{"id":428693,"date":"2025-12-06T11:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T11:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428693\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T11:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T11:35:10","slug":"column-at-last-the-players-themselves-are-the-voice-of-the-nba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428693\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: At last, the players themselves are the voice of the NBA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Three words perfectly summed up what LeBron James has been trying to tell us most of his life.<\/p>\n

His pass to Rui Hachimura in the closing seconds of Thursday\u2019s game led to the game-winning basket. With that pass, James sacrificed a chance to score at least 10 points in an NBA-record 1,298 consecutive games. When the game is on the line, the sports industry wants stars like him to take the last shot because that\u2019s how the industry traditionally defines greatness.<\/p>\n

People say: \u201cJordan would\u2019ve shot it. Kobe would\u2019ve shot it.\u201d And ever since Sports Illustrated put James on the cover in 2002 \u2014 next to the words \u201cchosen one\u201d \u2014 he has been trying to tell us he defines greatness differently.<\/p>\n

He reiterated that after the game against Toronto, when asked what feelings he had toward his scoring streak ending.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone. We won.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sports industry, the machine, will discuss whether to feel the same way.<\/p>\n

But we can\u2019t pretend he hasn\u2019t been telling us the same thing for more than 20 years: All he cares about is making the right play for the team. He\u2019s been saying that since the S.I. cover. And that has been particularly true since creating his own media company, Uninterrupted, back in 2014.<\/p>\n

He and Yankees great Derek Jeter, who started the Players Tribune that same year, are pioneers when it comes to modern athletes telling their own stories. And in the decade since, it\u2019s been captivating watching athletes move beyond the gatekeeping of traditional media and the limitations of social media to create podcasts and produce documentaries (or at least try<\/a>) \u2014 all to tell their own stories.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say every time a group of former or active players steps in front of a mic, brilliance is heard. In fact, a lot of what we hear is just retelling stories we\u2019ve heard a thousand times, only with less structure. Oftentimes there are ego-driven attempts to rewrite history under the guise of \u201csetting the record straight.\u201d As if we don\u2019t have Google and can\u2019t see the record for ourselves. But it is in their own words, which adds something to the discussion. And because there\u2019s more of it, I\u2019m finding some of the best stuff out there isn\u2019t from the gods of the game like James, but the near-mortals.<\/p>\n

Take \u201cRun It Back\u201d on FanDuel TV. The sports media machine is driven by stars, but the league is mostly made of voices like the ones on that show. The players who didn\u2019t lead teams to heights and whose faces never made it to the cover of a magazine. And until recently, most of the insight from most of the players was just lost because we didn\u2019t hear their voices. But now \u2014 particularly this season, with networks investing heavily in athlete-driven NBA content \u2014 more sources are bringing more texture. People like \u201cRun It Back\u201d co-host Chandler Parsons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like the inside info, and I like the takes from the other guys,\u201d Parsons said about hearing from the non-superstars. \u201cI like hearing from Draymond Green and hearing what he has to say through his eyes and not through a third party\u2026. As an athlete who has been in my shoes and played the game at the highest level, I respect their takes and I respect their opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the early days of Monday Night Football, Howard Cosell, the original sports media provocateur, often griped about former NFL players leaving the field and walking into the booth. He would say sports media was the only profession where someone with no experience could be handed a big check to do the job at the highest level. That was back in the 1970s, when TV networks were few and media-savvy athletes like the great Muhammad Ali were even fewer.<\/p>\n

Parsons graduated from the University of Florida with a journalism degree, so perhaps he avoids the scorn of Cosell\u2019s ghost. Still, without the explosion of streaming networks and podcasting, there\u2019s a good chance we wouldn\u2019t have heard much from him and others like him, just because they weren\u2019t household names. It was his appearance on another athlete-driven podcast, \u201cAll the Smoke,\u201d that elevated him as a viable NBA analyst.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea I wanted to do this,\u201d Parsons said.<\/p>\n

Same for Matt Barnes, who along with Stephen Jackson, started their podcast \u201cAll the Smoke\u201d after careers in the NBA and stints with traditional media. To understand how popular it is today: Since joining YouTube in 2019, the show has amassed more than half a billion views, has landed interviews with Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Michelle Obama and Gov. Gavin Newsom and has grown into a full-fledged production company.<\/p>\n

Barnes, who is the CEO of All the Smoke Productions, told me that because of the increase in NBA content in the so-called manosphere, there can be pressure to give takes for clicks. (I told him that sounded familiar.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some athletes in this space who say some of the craziest s\u2014,\u201d Barnes said. \u201cI feel like if I put the work in and have deep, meaningful conversations, I\u2019ll go viral for something that\u2019s an interesting story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Case in point: \u201cSmoke\u201d was among the first media outlets to have NBA legend Dwyane Wade on to talk about his transgender daughter. It was a powerful episode that a decade ago would never have been initiated by former athletes. That\u2019s not just a reflection of the times changing. It embodies how players now see themselves, and speak for themselves, in these changing times.<\/p>\n

Players and former players are the new voice of the NBA. They\u2019ve always been there. They just needed to be heard.<\/p>\n

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three words perfectly summed up what LeBron James has been trying to tell us most of his life.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[39007,1910,199388,3363,121896,1260,199387,9323,4368,23492,199386,62,16422,6620,199389,67,132,68,18047],"class_list":{"0":"post-428693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-athlete","9":"tag-game","10":"tag-howard-cosell","11":"tag-lebron-james","12":"tag-matt-barnes","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-own-story","15":"tag-player","16":"tag-podcast","17":"tag-smoke","18":"tag-sport-industry","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-take","21":"tag-time","22":"tag-traditional-medium","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-voice"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115672417883131532","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}