On Monday, the NBA announced that players and the media will have a role in deciding who starts in the All-Star Game, joining the fans. Reaction was mixed.
Joshua Dahl-USA TODAY Sports
Perhaps the most interesting reaction was from a portion of the media that wants nothing to do with this. Here’s the widely respected and very good Scott Cacciola of The New York Times with a representative take.
In Cacciola’s case, this is actually an institutional position: The Times prohibits its beat writers from voting on awards bestowed by the media, such as the NBA MVP and All-NBA teams. Cacciola indicates that even if that were not the case, he wouldn’t vote for All-Star or any of it regardless because journalists “should have no direct involvement in the beat they cover.”
The act of committing journalism is, however, direct involvement in the beat they cover.
NBA beat writers and their editors decide what stories to pursue and what players to write about. Writers decide who to interview, what questions to ask, how to frame a narrative. Writers decide how to promote their work on social media. Their editors decide how to frame the story in headlines and, for the dwindling print writers, where to put it on the sports page. All of this — the tweets, the stories, the quotes, the narratives — become a fabric of the NBA instantly and are left inextricable from the product itself.
This is direct involvement in the beat they cover. NBA beat writers are not wisps that flutter in and out of locker rooms with no impact made by their presence or activity.
Consider last week’s contretemps over the DeMarcus Cousins confrontation with a Sacramento Bee columnist. Beat writers were in that locker room. None of them wrote a word about the incident — one that surely reflects poorly on Cousins and could definitely impact his pocketbook, either via a league fine or his next contract. The incident didn’t see the light of day until the Bee itself took the extraordinary act of producing a video about it.
In their silence, the beat writers in that locker room had direct involvement in the beat they cover. They made decisions not to write about an issue that will probably cost Cousins some money. The Bee’s executive editor made a decision to commission a video and write an op-ed that will probably cost Cousins some money. This is definition of direct involvement in a beat.
But that’s an extraordinary example. Journalists affect the league much more subtly every day.
If the Knicks win, leading with Carmelo Anthony’s scoring numbers has a different impact than leading with Kristaps Porzingis’ shooting. If the Knicks lose, focusing on Derrick Rose’s defensive deficiencies has a different impact than looking at Anthony’s lack of efficiency. (The fact that I just put “Derrick Rose” next to “defensive deficiencies” apropos of nothing has an impact in some recess of some reader’s brain.)
These decisions — all innocent — all shape the narrative around the players. These narratives all impact award votes, contracts, fan sentiment. And they are impossible to avoid every single day.
Instead of pretending to be unbiased fact organizers, journalists should acknowledge their huge role in shaping opinions about players. This doesn’t mean beat writers should be voting on NBA awards or All-Star nods — that’s a particularly awkward dance, as the Anthony Davis debacle showed last spring. But there needs to be more acknowledgment from the media in general (beyond the NBA, too) that their editorial decisions at every level shape sentiments, narratives, and decisions.
Let us also note how minor an impact a single media vote for an All-Star starter will have. Assuming the standard 120 media voters, a single All-Star starter vote from a journalist is 0.2 percent of the total impact on the fan-media-player vote. Where the value comes is in that players and media are unlikely to work in concert to elect a joke candidate to the All-Star team, and in fact, by being more interested in making good votes will act to deny All-Star spots to undeserving players. This is where I remind you that Zaza Pachulia was just 14,000 votes behind Kawhi Leonard for an All-Star nod last year.
The stakes here in the NBA realm are relatively small compared to other beats. But the core truths of the profession’s place in the modern world extend to basketball and beyond.
