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 2012–2018.
In 2017, while working as a sideline reporter in Cleveland, she started the podcast Roadtrippin’ alongside then-active Cavaliers players Richard Jefferson and Channing Frye. Ex-NBA center and ESPN analyst Kendrick Perkins later became an official co-host 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.”
