dive into the biggest sports moments of late. The New Yorker sportswriter Louisa Thomas and David Remnick talk about the most significant stories of the week, and what to keep an eye on in the days and weeks ahead. Further reading, viewing, and listening: “The U.S. Crashes Out of the World Cup,” by Louisa Thomas “Serena Williams Returns to Wimbledon,” by Louisa Thomas “The Knicks Win the N.B.A. Title: A Post-Game Conversation,” with David Remnick, Vinson Cunningham, and Louisa Thomas New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. It would be an understatement to say that this summer has brought a flurry of incredible sports activity to the city of New York, to the country, and the world. What started with the triumph of my beloved Knicks in the NBA finals has led to some remarkable tennis showdowns already in Wimbledon and a dramatic and already play. politicized World Cup tournament. And then there's all the speculation about the fate of 41-year-old LeBron James, the greatest score in the history of the league, who may be on the cusp of his NBA swan song.

Breaking news out of the NBA, Arsham Sharanya, reporting that after eight years, LeBron James, the NBA's all-time leading score, will be playing a record 24th season in the NBA, but it will not be with the Los Angeles Lakers. The reaction is pouring in on... To make sense of all the headlines, and all the heroics, I sat down with my colleague, New Yorker sports writer, Louisa Thomas.

Louisa, it's good to talk to you again. The last time we talked was with Vincent Cunningham, all forclect and hysterical about the Knicks win, and I still think that's the dominant story in sports, possibly for the next, I don't know, decade? What do you think? Nothing else has happened since that. But we're going to let a few other events sneak through the door,

namely the World Cup, and I got to say, there are a lot of reasons to be a little, well, I don't know, sheepish about Americanness lately. But that whole Trump episode and the American team, what do you make of it? What a disaster? I mean, it really was a U-turn in good vibes. What compelled the President of the United States to get involved in a red card and tell us the story? David, are you asking me to wax poetically about the interiority of the president of the United States? Yeah, why not? Why not? Why not?

Well, I think Trump had been kind of snoozing through the early part of July. He'd actually been remarkably hands-off about the World Cup. He'd been involved in his, you know, his own 250th celebrations. He had not been at any of the games so far. But he repeatedly claimed that he did not know what a red card was. Red card. I didn't know what the hell a red card was.

When I found out, I said, you've got to be kidding. Until that moment. But he had lots of thoughts about it. Yes. He knew that that wasn't a red card, whatever it was. Generationally, a guy who was 80 years old who grew up in the New York area, soccer is not his thing. This is a guy who still thinks George Steinbrener is the owner of the

Yankees. And so he gets involved and he protests the red card. And then the team gets their star back. And admittedly, it was not a great call, the red card. And the American team just seemed to go, you know, belly up. What happened out on the field? Well, one thing that happens that they faced a superior team, which had not yet happened. Belgium played extremely well. Belgium played like they were motivated to defend not only their honor, but the honor of football. And, you know, it's interesting because the U.S. actually came out a little flat in several of the games. Even in the first game against Paraguay, you know, for the first few minutes, they were pretty disorganized. And Paraguay was actually the one with the better chance.

But what happened in the first two games, especially, is that they scored early. And that seemed to settle them and allow them to sort of get into their, patterns. But in this game, Belgium came out and had an immediate chance. I mean, it was from kickoff. An electric start. The USA didn't really take charge. And Belgium did. And I think that that rocked them back after what had been obviously an emotional 24 hours. And then Belgium scored quite quickly. And then it was just like the wheels just not only came off, but flew into outer space. Belgium celebrations fill the Seattle air. As the Red Devils roar into the quarterfinals,

United States of America won, Belgium, four. You know, now that baseball, you know, people are, you know, you've got instant replay about balls and strikes and plays at first base and all the rest. And we have all kinds of video, second-guessing and other sports. How has that dealt with in football and soccer? What happens is, you know, the use of, as known as VAR and soccer, video-assisted referee,

is extremely controversial and contested among soccer fans because when it helps your team, it's obviously just objective truth. And when it goes against you, it's misused somehow. But basically, the idea, and this is infiltrating sports, all sports really, is that there's this idea that we should get calls right and we have the technology to do it, so let's try. basically there is someone monitoring these TVs, basically,

and they have the capacity to slow down or replay. And when something is missed, you know, the referees alerted that they're going to go to a video review. And in this case, the original call was not even made on the field. But the video review alerted, we're going to review this. And there is a rule that if you, basically, if you step on someone's leg, that's considered quite dangerous. because it is, you know. And there have been cases in which players have just totally kind of flown out of control

into players and stepped on their legs and, you know, broken them. So in this case, though, in the sort of regular run-of-play, like in the flow of the game, it was just a sort of typical football challenge. But what happened was when they went to video review, they actually watched the replay over and over. And when you slow these things down, they can look pretty horrific. I mean, there is a photo of flow as many people in soccer column, for the obvious reasons, standing on top of, you know, the Bosnian player twisted ankle. And that is, you know, pretty uncontrovertible. However, you're actually supposed to watch it as the referee has watched it.

So one of the U.S.'s objections here was that they had misused. VAR by slowing it down and focusing on the still photos instead of watching it as the referee would have watched it, which is a sort of more typical play. This drive to an exactitude, it's kind of like a philosophical question that we no longer are going to tolerate the, you know, sort of the ups and downs of the judgment and eyesight of an umpire or a referee. And we're going to get it so absolutely right that you can now have off sides calls determined by a sensor. that's in the ball. Yes. There are sensors in the ball. I mean, it works as it sounds.

There are sensors in the ball that can measure exactly not only where it is, but if it's been touched. And so there have been several controversial calls where it hasn't looked like it's been touched, but the sensor has kind of flared and maybe it sort of hit a few strands of someone's hair or, you know, maybe someone was offside by a millimeter. And, you know, one of the interesting things here is that there is a very small margin of error for all of these things. but we are not allowed to operate in the gray here. This has been an issue in tennis. This has been an issue in baseball, obviously.

This has been an issue in all sorts of sports as we sort of try and figure out what kind of human judgment we want to involve. Now, another big issue, another big issue with World Cup before we leave it, as I'm now starting to see because, as you know, trend pieces in journalism, if you have three examples, you're all set to go.

Is there a Trump curse? Trump came to see the Knicks in game three, the Knicks lose. He goes to see the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. The Chiefs get obliterated. And now he interferes in the World Cup and the U.S. team really performs poorly. Are you willing to set down the law here and say, there's a Trump curse when it comes to sports? Because I absolutely am. I was ready to do it after two.

Two a series makes. Yeah, there you go. But yes, I mean, I do think, you know, there is some question about whether or not this was just a soccer question. Was the U.S. going to win? But I do think that there was a different kind of energy around the team. There was a different kind of energy around the Belgian team. We cannot, these are not double-blind experiments. We can't go back in time and say what would have happened if they were able to play without this kind of interference.

but I can say that, you know, the U.S. coach is very interested in energy. He thinks everything comes back to, like, positive, good vibes. And that stuff is sort of usually kind of overlooked because he's such a good tactical coach. But in this case, I think he might be completely right. The energy around this team, it shifted. Yeah, it really did. I'm speaking with the New Yorkers, Louise Thomas, more in a moment. Now, let's get to very important things, the NICS.

I feel they did not improve substantially during the free agency period. I think they kind of, for financial reasons, so and so on, are standing pat. The big news in the NBA action in recent days has been the destiny of the 41-year-old, now former Laker, LeBron James. And the choice seems to be whether he goes to the cavaliers for a poetic ending of his career or whether he goes to join the Warriors and have fun with Steph Curry. What do you think he'll do? And here I thought you were going to spend the entire segment talking about Mitchell Robinson going to the Celtics. Fairly well, Mitchell.

Don't break your hand. Don't punch any more trucks. I mean, I, you know, where does my... Where does my heart go? My heart always goes to poetry. So, you know, I want him to be Odysseus, you know, returning home. But much like Odysseus, I actually think that there is something in LeBron James that always needs to leave. Bye-bye, Penelope.

Exactly. I think that there, I think he really is considering Golden State. I mean, there are other reasons for him to want to go to Golden State. One is, yeah, to have fun with Seth Curry, which, would be its own kind of poetry. Yeah, I watch that. Yeah, for sure. And also it is closer.

He has no intention of moving his base camp, his, you know, back to Akron. He still has family there. He still has roots there. But his life is in L.A. now. And that's an easier trip from San Francisco than from, you know, Ohio. I think you and I and Vincent, even though we're all reduced to tears, tears literally streaming down the face of Vincent Cunningham

on our substack live final night. Wemby tries a three, puts it up, off the mark, Ananovi the rebound. It's over, it's over. Nick Vans, this is not a dream. Your long, long wait has ended. Go ahead and cry after 53 years. We all realize that San Antonio is a great team,

and Victor Wimbunyama is a fantastic player who's only going to get better. What does he have to do in the offseason to be that much better, particularly in the playoffs? What's the slight missing piece in Wembe that's going to have to come together? Well, one thing that happened is that he played 20 to 30 minutes during the regular season, and suddenly he was playing 40 minutes at night in high-pressure situation. So one thing is just building up his fitness base. I think, though, that, you know, Wembe is a person who is sort of obsessed with the completeness of the game. And, yeah, keeping us cool.

You know, you referred to his penchant for, you know, smushing the opposition. It does do that. Excuse me. That should be a flagrant one. I can understand why Brunson. And then Wendy's laughing at. I think some of that was a little deliberate because he was seen as a little bit soft and a little too nice and a little, not badass enough. And, okay, maybe you don't have to try to break our hero's ankle in the process.

But I think some of that might have been deliberate. Yeah, he does do that. And, you know, it's going to be interesting to see because he went, speaking of U-turns-on-vives, he went from someone who was universally admired. and celebrated almost to being someone who is seen as a great villain. And there is a place for villains in the NBA, for sure. And finally, another thing that I was watching was tennis, and I was really taken, really, really moved by Serena's comeback match against this very young, very nervous.

It was just very touching to watch. watch this match. Tell me about how you saw that. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was actually surprised by how move I was, in part because it seems to me that everybody was surprised by Serena coming back. I had been waiting for this day since she had, quote, unquote, retired. So I was not at all surprised when she came back. But yeah, I mean, you saw it from the very, you know, there's this kind of ESPN has these cameras everywhere. I mean, it's like absolutely surveilled. And in the hallway, you go from the players locker room out to the court. They were tracking the players the whole time.

And Serena's opponent was she did not know where to put her eyes. Right. You know, she had never been in this situation. And she was just like a deer, you know. And Serena, because she has been in a situation so many times. And she very much knew she was on camera, just looked as relaxed as, you know, a lake. And when they stepped out there, I was like, wow, this is a, this is, this is moving. And, but we didn't get, you know, it sort of was a slow, a slow build.

And just when I thought the match was, you know, going to be over, Serena did the thing that Serena does. That's right. And she started throwing down Aces, you know, down break point. And she started kind of, there was really, there's a, in tennis, there was this classic pattern of the big sur followed by the big forehand. and she did one of those like you know

and it was just like I was transported back to 2011 or 2012 you know what I mean or 2002 you know I mean it was just one of those muscle memory yay

just athletes of all time for nothing champions champion spirit and she's in this fight Serena Williams but now Serena has knee problems and do you think this come back

is over just as it started? She is actually announced, or one of her coaches, Renee Stubbs, who is herself a doubles Grand Slam winner, that she's going to play in the U.S. Open. And hopefully, as long as her knee is okay, she's going to probably play a warm-up event. So do I think it's over? I don't know. I mean, she is not someone who likes to go out on a loss. The problem is in tennis, unless you win the toy.

tournament, you go out on a loss. And it's also hard to imagine her going out on a win. It's really. That would be just beyond beyond. Yes. Well, Louisa, it's always a pleasure to talk sports with you. Thank you so much. Always. Louisa Thomas writes the sporting scene column for The New Yorker, and you can find her writing on the World Cup, Serena Williams' attempted comeback, and much more at New Yorker.com. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boteen and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Parrish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.