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Ethan Sherwood Strauss: Something Is Corrupted in ESPN’s NBA Coverage

. It’s corrupted what ESPN is trying to do in terms of entertaining people because they can’t tell stories as well because there is always this neurotic paranoid fear that it will piss off an agent.

Ricky Keeler

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ESPN on NBA

Ethan Sherwood Strauss covered the NBA for ESPN and for The Athletic over the course of his career. Now, he is writing about topics that interest him the most on his substack, House of Strauss.

Strauss was a guest on the most recent episode of South Beach Sessionshosted by Dan Le Batard. He said the reason why he decided to leave The Athletic in August 2021 was because he wanted to write about what interested him and that he thought his sportswriting was getting worse instead of better:

“There’s a not so flattering aspect to it which is I thought I was getting worse at sportswriting. I think a lot of people went through this over the pandemic period where they didn’t feel themselves caring so much about their job as they did in the past. For me at The Athletic, I was covering the Warriors. The Warriors are exceptionally well-covered by The Athletic. It’s not just me over there…I felt like I could keep pace if I was tremendously motivated like we just kicked off the 2018 playoffs together.”

“I felt myself kind of getting worse and I thought that eventually the fans, the readers, they feel it, they know it. They know that you are fraudulent at some level. I had a couple of years left on my contract but was I really going to command some sort of salary after that if I didn’t have a following, if my work wasn’t good anymore? It was inspired by fear and I wanted it to be inspired by a different, better fear. A fear of failure.”

That fear made Strauss excited to start up the substack because he felt he needed to take that risk to see if other people were interested in what he was writing about:

“It excited me to start the substack and just know I can fail. To know that maybe I am going to try to talk about the stuff that interests me and it won’t work and it will be humiliating. It won’t just be an ego failure, but it will be a financial failure on top of that. That’s scary as hell. I sometimes think you need something like that in your life in order to force you to be better and to force you to grow. I wanted that sense of risk.”

One of the topics the two of them got into was ESPN’s coverage of the NBA and Adrian Wojnarowski in particular. Not only does Strauss think Woj is not very good on TV, he thinks that the coverage is being corrupted based on what is going on behind-the-scenes:

“He [Woj]  has built this empire on the basis of being first and having the news first. He’s in many ways a savvy businessman. He has tried to set it up where it’s almost mechanized where they are coming to him and he’s sending a social media resume around to different sources, to agents, to GM’s.”

“It corrupts the coverage because if the main focus is breaking a news story on Twitter and being first, that will detract from other focuses such as telling the most interesting story, revealing something that might not be flattering to a team or a player, but is of interest to the fans. It’s corrupted what ESPN is trying to do in terms of entertaining people because they can’t tell stories as well because there is always this neurotic paranoid fear that it will piss off an agent. I think people have this sense that something’s not on the up-and-up when they watch ESPN’s NBA coverage. Those stories have done well.” 

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ESPN Sees Larger Than Average Audience For Big City Greens Classic

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ESPN aired Tuesday night’s New York Rangers and Washington Capitals game. DisneyXD and Disney Channel aired an alternate broadcast that included players being 3D animated to resemble the cast of Disney Channel’s popular cartoon Big City Greens. It turned into a ratings win for the networks.

The alternate broadcast featured players animated in real time to mimic what was happening on the Madison Square Garden ice. Players were equipped with special chips in the padding to aid the animation, and special pucks were used to ensure a smooth transition from video to computer-animated graphics.

An average of 589,000 viewers tuned into the game on ESPN. Meanwhile, nearly 175,000 watched the broadcast between Disney Channel and DisneyXD.

The figure for ESPN represents its largest NHL broadcast since a November 1st broadcast featuring the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins.

The combined total for the broadcast — 765,000 — outdrew the World Baseball Classic broadcasts but did not top the NCAA Tournament’s First Four round that was broadcast on truTV.

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Sports TV News

Greg Gumbel: I’m Lucky That I’ve Never Been Fired

“I worked for some people who didn’t like me, I’ve worked for some people I didn’t like. It’s a strange business, there’s no doubt.”

Ricky Keeler

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Greg Gumbel

This week, it was announced that Greg Gumbel will no longer be a play-by-play announcer for the NFL on CBS after working on CBS’s NFL coverage every year since 1998. Gumbel has had an illustrious career and he takes pride in the fact that one thing has never happened to him.

Gumbel was a guest on the Tell Me A Story I Don’t Know podcast with George Ofman (Part 2 from an interview back in September) and he told Ofman that while he has never been fired before, but he doesn’t think broadcasters should be embarrassed when they get fired because of what the business is.

“It’s the nature of the business. I honestly think I’ve been extremely fortunate in that I’ve never been fired in a business that is known for firings. Being fired in this business is no shame, no embarrassment because it’s a subjective business. Because this guy at this network likes my work, it doesn’t mean that this guy at that network does. It’s extremely subjective and if you can buy that and understand it the way it is, then it shouldn’t bother you at all.

“It’s never happened to me. If it had, it would not have surprised me. I worked for some people who didn’t like me, I’ve worked for some people I didn’t like. It’s a strange business, there’s no doubt.”

Gumbel has been the host of CBS’s NCAA Tournament coverage for the last 25 years and he knows it’s a job that he is very grateful to have.

“I know there are people who would give their right arm to be sitting there next to Clark Kellogg and Seth Davis on Selection Sunday or sitting next to Kellogg, Kenny Smith, and Charles Barkley when the tournament begins to talk about what we’ve just seen or what we are going to see. I am never, ever going to take for granted the fact that I have been very fortunate to be able to do that.”

One thing Gumbel tries to avoid whenever he is on air is the mispronunciation of someone’s name because he knows how it feels to have his name distorted accidentally by some people.

“Pronunciations are important to me. There’s been a lifetime of people who may not completely mispronounce my name, but distorting it a little bit from time to time. I never want to do that to an athlete. If I ever mispronounce an athlete’s name, I hear it from his family, I hear it from the school or the team and I apologize for it as soon as I can. I don’t think that is something light or should be taken for granted.”

Toward the end of the interview, Gumbel was asked by Ofman when he will know it will be time to end his career.

“Other people have given it more thought than I have. I think when that time comes around, it will hit me over the head more than I will think about it. There are people who ask me why I still do what I do. The very bottom line is I love it, I enjoy it.”

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Sports TV News

Diamond Sports Group Misses Arizona Diamondbacks Rights Payment

It is believed that the missed rights payment by Bally Sports Arizona triggers a clause in the contract that reverts the television rights back to the Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball.

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Last week, Diamond Sports Group — operator of the Bally Sports-branded regional sports networks — claimed it had paid every rights fee it was contractually obligated, except for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

At the time, the company said it had a grace period until it needed to make a payment. That payment was due by Thursday, March 16th at 11:59 PM. That time has come and gone, and the company failed to deliver its fee.

It is believed that the missed rights payment by Bally Sports Arizona triggers a clause in the contract that reverts the television rights back to the Diamondbacks and Major League Baseball.

The Diamondbacks are not the only team affected by the situation. Bally Sports — which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this week — has also reportedly entered a grace period with the San Diego Padres. According to a report from Sports Business Journal, that grace period ends on March 30th, baseball’s Opening Day.

Previous reporting claims that contract is one the network hopes to get out from under. The company loses a reported $20 million per season on its television deal with the Padres. The Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Guardians are the other two baseball franchises the network holds the rights to that it hopes to terminate deals for.

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