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Basketball Media I Consume

Basketball Media I Consume
As you'll see, it's far too much media. (Image Credit: LitHub)

As we get into a new NBA season (tonight!), I thought perhaps it would be helpful to share with you the basketball media I consume.

I don't really watch or listen to live talk shows. I only have a few goals in life, but one of them is to minimize the yelling in my life. Listening to people scream at each other on talk shows is not my idea of a good time. Instead, I try to read as much as I can, and listen to podcasts. Podcasts are also easier because I listen to them on my time, I don't have to tune in at a specific time.

I've broken these down by how often I consume them, from most to least.

Extremely Frequently

The websites here I just leave open as a tabs on my phone for whenever I have time to read throughout the day. The podcast feeds I generally check once a day, even though I know they're not daily podcasts. And the email newsletter obviously comes into my email.

  • Tom Ziller's Good Morning It's Basketball (GMIB) Newsletter: Reading this newsletter is one of my favorite parts of each day. A traditional newsletter, it lands in my inbox every weekday during the season, and occasionally on the weekends. I can't recommend it highly enough.
  • Boston Globe Sports: Gary Washburn and Chad Finn are must reads, and Adam Himmelsbach is good too.
  • Mass Live Sports: Brian Robb is my favorite Celtics beat reporter, and Souichi Terada is very good as well.
  • Hoop Rumors: They do the best job of aggregating news.
  • The Bill Simmons Podcast: Always my first listen. I've been reading to and listening to Bill for as long as I can remember.
  • The Lowe Post: Generally, I don't get to read Zach Lowe, because I don't subscribe to ESPN+, but his podcast is always great.
  • The Ringer: Michael Pina, Seerat Sohi, Howard Beck, Zach Kram, Mirin Fader, and Rob Mahoney are among my favorites here, but really everyone on their NBA staff does a great job.
  • Basketball-Reference: More or less there every single day of the year.

Frequently

Do I read every post or listen to every podcast? No, but I probably would if I had the time.

  • NBA.com: Half the time I go here for news, and half the time for John Schumann's articles. His weekly power rankings are essential reading.
  • SI's The Playmaker Newsletter with Chris Herring: Chris is one of my favorite analysts/reporters, and this weekly newsletter is always a good catchup of what he's been writing. There is organic content in it too.
  • Winning Plays: Brian Robb's Celtics podcast. The ones with Ryan Bernardoni and Chris Forsberg are my favorites. It actually looks like this podcast is ending, which sucks, but the show I linked teases a new venture. Will have to check for that.
  • The Ringer NBA Show: There are a lot of shows in this feed, and I don't listen to all of them, but I listen to almost all of "Group Chat" with Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre, as well as "Real Ones" with Logan Murdock and Raja Bell.
  • Boston.com: Khari Thompson and Tom Westerholm do good stuff.
  • ESPN.com: Mostly just for Woj bombs, but guys like Tim Bontemps do good stuff too. His MVP polls are mandatory reading.

Casually

These are websites/podcasts I enjoy, but I usually don't get to.

  • Locked On Celtics Podcast: John Karalis is the iron man of Celtics coverage, he is always up with articles, podcasts, and videos.
  • Celtics Talk Podcast: Chris Forsberg works for the team's broadcast partner, but he is somehow able to maintain his objectivity with his coverage.
  • The Athletic NBA Show: Like with The Ringer's NBA Show, this feed has a lot of different podcasts. The only one I listen to is "Hoops Adjacent" with Marcus Thompson and David Aldridge. Aldridge is like the wise uncle who has seen it all but is still excited to see more. I don't actually listen to this one as often as I should because for some reason the feed doesn't label their podcasts properly in the title, and sometimes I'm too lazy to check which one is which.
  • RealGM and Spotrac: Good data.
  • ESPN Trade Machine: I don't go to it very often, but when I do, I can lose a solid half hour just making up fake trades.

Just Subscribed/Rediscovering

As I was constructing this piece, I thought about all the places I used to visit or follow on Twitter, and am starting to round out what I read with these.

  • CelticsBlog.com: Jeff Clark and especially Andrew Doxy are people whose opinions I respect a great deal.
  • Heavy.com: Just for Steve Bulpett, who is one of the grandfathers of Celtics coverage, he was the Boston Herald's Celtics beat writer for the longest time. I really don't know what Heavy.com is other than the place that publishes Bulpett.
  • Last Night in Basketball: Jared Dubin's newsletter. This one is brand new for me, but looks very interesting.
  • Andscape: Marc Spears, Justin Tinsley, and Clinton Yates in particular.
  • Marc Stein Newsletter: It's a lot of Dallas, but Stein has long been a great national reporter. I did get spammed a whole bunch of times after I did a free subscription though, which was annoying.
  • Basketball Feelings: Katie Heindl's newsletter is often esoteric and often time consuming to parse, but I like it anyway.
  • Yahoo Sports!: I like Dan Devine and Jake Fischer, but I don't go here much because they don't do a great job of breaking out which articles are there. The website doesn't even have a masthead as far as I can tell. Sad.
  • Other Writers I Like Who Sometimes Write about Basketball: Jonathan Abrams, Sopan Deb, Shakeia Taylor, Frankie de la Cretaz, Bradford William Davis

Who do you read or listen to? Let me know if there's someone/something I should add to my list!

Published by:

Paul Swydan