Athlon’s NBA Preview takes me back to my dad, my childhood and where it all began

My dad died almost 30 years ago, long before he got to see where this whole basketball-writing thing would take me.

But every year around this time, I think about him. Especially when I get my hands on the latest Athlon Sports NBA Preview.

Marc Stein — Hall of Fame basketball writer, longtime friend of hoopheads everywhere and someone I’ve been reading for roughly 30 years myself — wrote about that feeling Tuesday in The Stein Line newsletter. He talked about spotting Athlon’s new NBA annual at an airport newsstand and the little jolt that comes with seeing something you wrote sitting there on an actual rack.

I know exactly what he means. This is my third year, I believe, writing for Athlon’s NBA preview. This time, I wrote one of the magazine’s main features, “10 Storylines to Watch” entering the season. I also wrote the Cavaliers, Nuggets, Pistons and Raptors previews.

Then there are the scouts’ takes. Every NBA team page has one, and I compiled all 30 of them by interviewing scouts around the league. It was a lot of work.

It was also a job. Athlon hired me, I turned in the copy, they sent me a paycheck. That’s generally how I look at these things while I’m doing them. Then the magazine comes out. That’s when it becomes something else.

When I was a kid growing up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, my dad used to bring home the Street & Smith’s NBA and college basketball annuals. This was before the internet, obviously. If you wanted to know about every team, every player, every conference, every roster, those magazines were gold.

My dad and I would practically race to read them. One would get the magazine first, the other would be waiting for his turn. I loved basketball already, but those annuals helped turn it into an obsession.

Somewhere along the way, they also planted the idea that maybe I could write about this stuff someday.

There was a little shop in Cuyahoga Falls where you could find those magazines. Funny enough, it was right down the road from where I live now.

A lot happened in between. I started my writing career in Wyoming, then went to Idaho and West Virginia. Eventually I came home and covered the Cavs. I worked at Fox Sports Ohio. During LeBron James’ second run in Cleveland, I co-hosted a television show with Jeff Phelps.

I’ve interviewed Larry Bird, Jerry West, Artis Gilmore and hundreds of NBA players. I’ve sat on television sets with Austin Carr, Campy Russell and Booby Gibson. Mark Price, one of the players I watched growing up, now invites me onto his podcast.

Thursday night, the Cavs play a preseason home game, and I’ll begin my 20th year covering the NBA. You don’t really think about any of that when you’re living it. Mostly you think about the next story. The next deadline. The next game. The next phone call. The next paycheck.

Then you pick up a magazine. You flip through the pages and see your name. And suddenly, you’re 15 again.

If somebody had told that kid reading Street & Smith’s with his dad that someday somebody would actually pay him to write for a national NBA preview magazine, I’m not sure he would have believed it.

Forget television. Forget credentials. Forget interviewing Hall of Famers. That alone would have sounded pretty incredible.

Print has been fighting for its life for years now. We all know that. I run a website. I publish online every day. That’s the business.

But there is still something about a magazine you can hold. Something about seeing it on a rack. Something about turning the pages. Athlon gives me that feeling every year.

I’m old enough now to qualify for discounts at places that I’m not emotionally prepared to admit I qualify for discounts at. I believe McDonald’s might even throw me a cheap coffee. Michael’s Arts and Crafts apparently considers me one of its elders.

Yet somehow I’m still here, covering the NBA. Still writing about basketball. Still getting paid to do the exact thing I wanted to do when I was 15.

My dad never got to see most of it. But I know this much: Nobody would think that was cooler than him.

And every time the Athlon NBA Preview comes out, I get to remember why I started doing this in the first place.

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