Welcome to the launch of Keeping It 100-Proof, a new series of Q&A’s with a variety of interesting people who have roles within the basketball world that we love so much. I’ll be aiming for a broad range of perspectives, thoughts, philosophies, and hoops wisdom, while avoiding hot takes or short shelf-life news stories. Whether it be a player, a media member, front office personnel, coach or maybe even someone from the sneaker or music industry with ties to the league, I can guarantee that these Q&A’s will have a mature, refined, and flavorful aftertaste that will age very well. Hope everyone enjoys and thank you in advance for sharing with others in your basketball circle!
We’re fortunate to launch this series with a very special guest: Ben Golliver, National NBA Writer for the Washington Post, and one of the best NBA writers and podcasters this fine Earth has to offer!
I’ve been a big supporter of Ben’s work for years now, following him all the way back to his Sports Illustrated days and would always listen to his Open Floor podcast with Andrew Sharp. For those that know his work, you know why he is a must-follow in any and all formats from articles to tweets, to podcasts, to his fantastic book, Bubbleball: Inside the NBA’s Fight to Save a Season. Ben’s combination of high basketball IQ, passion for the game, versatility across all media, and high motor have transformed him from a high-ceiling prospect to a grizzled veteran on the NBA scene. And on top of all that, he’s a great guy, with excellent taste in sneakers. So, without further ado, here’s our Q&A:
I had the opportunity to travel to Portland, Oregon for the first time a couple weeks ago for a work conference. But back in July when I confirmed the trip, the first thing that came to mind was finding a way to go see a Trailblazers game. Sure enough on the day tickets were released to the public. I saw the Blazers were playing their home opener against the Magic on the Friday I’d be in town. I immediately bought a $50 balcony seat but may or may not have moved up into vacant $500 seats after the 1st quarter. It was a great experience! Bottom line: I loved the Blazers fans, the in-stadium food/drink and especially the old school stadium vibes with no loud music or Jumbotron tomfoolery. I sat next to a Magic fan who was super into the game and making hilarious comments as Banchero and Wagner had their way with the younger Blazers lineup. Then, on the other side of me was a woman who happened to work for Nike, so I got to talk shop with her about the sneaker industry. All in all, it was a fantastic evening!
As someone who grew up in the area, you had the good fortune of absorbing all of this basketball awesomeness firsthand for years! Tell me a little bit about what it was like being in that area during the Drexler-Porter-Kersey-Williams-Duckworth years? Did you go to many games in person? What was the vibe around town as those teams piled up W’s and were championship contenders each year?
I’m glad Portland’s environment delivered even though the post-Damian Lillard Blazers are ebbing. “Rip City” was a great environment to grow up in, and basketball was the only game in town in the early 1990s. There was a small-town feel to those teams: The players would show up for meet-and-greets at the Fred Meyer grocery stores, they would appear on collectible Dairy Queen glasses and the local Franz bakery would include Blazers basketball cards in each loaf of bread. Back then, they played in the Memorial Coliseum, which still stands next door to the Moda Center. The Memorial Coliseum was older and smaller than the Moda Center, and the fans felt like they were right on top of the court.
My dad loves telling the story of how I broke down crying at the Memorial Coliseum when Clyde Drexler got a rare ejection, but my best memory of going to a Blazers game was seeing Michael Jordan and the 1996 Chicago Bulls at the then-new Rose Garden (later named the Moda Center). In the closing seconds, Jordan stripped Arvydas Sabonis and went the other way for an uncontested dunk to cap the win. Growing up in Beaverton, which is Nike’s international headquarters, I was fully brainwashed with MJ propaganda and cherished my chance to see a superhero in person.
The early-1990s Blazers were beloved by fans because they had such a perfect starting five, a great sixth man in Cliff “Uncle Cliffy” Robinson and other role players like Danny Ainge, Robert Pack and Danny Young. There was a ton of excitement around those teams because Drexler had blossomed into a legit superstar and Jordan foil, and he led deep playoff runs after a string of first-round exits in the 1980s. Of course, they couldn’t conquer the Detroit Pistons or Jordan’s Bulls once they made the Finals and they eventually had to be broken up. Fans loved that Duckworth and Kersey, in particular, embraced the local community and stuck around after their respective retirements, and their deaths led to major public memorials.
Because those early-1990s teams never got over the hump, they don’t quite get elevated to the status of the 1977 team, which was before my time. But Drexler remains strongly in the conversation as the “Greatest Blazer Ever,” and shortly after I started covering the Blazers in 2007 I put together an online campaign encouraging the franchise to retire Porter’s No. 30 jersey, which they later did.
I really enjoy your Instagram stories and am always impressed by your stellar nature photography. You obviously take advantage of nature to rebalance yourself in your free time. How has that practice helped you get through the tedious NBA schedule over the years? How do you go about ‘shoe-horning’ those quick trips into your already busy schedule?
Sportswriting can be an unhealthy profession with lots of travel, late nights, fast food and the like. When I first started traveling heavily for work around 2013 or 2014, I got more serious about establishing healthy routines for mental and physical balance.
Oregon is rightfully known as an outdoorsy state and I always enjoyed traveling, so I decided to try to make the most of my work travel by seeing new sites while getting in my miles walking and hiking. There’s something cool to see in every state – I’ve been to 49 (saving Alaska for last) – and I started with road trips through Utah and Arizona after Las Vegas Summer League. Seeing Utah’s red rocks and the orange hoodoos at Bryce Canyon got me hooked on the National Park system and led me to seek out other spots when I’d have an off day during the playoffs or while in a city reporting a story.
There’s no magic formula to creating time to get outdoors. You have to make it a priority, and for me it has become that. There’s nothing better than going to the middle of nowhere after spending months in loud arenas and cramped airplanes. I typically avoid staying in downtowns/city centers in favor of hotels that are in the suburbs or near the airport. I also always rent a car whenever possible rather than taking Uber. By doing those two things, I can more easily get to and from green spaces when I have a few hours of downtime.
Finally, I’ve been lucky because we’re in this era of parity in the NBA with new teams seemingly rising year after year. The Warriors, Nuggets and Kings each having their moments over the past five years has helped introduce me to some really beautiful places. People always ask this, so my five favorite U.S. National Parks are: 1. Glacier 2. Yosemite 3. Bryce Canyon 4. Yellowstone 5. Rocky Mountain.
I know you care a lot about USA basketball, just as I do. How do you feel about their current roster construction strategies? Is there an argument for going back to mostly (or all) younger players and letting them stay in the program? Is there a decent way to assemble a group of players that will commit for a longer stretches than just one tournament? Needless to say, it seems quite inefficient to rely on two separate teams which makes Grant Hill have to overhaul the roster with All-Star players each Olympics to ‘make up’ for lesser teams that may have good to mediocre showings in FIBA World Cups.
USA Basketball can’t expect longtime commitments from the very best players because the FIBA World Cup and Olympics are now in consecutive years, the playoffs run so late into the summer and, most importantly, the players are making so much money on and off the court that the international stage isn’t a compelling draw by itself. Those are fundamental challenges that I don’t think they can “solve,” and they just have to develop workarounds. The problem with trying to construct a dedicated “B team” of players who might be willing to make that type of sacrifice is that the international competition is so strong that prioritizing continuity – without A-list stars – will still get you beat.
Stepping away from basketball, patriotism has been in decline in the United States recently, particularly among young people. It would be great if the recent FIBA World Cup loss inspired guys to represent their country like it did for LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, but it has seemed like a tougher sell to the under-25 stars. The first step for any national team is national pride, and that has been a bigger issue for USA Basketball relative to many of its top international rivals.
My hope is that the younger generations of stars will look at Durant’s decision to play in event after event and follow that example. Hopefully, he’s not the last of a dying breed. The compromise will probably continue to be that USA Basketball puts out loaded Olympics teams and so-so World Cup teams, and that will likely require all of us to get accustomed to USA Basketball losing more regularly than it did during the glory days.
When you played basketball what position did you play and who would be your NBA comp style-wise? Did your game affect how you live your life and/or cover the league?
I never played at a meaningful level, but Jalen Rose was one of my favorite players when I was growing up and I tried to operate in his mold as a tall, lefty playmaker. A better comparison might be Brandon Roy, as I suffered a “career-ending” knee injury while playing rec ball in college.
That injury contributed to my interest in writing about basketball, as I needed to find a way to scratch the itch and couldn’t play pick-up anymore without risking further injuries. When I moved back to Portland after college, I got partial season tickets to the Blazers and then started blogging about the team once they won the right to the No. 1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft. My blog was called “Draft Kevin Durant,” and my goal was to convince the Blazers to select Durant over Greg Oden. My mission failed, but it helped me get my foot in the door covering the league with Blazersedge.com, a Blazers blog.
When I look back at my time playing as a teenager, I remember glorifying flashy players like Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury and trying to emulate them. Time has changed that. The longer I have covered the league, the more I’ve gravitated towards players who get the job done regardless of how pretty it looks. I put reliable players with touch and feel on a pedestal, and when I’m evaluating young players, I try to determine whether they make their teammates better. When I was 18, I didn’t care at all about Tim Duncan and John Stockton. Now, I put guys like that near the top of the all-time lists at their positions.
You are an extremely versatile NBA reporter, moving seamlessly from books to social media to newspapers to podcasts to TV – – which of those mediums do you get the most satisfaction from working on and why? And moving forward do you foresee specializing in any one of these to a greater level? Are there any other books in the works that we can look forward to?
To me, it’s always about writing. I’ve been lucky enough to write everything from one-sentence tweets to a 300-page book. My favorite things to write are profiles of rising stars and game stories from historic events like a Game 7 of the NBA Finals or LeBron James setting the all-time scoring record. I grew up reading practically every sports book in the Beaverton City library and The Oregonian’s sports page every day, and I draw a lot of inspiration from the idea that kids like me who care about the sport’s history will be able to look back in 30 years and read my book about the bubble and my stories from title-clinching games.
I don’t have any plans for a second book yet but hopefully the right idea will land in my lap. I didn’t have any plans for a book about the bubble – who planned for the pandemic? – but I’m proud of how that turned out.
At the same time, I’ve podcasted seriously now for seven or eight years, and it never gets old. I love being able to paint pictures of what a game felt like or what a stadium looked like when I travel, especially for big events like the Finals, All-Star Weekend and the Olympics. I plan to keep podcasting for as long as people are interested!
Keep a pulse on Ben’s coverage and projects:
Bubbleball: Inside the NBA’s Fight to Save a Season at Amazon
Greatest of All Talk (GOAT) podcast and @goatnbapod on Twitter
Twitter: @BenGolliver
Instagram: @Ben.Golliver
Bonus reading!
Ben’s post, “Brandon Roy Could Cook” from Blazers Edge on December 15th, 2011