The NBA media space needs Zach Lowe more than he needs it

Posted by Admin September 27, 2024 NBA

Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Mike Sykes

Happy Friday, folks! Welcome back to Layup Lines. Thanks so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve had an excellent week and have an even better weekend planned ahead of you.

The biggest story in the NBA this week seemed to be one that had nothing to do with the actual league and everything to do with the folks that cover it.

ESPN’s do-it-all NBA analyst, Zach Lowe, was laid off by the company this week, according to reports. The reason why is reportedly less about anything that Lowe did or didn’t do and more about cost-cutting measures.

The move isn’t shocking given the current landscape of things at ESPN. Lowe isn’t the only one in recent weeks to have been let go by the company. ESPN has done quite a bit of purging in 2024, including names like Robert Griffin III and Sam Ponder.

I don’t mean to brush any of those names aside. Losing your job is no small deal for anyone no matter what your net worth is. But, moving forward, I’m not sure there’s a more impactful name on that list than Lowe’s right now considering his role at the company and, generally, what he means to coverage of the NBA in particular.

To explain this, we’ve got to take a step back. Around this time last season, Adam Silver bemoaned the current state of the league’s coverage overall. It’s hard to blame him for it, even as someone who works in this space. There’s lots of good work out there. However, it seems always to be overshadowed by podcasts paired with incendiary takes and the stan-iest of stan accounts on Twitter only looking to rage bait folks into engagement.

That’s another conversation for another day, though. For the purposes of this one, you should know that one of Silver’s long-term goals with the NBA and its (then) impending television deal was to create an ecosystem where — not just smart — but constructive conversations and content could flourish.

Well, nobody was better at smart, constructive NBA content than Lowe.

He quite literally changed the way people write about basketball. From his time at Sports Illustrated to Grantland and, eventually, his work over the last decade for ESPN’s flagship, he’s always pushed the medium forward and constructively covered the league he loved.

He did that in such a groundbreaking way. Before everyone had a podcast, Lowe had the NBA podcast. The Lowe Post was the definitive listen for any NBA fan out there.

His angles were unique. He explained difficult concepts that the layman would never understand otherwise. Many of us know so much about Tom Thibodeau’s defensive concepts and how demanding they are because Lowe led us to that conclusion.

It wasn’t just those concepts, though. He tackled player intricacies, like what made Blake Griffin more than just a dunker in 2014 or why Tobias Harris was actually good back in 2015 despite how bad the Magic were. He taught you how to evaluate players regardless of circumstance. He did it through good, old-fashioned journalism and film study. It made fans smarter and inspired others in the space to up their game.

Getting back to the conversation at hand and the conundrum Silver faces with the NBA’s coverage moving forward, that’s the sort of innovation the space needs today. You’d like to think that Lowe would be involved in that in some way — that ESPN, as an NBA broadcast partner, would want him doing more, not nothing.

If you — like me — thought that, I guess you’d be wrong.

Maybe there’s an argument to be made that Lowe’s time was up. He’s been working at ESPN for over a decade now, including his time at Grantland. There’s a chance that the formula he concocted is outdated now.

But, at the same time, I can’t think of anybody better to figure out a new way forward at a company with a bigger platform. Surely, there has to be some way for him to continue contributing to the space if he so chooses. I’m not sure of the answers here. I’m not even sure what Lowe, himself, thinks of all this.

In the end, I’m sure he’ll land somewhere doing something he loves around basketball, whether that’s continuing his work in the media space or maybe jumping over to the team side and finding a niche there.

However, it all plays out, his presence at ESPN will be greatly missed.

Jaylen Brown’s sneaker takeover

Jaylen Brown has been a signature sneaker free agent for quite some time now. He’s reportedly had deals on the table with other brands but has passed up on them repeatedly.

Now, we know why.

Brown launched his own brand called 741 and is wearing his own signature shoe this NBA season. It’s called the Rover. It’s one of the best-looking sneakers you’ll see this season.

The knit shroud on the upper is what sets this thing off. It’s almost like the shoe is bejeweled.

Brown talked about his decision to release his sneaker here.

“My whole ideology is being able to create other options. There’s a lot of guys who feel like they want to do other things, and they’re afraid, or don’t know how. As a Player’s Association rep, I listen to them. … The solution, for me, was just to start, use my platform to create those. And spark others and show them exactly you can do it.”

That’s a word from Brown. This is a gamble, to be sure. It takes a lot to launch and distribute a sneaker. On top of that, his health is involved, too. So, even with his money and resources, this is not an easy move.

Salute, JB.