While there are plenty of problems with the internet when it comes to the coverage and discussion of professional sports, one of the best possible things to come from it is a variety of perspectives. All of you subscribing to The Athletic come with different perspectives that mostly share a common nerdy interest in sports. If you’re reading this or listening to basketball podcasts on The Athletic, then it’s more focused on professional basketball and the world that surrounds it. I don’t use the word “nerdy” in a pejorative manner, either.
We’re all nerds on here. Some of us nerd out over basketball or comic books or French literature or “90 Day Fiancé.” But we all nerd out over sports in some way if we’re subscribed to The Athletic. That’s a good thing. It’s a fun thing. However, it would be boring if all of us nerds agreed on everything when it comes to the NBA. A bunch of people sitting around, agreeing with each other becomes a mental orgy. Sure, we can have fun participating in that, but I’m not sure how much we grow and learn from it. Disagreement and discourse in sports consumption drives this business. But when it’s forced and scripted, it loses the spirit of what sports fandom and sports coverage are supposed to be.
That’s where “The Athletic NBA Show” comes into place.
A little over a year ago, I was part of The Athletic bringing in established basketball podcasts to help drive the audio discussion. I’m a part owner in Count The Dings, whose roots date all the way back to TrueHoop podcasts on ESPN from over half a decade ago. That product came mostly from Jade Hoye, a genius producer with a great vision looking to put people together for passionate discussions about the NBA. I won’t bore you with the full history of how that audio vision came to The Athletic, but there were a lot of iterations of this company and the voices on there.
Jade wasn’t just brought in to bring our podcast to The Athletic. He came here to install his vision of how the audio experience should be presented to the listener. It should be different. It should be diverse. It should be voices who challenge each other and voices who challenge the reality of what we think we’re seeing. And it shouldn’t be the same show every single day. Each day should have a different perspective, different voices, and a variety that keeps listeners engaged and passionate about what they’re hearing, even if they don’t agree with what they’re listening to all of the time.
When Jade was constructing the TrueHoop podcasts, each day had a different theme. You would get a black culture show on Mondays called Black Opinions Matter Monday, a perspective no other major network or platform was consistently giving in this sports media world. You would get all encompassing conversations on Tuesday and Wednesdays with different pundits and reporters dropping in. Thursday would nerd out in a more analytical conversation, and Friday was a mailbag that turned the listeners into the content creators for that show.
We’ve slowly been constructing something similar over the last year-plus at The Athletic. “Tampering” has been a show driven by Sam Amick and Joe Vardon, as they bring a reporter’s perspective into the NBA conversation. “The Back-To-Back Podcast” has had two very different shows each week with “BasketBuds” (hosted by me) giving you a casual, fun, and hopefully humorous with a rotating platform of voices from around this NBA coverage team and the basketball world in general. It also has given listeners “Nerder She Wrote” hosted by Dave DuFour with an analytic-driven conversation so many of our subscribers love to dissect.
We’ve also had Ethan Strauss with “House of Strauss” bringing you unique stories and perspectives that only Ethan can elicit (by the way, buy his book). He’s often brought Marcus Thompson (I have to tell you to buy his book, and this book too, or he’s going to yell at me for not being fair) into the fold, and they have arguably the most entertaining basketball and life discussions you can find on the internet. And then, of course, we have a secret weapon in Hall of Fame journalist David Aldridge giving us enthralling conversations about basketball and its history with Wosny Lambre and whichever great guests DA brings onto the pod. Well… I don’t know if a Hall of Fame journalist can be a secret weapon, but his “Hoops Adjacent” podcast is one of the best and fastest growing pods on the internet.
Instead of being all in various feeds moving forward, the voices and tones of each podcast will be brought into this one feed called “The Athletic NBA Show.” This is how the schedule will break down for our listeners and subscribers:
- Monday: BasketBuds with Zach Harper kicks off the week with the expertise and fan experience podcast discussing what’s going on in the NBA world. It will have Michael Lee, Kavitha Davidson, Dave DuFour, Wosny Lambre, Jay King, Kelsey Russo, Fred Katz, Jon Krawczynski, and a lot more coming through on rotation to have some fun with our topics.
- Tuesday: Tampering with Sam Amick. Sam discusses league-wide issues and gives insider perspective with John Hollinger, Shams Charania, Joe Vardon, and other guests from around the basketball world.
- Wednesday: Hoops Adjacent with David Aldridge and Wosny Lambre. They’re discussing cultural issues from a younger and… more seasoned perspective with a goal of trying to dissect what’s happening in the world of basketball and what surrounds it.
- Thursday: Point of Contention with Ethan Strauss and Marcus Thompson. This will be a debate show you simply can’t miss, much like any article Ethan and Marcus write on this site.
- Friday: Nerder She Wrote with Dave DuFour, Seth Partnow, and Mo Dakhil. The show where you’ll get the analytical perspective with stats, info, and sports science all in the mix.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the best group of NBA writers on the planet,” producer Jade Hoye told me about what “The Athletic NBA Show” coming together means for him personally. “This is gonna be a great chemistry experiment and it will deliver full spectrum fair and balanced coverage of the NBA. There is something for everybody that truly loves the NBA.”
By subscribing to this feed, you’ll know what you’re getting every day of the week, and it won’t be the same conversation each day. It will be a variety of perspectives because that’s what subscribers, readers, and listeners should expect out of NBA coverage. Variety, diversity, and different perspectives are what drive the sports discussion world. All five shows within each week will nerd out on this stuff in distinct ways. We want these discussions to invoke different feelings of both agreement and dissension. We want you to have entertainment in a multitude of ways, even if it means you think what we’re saying is incorrect.
Sports are supposed to be fun. Sometimes, we forget that or lose track of it. “The Athletic NBA Show” won’t forget that.
Subscribe to “The Athletic NBA Show” on Apple or Spotify or listen ad-free on The Athletic. Haven’t joined The Athletic yet? Get 40% off everything The Athletic has to offer with this special link: theathletic.com/nbashow
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