The 18th Annual Povich Symposium: a column

Flyer for Povich Symposium (Alexa Henry/The Black Explosion).

On Nov. 17, the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism hosted two panel discussions that focused on the future of the NBA and sports journalism. The first panel left me with more questions than it did answers but the second panel gave almost an unfiltered look into what it’s like to cover sports at a professional level.

The first panel featured the National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver and Monumental Sports and Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis with Sports Business Journal's John Ourand. The second panel featured the Athletic writer David Aldridge, ESPN’s Frank Isola, the Washington Post Ava Wallace and Merrill College Professor of the Practice Kevin Blackistone.

For context, this Symposium happened days after the NBA suspended Draymond Green for putting Rudy Gobert in a chokehold after a Warriors-Timberwolves game got chippy. I was hoping, maybe, Silver would address the suspension as that was all anyone or any sports news outlet could talk about. Sadly, everyone’s favorite commissioner did not address the drama surrounding the player.

The first part of the Symposium started off with Ourand asking Leonsis and Silver about what they thought of the state of sports journalism today.

“It's never been better. When I look at the volume of coverage of our league and our players I think we’re largely the beneficiaries. It’s more often we’re complaining about that we’re not being covered rather than about specifically the way we’re being covered,” said Silver.

Then Leonsis added that coverage of the NBA is getting better because journalists are showing their “talents” rather than “retweeting” other’s work. Although there isn’t a problem with retweeting another person’s work, it seemed like what he was trying to get at is that more sports journalists have their own identity instead of following the crowd, which I agree with. More sports journalists are finding better angles and even getting into data journalism to tell better and more in depth stories.

“I think context is more important than news,” said Leonsis. “You need to be able to explain things and that comes from doing the work, knowing history, looking at things that happen in other industries, connecting those dots and how it would affect things that are happening today.”

Left to Right: Ted Leonsis and Adam Silver (Alexa Henry/The Black Explosion).

The conversation moved to the new in-season tournament and the possibility of shortening or lengthening the season.

I have to admit, the in-season tournament was not as easy to follow compared to the WNBA’s Commissioner’s Cup. It was interesting because I was wondering “why didn’t the NBA just model their in-season tournament after the WNBA’s?”

It is the first year of the tournament happening in the NBA but it seemed almost unnecessary. There was huge hype in the beginning of the season for the tournament, but it felt like it died out. Before anyone knew, the Lakers were crowned the first champions of the in-season tournament. The court designs were also very distracting with their exaggerated colors but at least that’s over.

The second panel opened up with Blackistone asking about the challenges of covering the NBA today. More specifically, the question was geared towards Ava Wallace who covers the rebuilding Washington Wizards.

“How I kind of smartly cover an NBA team has changed quite a bit for someone who writes for a newspaper. We’ve got to serve PR subscribers who are waiting to see a gamer in the paper every day and then we’ve got to serve 99% of our other readers who are not,” Wallace said. She said that she has to find different ways to appeal to both kinds of readers, especially when it comes to reporting on a team that is rebuilding.

Left to Right: Prof. Kevin Blackistone, David Aldrige, Ava Wallace and Frank Isola (Alexa Henry/The Black Explosion).

From a print perspective, this is interesting because the casual viewer of sports may just want to know what happened during the game but there are people out there that care about injuries or anything going on outside of the game and that's the extent of them reading sports. I think this is where sports print journalism will face their biggest challenge because it’s a skill to be able to write to different audiences instead of one specific audience.

Broadcast journalism doesn’t have to worry about it as much because there are shows specifically geared towards people who want an in-depth analysis and someone who just wants to know who won and lost.

On the broadcast side of coverage, Isola mentioned that on former NBA player JJ Redick’s podcast, “The Old Man and the Three”, Adam Silver mentioned that he wishes that the NBA was talked about how the NFL is talked about. Silver said that NFL coverage talks about defenses and strategy and he would like that for the NBA. Isola, however, said that people like the dramatization of the league.

“So, what happens is Draymond Green choking Rudy Gobert so what are we supposed to talk about? It’s still, I think, what keeps the NBA going is that it is a drama league,” said Isola. An audience wants to hear the five W’s to the altercation between Green and Gobert and not an update on the in-season tournament.

The way the NFL and the NBA are covered are vastly different but similar. A lot of the time a casual viewer of sports isn’t paying attention to the strategy behind basketball: most people just want to see them dunk or shoot threes. In the NFL, yes, a viewer is there for the touchdowns but a viewer understands there’s more to the game than just touchdowns. There’s conversions on third down, there’s flags which affect yardage, field goals, etc. The casual viewer can see the strategy and athleticism being played out in the NFL.

However, in the NBA, people are more about the blatant athleticism that those players have. The causal viewer probably can’t identify a full court press or the difference between zone and man defense. All the casual viewer wants to see are the Steph Curry threes and Victor Wembanyama dunks.

This is why free agency, suspensions, and fights hold a lot more in the NBA than in the NFL. Pushing and shoving is a norm in the NFL but it’s not as much of a norm when it comes to basketball.

The floor opened up to limited student questions. Ryan Martin, a first year journalism student at University of Maryland, asked about the infamous comments that Charissa Thompson made on the “Pardon My Take” podcast.

“I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again. I would make up the report sometimes because A, the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime or it was too late and I was like, ‘I didn’t want to screw up the report,’ so I was like, ‘I’m just going to make this up,’” said Thompson on the podcast. Her comments soon received widespread backlash, even from Aldridge, who wrote about how her comments “corrode sports journalism” in the Athletic.

Aldrige at the panel held himself back from what he wanted to actually say. He was a former sideline reporter himself, which makes sense why he took this comment so personally.

Charissa Thompson’s comments are extremely damaging even though she tried to back track them. Even if a coach would be happy not to do an interview while they are in the midst of a game, it is the job of journalists to make sure what they are writing and what they are saying is factual. In an industry that is still being dominated by males, it’s tough to hear a woman in an anchor position made up reports in her early days. It sends a message to young journalists that all you have to do is make up quotes and they’ll be right where she is, covering Thursday Night Football.

As a woman of color working in this industry, it’s disheartening to hear all someone had to do was lie and they have a seat that I want in the future. When I first heard the news, I thought “then why am I doing all this if all I have to do is make up a general lie and I’ll be where she is?” But I realized it’s the credibility that she now has lost and as a journalist once you lose credibility you might as well change jobs.

“There were lots of times where coaches blew me off coming back onto the court in the second half or they said something that was stupid or said something that didn’t make any sense or said something that I couldn’t use. Well guess what, go grab an assistant coach then go grab the trainer, go grab a player, grab somebody and ask him a question that you can use,” Aldrige passionately said into the microphone at the Symposium. He’s right. If one person doesn’t know, well, someone will.

Left to Right: Prof. Kevin Blackistone and David Aldrige (Alexa Henry/The Black Explosion).

“I hope young reporters do not believe that’s how the job is done because that is not how the job is done. If you ever do this for a living and you become a sideline reporter, you will find that 90-95% of what you get never makes the air because there’s just not enough time and that’s okay.”

The future of sports journalism is a bright one but a messy one. Between networks hiring their own sport reporters that basically are doing public relations work instead of reporting to Thompson making up reports, lines of ethics get crossed. Future sports reporters have to make a decision, do they want to report fairly or do they just want to be able to sit courtside?

With the addition of social media, audiences can see what it’s like to be a sports journalist. Journalists can interact with their followers in real time updates and answer questions through social media. More sports journalists are opting to really examine a player and tell their story that makes the human instead of simply recapping games.