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By Jay Caspian Kang
There comes a time in each and every sports journalist’s career when they realize they have no idea what they’re talking about. It turns out that the game they watched when they were young is much more complex than it appeared on TV. Players and coaches speak in impenetrable jargon, and front-office nerds spend their time poring over proprietary spreadsheets that can’t be noticed on the internet. As a kid who has taken his beloved action figure to a sleepover only to realize that his new friends, other people he idolizes, have long since moved into video games, he realizes that all of his beloved sports clichés (about “will to win” or whatever) are embarrassing.
And yet, the traditional wisdom within sports media is that the writer’s audience continues with outdated narratives rather than spreadsheets and needs the game to be presented in layman’s terms. Thus begins a career of negotiating notices about genuine gambling with the intended recipients. readers’ needs. Along the way, the sports journalist might even notice that some of those stories from the formative years are truly genuine. There are moments—Tiger Woods’ fantastic victory at the 2019 Masters, for example—or LeBron James’ performance in Game 6 of the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Finals — when athletes combine everything in them and include the old truisms about greatness. The best sports journalists should act as translators and therapists. They tell you what you’re looking for in applicable terms, and they also tell you why you cried when Woods hugged her son after he stepped off the 18th green at Augusta National.
But what if there was no need for an editor to translate? What if the players themselves could simply tell you all the intricacies of the game, break down the jargon, and explain in detail what was happening in the kind of moments that gave rise to those clichés? That turns out to be the concept behind “Mind the Game,” a podcast hosted by J. J. Redick and LeBron James. Throughout the first five episodes of the series, Redick and James have talked about basketball in a way that demands the situations the audience wants, but also gives them the emotional, big-man moments they want. “Mind the Game” is also released in video format, on YouTube, filmed in an intimate setting with wine bottles scattered around the set. It begins with Redick, paper or whiteboard in hand, presenting a glossary of what’s to come. Terms like “floppy,” “top lock” and “short roll” are explained in such a way that when it comes to the meat of the display: James and Redick meticulously break down specific plays, adding some of the iconic maxims from James’ career. – the public can continue. The most common question asked in sports media is some edition of “What was going through your brain when you did that?” » Redick and James talk about the same question, but provide detailed answers.
This observational technique turns out to have been in Redick’s brain for some time. Earlier this year, he gave the impression on ESPN’s “First Take” and ranted about incitement in the sports media, seeming to lament the fact that enthusiasts were less interested in his investigation of the game than in the fights between coaches, players and media personalities. “Do enthusiasts really need to have knowledge or not?” he asked. “Mind the Game” reads like Redick’s attempt to prove that the challenge is rarely very much with enthusiasts but with what he calls the sports media “ecosystem,” which prioritizes silly debates and drama. The challenge of the program is to bring the strength of the stars and the point of view of the true connoisseurs to analytical observation, renegotiating the position of the sports journalist. balance between geeky communication and the audience’s love of storytelling. Can sports media be smarter?
This is also a well-known question. Early in my career, I worked as an editor and publisher at Grantland, a sports and pop culture site overseen by former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons. Like Redick, we sought to create a new type of sports media, one that values quality writing and analysis. We hoped that Simmons’ popularity could help us bring nerdy, intelligent prose to the general public. In the early days of the site, I was editing one of our football editors, who brought a statistics-based technique to his work, and wrote an article explaining how, judging by the numbers, luck was more common than It was determined. It’s not about having players who look for the ball more, he concluded. Taking into account the effects of the N. F. L. Games feature turnovers, a team with a decent record that had recovered an unusually giant percentage of fumbles was probably reaping the benefits of some lucky rebounds and surpassing their actual skill level. I keep thinking that the editor was essentially right, but that there was something miserable about approaching football as a series of random fluctuations, and that perhaps the regression of fumbles deserved to be downplayed in his long-term writing. .
It is true that the editor did not pay attention to me and he had a successful career as a wise NFL player. analyst. I was wrong to push him in that direction and he was responding to outdated instincts about what sports enthusiasts wanted. This does not mean that industry incentives have suddenly taken over or that drama and the Dallas Cowboys, until now the most popular media outlet in American sports, are suddenly disappearing from sports media programming lists. Nor does it mean that Redick and James have invented an entirely new form of spectacle. “Mind the Game” is a synthesis of many things that came before. Athlete-focused content has become incredibly popular over the past five years. “The Pat McAfee Show,” for example, presented through the gregarious Indianapolis Colts betting trainer and featuring a collection of other existing and retired NFL players. players. The players, including Aaron Rodgers, have become YouTube sensations and were eventually licensed through ESPN for eighty-five million dollars. “All the Smoke,” an exhibit featuring shaper N. B. A. Players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson pioneered an intimate interview style that allowed visitors to speak more candidly than ever publicly about their playing careers. James himself in the past tried to change the way of communication with his show “The Shop,” which aired on HBO for four seasons before moving to YouTube and aimed at a college barbershop environment. And Redick has his own podcast of his with Tommy Alter, where he talks about the N. B. A. at a granular level, seeking to break down some of the complexities of the game.
I’m a fan of this new wave of gamer media, especially the hilarious “Club 520 Podcast,” brought to you by former N. B. A. guard Jeff Teague and two friends from his hometown of Indianapolis; “The Pat Bev Podcast with Rone,” co-hosted by his fellow N. B. A. guard Patrick Beverley and war rapper Rone; and the “Podcast P” show, which revealed future Hall of Famer Paul George as one of the most talented interviewers in all of media. Programs like those remove the translation canvas and update writers like me with directors’ voices. But most of the time I watch clips on TikTok and Instagram, which happens to be the way many enthusiasts enjoy them. I also discovered (very unlikely not) how many of those podcasts are sponsored through sports betting companies, which have recently found themselves in the middle of an intense visitor acquisition war. At some point, the money will stop flowing and, as has happened in other media, some winners will emerge and the abundant variety of this era will give way to something more subtle and probably predictable. One thing I’ve learned during my time in sports media is that it’s an industry unusually immune to certain types of change. We enthusiasts still want to hear about the Lakers and the Cowboys. And I’m pretty agnostic on the question of how much and in what tactics the industry wants to change. I appreciate the thoughtful analysis, but most of the time I just need the drama and the screaming.
However, “Mind the Game,” more than any of the podcasts and shows that preceded it, brings a degree of authority that can create even a slight shift in the contours of sports discourse. It showcases James’ outstanding brain in a comprehensive and unprecedented way. In the N. B. A. In the Finals, James, betting without his two most productive teammates, nearly defeated the heavyweight Golden State Warriors in what went down as the most heroic defeat in league history. In the first 3 games, he slowed the game down, orchestrated the entire offense on his own, and disrupted the Warriors’ quick, calculated pace. It was the kind of intellectual mastery that inspires rare feelings in fans: a wonderful player, with the odds stacked against him, trying to think his way to victory. And yet, even though I’ve revisited this series dozens of times, I still don’t know what was going through James’ head. In those moments, we fans, even as we try to be wise and informed, are like Salieri searching for Mozart’s score in “Amadeus. ” We can see the evidence of genius, but we cannot perceive how it was achieved. Listening to “Mind the Game” is probably the closest I’ll ever get. ♦
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