The Press Box<\/a> with Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson.<\/p>\n\u201cI think it\u2019s bad business. I think part of the reason why some interest has waned a bit is that there\u2019s more distance between the players. I think while player media is good, I think the players aren\u2019t experts at storytelling. I think, in general, storytelling about the league is on the way down and needs to rebound. I don\u2019t know on the pie chart how big it would be, but part of the reason why storytelling isn\u2019t as good as it used to be is because of the physical architecture that has changed within the NBA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Windhorst added that today\u2019s NBA arenas and facilities make it easy for players to avoid the media. The locker room used to be the natural point of access. But players are rarely at their lockers anymore. Instead, they head straight to private areas, cutting off one of the few remaining spaces where honest conversations could happen.<\/p>\n
The result? Less storytelling, less context, and less connection between the league and its fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of gotcha journalism that goes on now and a lot of clout chasing, or whatever,\u201d Windhorst explains. \u201cAnd like a paragraph will say seven paragraphs and one sentence from one paragraph gets used, and that\u2019s the headline. And that\u2019s on NBA Central on Twitter. And the player\u2019s like, \u2018Why\u2019d this guy screw me over?\u2019 And I can get why they don\u2019t do it. It\u2019s a two-way street. But architecture has led to reduced storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked what NBA reporting might look like in five to ten years, Windhorst didn\u2019t offer a blueprint. But he\u2019s hopeful it will start looking more like the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to believe we\u2019ll lean back towards storytelling\u2026 I see some shoots of moving that way and that there\u2019s more of that, that we move back to that,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d like to believe that Shams [Charania] has gone king of the mountain, and just owns the news, and it\u2019s just like it\u2019s his, and he just, he feasts on it. I think we can all agree that he works extremely hard, and I think we should all agree to just let him have it. That\u2019s probably cock eyed optimism.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect that there will be less player media because player media for largely has failed. There are obviously very successful guys and girls who have done it. But the podcast boom, at least the handing out of the money, has stemmed. And I suspect the fact that we\u2019re going to see that sort of peel back a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Windhorst said he won\u2019t truly know where NBA media is headed until Amazon and NBC start airing games. While both of the league\u2019s new media partners have made big hires, we won\u2019t get a sense of which direction they\u2019ll take until the 2025-26 NBA season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are potential game changers, or not,\u201d Windhorst said. \u201cI don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been five months since Brian Windhorst voiced his frustration with the current state of NBA media. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,2949,8372,6,567,8373],"class_list":{"0":"post-25477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brian-windhorst","10":"tag-bryan-curtis","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-shams-charania","13":"tag-the-press-box"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114489946593003504","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}