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Allie Clifton has become a household name in basketball media in recent years. But despite having spent more than a decade on television, she credits her rise to a podcast.
Clifton manages national duties as a studio host for Amazon Prime Video’s WNBA coverage and hosts Spectrum SportsNet’s local Lakers coverage. She had previously covered the Cavaliers for Fox Sports Ohio from 2012 to 2018.
In 2017, while working as a sideline reporter in Cleveland, she started the podcast Road Trippin’ alongside then-active Cavaliers players Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye. Ex-NBA center and ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins later became an official cohost in 2024. Road Trippin’ is considered one of the first and longest-running player-led podcasts.
“It changed the trajectory of my career,” Clifton told Front Office Sports about the podcast.
“For a long time, that was what people recognized me for. It was: ‘You’re Allie Clifton from Road Trippin’.’ It wasn’t the five years that I had done with the Cleveland Cavaliers as a sideline [reporter]. It wasn’t even my first couple of years in Los Angeles being a host for the Los Angeles Lakers. … When I’m able to kind of take a step back now and just understand kind of the fuel and the drive behind that and what it has served in terms of my career so far, it’s right at the top.”
Clifton said Jefferson first approached her during a 2017 practice to see if she was willing to join. The idea behind the show was to give fans an inside look at the lives of players during the season, a much more novel concept nearly a decade ago compared to today. It also gave Jefferson and Frye something to do when travelling during the final years of their playing careers.
Clifton said she originally declined the offer to host the show, believing the skills needed to host a podcast are different from sideline reporting.
“I wasn’t ready to step out and be so open and be able to kind of dictate,” said Clifton, who was in her late 20s at the time. “Sideline has a completely different role than hosting, so to lead conversations of very dynamic personalities, I was a bit hesitant.”
She eventually accepted Jefferson’s offer, and said hosting Road Trippin’ “opened her eyes” to hosting, which is now her primary role with Amazon Prime and Spectrum SportsNet. She now works with the likes of WNBA legends Swin Cash and Cynthia Cooper on Amazon Prime, and Lakers legend James Worthy on Spectrum SportsNet.
The podcast also launched Jefferson and Frye’s own broadcasting careers. Jefferson is part of ESPN’s lead NBA broadcast team and just called his second NBA Finals for the network, while Frye was a part of TNT’s basketball coverage and continues to make appearances across various networks.
Clifton said she has a very close relationship with the two, saying she feels like she has talked to them “every single day” since they started the show more than nine years ago. But she said Jefferson and Frye were silent over the last few weeks after they joined the 2016 Cavaliers’ NBA championship reunion that the likes of LeBron James and Kevin Love posted all over social media last week.
“That trip, eight days, might have been the longest I went without talking to them,” Clifton said. “And by design, because I think that they let us inside from a social perspective of what their trip was like. But I think too, if you just take a step outside and just appreciate it for what it is. in regards to the camaraderie, the continuity. That is a text chain that has been going since 2016. … It truly has become family for them. It is the group chat that left the chat.”
Redick’s Pivot to Coaching
In Los Angeles, Clifton now covers Lakers head coach JJ Redick, who was also one of the first active NBA players to start his own podcast around the same time that Road Trippin’ began. Redick eventually parlayed podcasting into a media career with ESPN after he retired in 2021, before becoming the Lakers head coach in 2024.
The former Duke star had previously hosted the Mind the Game podcast with LeBron James, who was on the Lakers. The team received criticism for hiring James’ co-host as their head coach, given his lack of coaching experience.
Clifton said Redick—who no longer cohosts the podcast—already had the natural basketball chops when the Lakers hired him. She also, however, believes that the media world can help develop other skills necessary for coaching.
“It’s kind of like a cheat code,” Clifton said of working in the media. “There’s a lens to the preparation that goes into learning talent on the floor as players, to then having to step into a different seat, a different light and have to coach them, right?
“But you’re just continuing to broaden your horizon and understanding of the game that he already knew so well. And so I think that when you take time to be able to sit down and really have real raw conversations through a podcast lens and a casual conversation, you’d be surprised the avenues that open up”
