Josh Hart grabbed a microphone, settled into his chair at the center of the stage and tugged the brim of his baseball cap. He looked to his left and saw the former N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady and the rapper Lil Wayne on a black leather love seat. He looked to his right and saw his New York Knicks teammate and close friend Jalen Brunson in a matching easy chair.
Then he looked beyond Brunson, to the only person onstage who needed an introduction at all.
“That’s the man, the myth, the legend: Matt Hillman,” Hart said. “If you guys know the pod, you know Matty Ice.”
“I’m the only one onstage you guys don’t know,” Hillman replied.
“Y’all will know who he is by the end,” Hart told the crowd.
It was a Friday in mid-August, and Hart, Hillman and Brunson were recording the first-ever live episode of their podcast, “The Roommates Show,” at Fanatics Fest NYC. The show, which started in February, has attracted a growing audience in part because of the popularity and personal connections of a young, surging Knicks team: Hart and Brunson are among four Knicks players who were teammates at Villanova. (They were also, as the title suggests, roommates.)
The show exists in a relatively crowded niche. There’s no official list, but some online tallies put the number of podcasts hosted by current or former N.B.A. players at nearly 60. Last season, active players hosted at least two dozen podcasts, meaning that one out of roughly every 20 players had a show. Beyond their ubiquity, another interesting feature has emerged in this small corner of sports media: More than half the podcasts have relatively anonymous co-hosts, like Hillman.
“There’s no show without Josh and Jalen,” Hillman said. “It’s about their name and their stardom and their chemistry. I’m here to make sure that the train stays on the tracks.”
For Hillman, recording the live show was the latest in a long run of surreal life experiences that started when he got to know Hart when they were high school basketball teammates at Sidwell Friends School in Washington. Hart eventually lived with Hillman’s family, and the pair have been best friends, business partners and, now, podcast co-hosts in the decade-plus since.
On podcasts, where chemistry can be critical, many of these co-host relationships are rooted in longstanding friendships.
Davis Reid, who hosted “The Long Shot” with the Miami Heat guard Duncan Robinson, met Robinson at Phillips Exeter Academy, a private school in New Hampshire. Robinson was later a groomsman at Reid’s wedding, and they would FaceTime at least once a week as Robinson rose from an anonymous, undrafted N.B.A. player to a star on a perennial championship contender. When Robinson was offered an opportunity to host a show, he asked Reid to share the sound booth with him.
“It’s an amazing time in media that players can take their narratives into their own hands, but it’s completely unrealistic to think that they can pour all of themselves into it,” Reid said. “Duncan wanted someone he could trust. He didn’t want to think about the show until we sat down to record.”
Shows like “The Steam Room,” with Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson, and “The Big Podcast,” with Shaquille O’Neal and Adam Lefkoe, build on dynamics that those retired players have established with their co-hosts through their N.B.A. studio shows on TNT. But the model of famous athlete and obscure sidekick is a relatively recent phenomenon.
JJ Redick and Tommy Alter were among the first to find success with the template. Redick launched a namesake podcast in 2017, when he was a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. The show ran for three years on Bill Simmons’s sports-and-pop-culture website, The Ringer. During that time, Alter rose from producer to co-host. Together, he and Redick left The Ringer to create ThreeFourTwo, a media production company, and began their enormously popular podcast, “The Old Man and the Three,” which has more than a million subscribers on YouTube. ThreeFourTwo would later produce “The Long Shot.”
For the players, the shows can be something of a lark. They’re an opportunity to promote their brands and to display their media bona fides for future on-camera opportunities. Their fame attracts the audience. But much of the behind-the-scenes work often falls to the co-hosts, who can handle everything from booking guests and scripting segments to editing episodes and cutting clips for social media. An average show will air a new episode each week during the N.B.A. season, but some produce episodes far more frequently, which can mean more money — but also more logistical work.
C.J. Toledano, who hosts “Point Game” with the free-agent guard John Wall, did not know Wall before they started the show. He got the gig because of his background in production — he owns his own studio, Follow Through — and social media. He worked with iHeartMedia to find an N.B.A. player to pair with to produce the show.
“There was this really funny moment in the beginning where I was watching him fire up his laptop and adjust his webcam, and I thought to myself: ‘What has my career become where I’m doing I.T. support for John Wall?’” Toledano said with a laugh. “He had the same issues as my mom did when she was trying to Zoom with us during the pandemic. It’s funnier when it’s a millionaire athlete.”
When there’s a friendship, though, there can be friction. Dallas Rutherford, who hosts “Podcast P” with Paul George of the 76ers, proposed starting the podcast together — but then had to audition for the job. He and George had known each other since they were on a youth basketball team in Southern California, and Rutherford prefers not to ask his rich and famous friend for money or favors.
“I would have done the podcast for free,” Rutherford said. “Money has never been a part of me and Paul’s relationship, and I didn’t want that to change. Regardless of how much I make, I have all this footage of me talking to these N.B.A. legends who I grew up idolizing. I get paid to talk with my best friends and famous athletes. I genuinely can’t believe it.”
Most of the hosts said working on a show provided enough money for a single person to live on. “Except in New York or L.A.,” Toledano joked. In some models, the hosts are paid a wage by the production companies; in others, they get a share of the advertising revenue. Some of the hosts own a portion of the intellectual property or business, but others do not.
Eddie Gonzalez, who hosts “The ETCs” with the Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant, has worked for Durant’s media company, Boardroom, in a variety of part-time and full-time roles. He met Durant through Twitter direct messages, and now he sometimes stays at Durant’s houses and flies with him on private jets.
“There definitely is this sense of amazement and wonder,” Gonzalez said. “I think that’s why the role of the co-host works so well. The listeners are living vicariously through you. You’re giving them an experience they wish they had, where you can just sit across from Kevin Durant and ask him about LeBron. It creates that sense of community among the fans and listeners.”
The show has slowed down this year, which has allowed Gonzalez to focus on other opportunities. He’s now the head of sports at the media company Complex, and he’s working on a scripted TV show about his life.
“There’s a friend-work balance that I had to discover,” Gonzalez said. “We went from being buddies to me being the bad guy who had to get him to sit down and do ad reads. Now we’re back to being friends 24/7. When we talk, it’s a podcast — whether or not we’re recording.”
The shows do sometimes come to abrupt conclusions. During the two-season run of “The Long Shot” with Robinson, Reid quit his full-time job in behavioral science, moved in with his parents and took a 50 percent pay cut. Then the show went on hiatus.
“There’s this moment of like, ‘What now?’” Reid said. “We stopped recording in July 2022, and by August I was back again in a 9-to-5 corporate job. One month I was at Summer League interviewing Mark Cuban, and the next I was at a desk staring at spreadsheets. I love what I do now, but that experience really made me realize: Being the co-host of an N.B.A. podcast is the best job on the planet.”
A few minutes into the live “Roommates” show, Hillman noticed that his microphone had stopped working. He tapped it frantically and tried to get the attention of a producer offstage. Hart noticed and called for help. Brunson noticed, too, and handed Hillman his own microphone so he could ask Brady and Lil Wayne a question about career longevity.
“Of all the people onstage,” Hillman joked, “it was probably best for my mic to go out.”
Later, Hillman asked Brady how he remained competitive now that he had retired from football. Brady, who had a well-earned reputation as a ruthless competitor in the N.F.L. — and a record seven Super Bowl wins to show for it — revealingly told Hillman, “My competitiveness is finished.”
After the show, Hillman took a helicopter to La Guardia Airport with Hart. Hillman has plans beyond the show — he’s the chief executive of PATH, a company for fitness influencers — but he tries not to lose sight of the serendipity of what they’ve started. When they boarded their flight to Miami, Hillman and Hart were seated next to each other, but they decided they had done enough talking for the day. Each slipped on headphones, and Hillman turned on “The Carter III,” the acclaimed 2008 album by Lil Wayne.
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