There comes a point in every sportswriter’s career when they realize they have no idea what they’re talking about. It turns out that the games they watched as kids were much more complex than they saw on TV. Players and coaches speak arcane jargon, and front office geeks spend their time poring over proprietary spreadsheets that can’t be found on the internet. Like a child who takes his favorite action figure to a slumber party only to discover that his new friends and people he admires have long since moved on to video games, the writer realizes that the clichés of the sports he loves are You realize it’s all about the “will to win.” ” is embarrassing.
However, conventional wisdom in sports media suggests that my audience still believes in old-fashioned storytelling, not spreadsheets, and wants the game to be expressed in simple terms. Thus begins a career in negotiating one’s own discoveries about the actual game with the supposed aspirations of the reader. Along the way, sportswriters may even discover that some of their childhood stories are actually true. Examples include Tiger Woods’ improbable victory at the 2019 Masters and LeBron James’ performance in Game 6 of the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Finals, where athletes summon everything within themselves and strive for greatness. There are moments that embody an old truism about. The best sportswriters learn to function as both translators and therapists. They tell you in relatable terms what you’re looking at, and why Woods cried when he hugged his son after coming off the 18th green at Augusta National. It tells us.
But what if the writers didn’t have to translate? The players themselves simply talked about all the intricacies of the game, breaking down the jargon and explaining specifically what happened in the moment that gave rise to those clichés. What if we could explain it in detail? This seems to be the idea behind Mind the Game, a podcast hosted by JJ Redick and LeBron James. Throughout the show’s first five episodes, Reddick and James hooptalked in a way that challenged the assumed demands of viewers, but also provided the emotional and great-man moments viewers desired. “Mind the Game” is also available in video format on YouTube, and is filmed in an intimate style with plenty of wine bottles scattered around the set. It begins with Reddick, paper or whiteboard in hand, laying out the upcoming glossary. Terms like “floppy,” “top rock,” and “short roll” are used when the meat of the show arrives, as James and Reddick carefully dissect specific plays, including some of the most iconic of James’ career. It is explained as follows. The audience can follow it. The question most often asked in sports media is, “What was going through your mind when you did that thing?” Redick and James discuss the same question, but provide a long-form answer.
This approach to commentary seems to have been in Reddick’s mind for a while. Earlier this year, he appeared on ESPN’s “First Take” to rant about sports media incentives and the fact that fans were less interested in his playing breakdowns than in the coaches, players, and player-to-player conflicts. It looked like he was mourning. And media personalities. “Do fans actually want to be educated?” he asked. “Mind the Game” is Reddick’s attempt to prove that the problem isn’t actually the fans, but what he calls the sports media “ecosystem” that prioritizes dumb arguments and drama. I can read that there is. The show aims to bring star power and a true insider’s perspective to analytical commentary, renegotiating the balance between sportswriter geeky chatter and viewers’ love of the story. It is. Can sports media get smarter?
This is also a well-worn question. Early in my career, I worked as one of the first editors and writers at Grantland, a sports and pop culture site overseen by former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons. Like Reddick, we were creating a new type of sports media that focused on increased analysis and quality reporting. We were hoping that Simmons’ popularity would help bring both nerdiness and great prose to the masses. In the early days of the site, I was editing one of his football writers, who took a stats-driven approach to his work. He wrote an article saying that, judging by the numbers, deciding which team to play was mostly luck. In that particular series of games, he recovered fumbles most often. He concluded that the problem wasn’t that some players wanted the ball more. Since the outcome of NFL games is often determined by turnovers, teams with a decent record of recovering a disproportionate number of loose balls likely benefited from a few lucky bounces. He probably exceeded his actual talent level. I’m right about this writer’s strengths, but there’s something depressing about approaching football as a series of random fluctuations, and I think it would probably be better to de-emphasize fumble regression in future writing. I remember that.
To my credit, he ignored me and went on to have a productive career as a smart NFL analyst. It was a mistake to push him in that direction, and he was reacting to his old instincts about what sports fans want. This doesn’t mean that industry incentives have suddenly changed or that drama and the Dallas Cowboys, by far the most popular topics in American sports, will suddenly disappear from sports media programming summaries. Nor does it mean that Reddick and James invented an entirely new format for the show. “Mind the Game” is a synthesis of a lot of things that have come before. Athlete-driven content has become extremely popular over the past five years or so. For example, “The Pat McAfee Show,” hosted by the gregarious former punter for the Indianapolis Colts and featuring other current and retired NFL players, including Aaron Rodgers, became a YouTube sensation and the final obtained an 80-year license from ESPN. 5 million dollars. “All the Smoke,” a show featuring former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, pioneered an intimate interview style that allowed guests to speak more candidly than they had publicly spoken during their playing days. James himself previously experimented with this conversation format on his show “The Shop,” which aired for four seasons on HBO before moving to YouTube and aimed for a college barbershop feel. And Redick has his own podcast with Tommy Alter, where he talks about the NBA on a granular level and tries to unravel some of the intricacies of the game.
I’m a fan of this new wave of player media, especially the hilarious “Club 520 Podcast,” hosted by former NBA guard Jeff Teague and two of his friends from his hometown of Indianapolis. “The Pat Bev Podcast with Rone” is co-hosted by another NBA guard, Patrick Beverley, and battle rapper Rone. And on the “Podcast P” show, future Hall of Fame forward Paul George has proven to be one of the most talented interviewers in all of media. Shows like this strip away the scrim of translation and replace confused writers like me with the voice of the principal. But I mainly watch clips on his TikTok and his Instagram. It seems like a lot of fans feel that way. I also noticed that many of these podcasts are sponsored by sports betting companies that are currently in the midst of a fierce battle for customers. At some point, the money stops flying around, a few winners emerge, as is happening elsewhere in media, and the rich diversity of this era gives way to something more sophisticated and perhaps predictable. He will be replaced. One of the things I learned while working in sports media is that the industry is unusually susceptible to certain types of change. We fans still want to hear about the Lakers and Cowboys. And I’m pretty ignorant on the question of how much and how the industry needs to change. I appreciate thoughtful analysis, but often I just want drama and screaming.
Still, more than any other podcast or show to date, “Mind the Game” brings a level of authority that has the potential to change the contours of the sports conversation, even if only slightly. James’s much-famous brain is on full display like never before. In the 2015 NBA Finals, James played without two of his best teammates and nearly defeated the mighty Golden State Warriors in one of the most heroic losses in league history. In the first three games, he slowed the pace of the game significantly, coordinating the entire offense by himself and disrupting the Warriors’ quick, calculated rhythm. It was the kind of intellectual mastery that evoked rare emotions in fans. A great player is trying to figure out a way to win against all odds. And yet, despite rewatching that series dozens of times, we still don’t know what was going on in James’ head. In that moment, we fans, even though we think we’re smart and informed, are like Salieri looking at Mozart’s score in “Amadeus.” We see evidence of genius, but we don’t know how it was done. Listening to “Mind the Game” is probably the closest you’ll ever get. ♦
