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The phrase "What's up Beck?" is one of the most famous phrases in the basketball niche. But do we know who originated it first?
In a discussion Between Zach Lowe and Howard Beck, Zach Lowe said this:
"This is what I knew, that Howard Beck was the coolest reporter in the room. There was a meeting, I think it was at the Seraton in Midtown, when Kobe came. It was a big deal that Kobe came to the meeting. All the fans know where the meetings are at this point, and Kobe gets out of a limo. There's a crowd, he's wearing sunglasses, he's walking into the hotel, I'm with you, we're talking or we're walking and Kobe walks by us. Kobe just lowers the sunglasses and says, What's up, Beck? He wasn't paying attention to anybody else, and I was like, "This is the coolest guy in the room, do you remember that, Howard?"
After this beautiful story, I have to introduce you (if you do not know him yet) to The One And Only Howard Beck!
For those who do not know Mr. Beck:
He began his professional career in 1997 at the Los Angeles Daily News. There, he began writing as a beat writer for the Los Angeles Lakers until 2004. As you can imagine, Beck experienced firsthand the Shaq-Kobe era, the arrival of Phil Jackson and the breakup of the Lakers dynasty in 2004. For the next 9 years he worked for the New York Times, covering mainly the New York Knicks and briefly the Brooklyn Nets when they moved to Brooklyn.
In 2013, Howard Beck joined Bleacher Report, where he was a senior writer covering the NBA. He also has his own podcast from 2017 to 2020 titled: The Full 48 Podcast. In it, he has hosted very important personalities such as NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Los Angeles Lakers Governor Jeanie Buss and many others.
From December 2020 to February 2023, he will be working as an NBA senior writer for Sports Illustrated and co-hosting The Crossover podcast with Chris Mannix!
He currently contributes to GQSports and the Locked On Podcast Network as an NBA Playoffs & Offseason Insider!
As you understand, this is one of the most respected journalists covering the NBA in the world. It is my great pleasure and honor that Howard Beck has accepted my invitation to join a QNA, and at the same time I have the opportunity to share with you the thoughts of such an established figure in the NBA niche.
I think it is clear to everyone that I want to ask him countless questions. However, since it is rare to have the opportunity to talk to important figures in this field, I have tried to make my questions more general so that they are interesting to me and to the readership.
My first questions have to do with how he sees his work, but also with the time he worked as a beat writer for the Los Angeles Lakers!
1. As someone who writes for the world of the NBA, your job as a beat writer or senior editor at the biggest NBA sites in the world seems ideal. I am sure the reality is somewhat different. I would be happy if you could give me some pros and cons.
In many ways, it’s obviously a dream job. I get paid to report, write and talk about the NBA. I get paid to watch games, attend games and travel to games. I get paid to interview and write about athletes who are global icons, who are the best in the world at what they do. I try to never lose sight of that. And I know that every sports fan thinks it’s the coolest job on Earth. There’s some truth to that, of course. But it’s also a very demanding job, in a very volatile industry. I spent 16 years as a beat writer, covering the Lakers from 1997-2004, and the Knicks from 2004-13. That meant covering the entire 82-game season, home and road, plus playoffs. I routinely worked seven-day weeks and spent 100-plus nights on the road. I often worked on holidays. I wrote 250-350 stories a year, often on deadline. So yeah, it’s often a stressful job, too. Over the last 10 years, I’ve worked as a national writer – for Bleacher Report, then Sports Illustrated – which means I don’t have to cover games on deadline or travel nearly as much. It’s a much better work-life balance.
2.In one of your articles, you talked about the humanity that emanated from Kobe. You were the Lakers' beat writer from 1997 to 2004. You witnessed Kobe every day, from his early years in the league to his basketball coming of age with the three-peat with Shaq, perhaps like no other.
I wasn't planning to attend his final game."What?!" he bellowed, with a glare and a smile. "You can't be here at 17 and not be here for fuckin' 37, man!" He smacked me on the chest with the back of his hand. "Come on, man! Finish the journey, man!"
It seems like there was a close relationship between the two of you. At the end of the day, what will stay with you the most in your life in terms of your connection to Kobe?
When you’re around a player for seven years – nearly every practice, shootaround and game – you definitely form a certain kind of bond. I wouldn’t say we were “close.” We didn’t hang out. We weren’t friends, but we were friendly, if that makes sense. And there were a lot of ups and downs along the way. Kobe wasn’t always happy with what I wrote or said. That comes with the job, though. But there was definitely a mutual respect there, and we enjoyed catching up with each other over the years, after I left L.A. for New York in 2004. He always made time for me if I had questions I wanted to ask, away from the press conference and the crowds. What will stay with me the most? His intense focus and commitment. Kobe knew exactly what he wanted from his career, and he did everything in his power to get it. I’ve never met anyone more dedicated to their craft, in basketball or in any other field.
3.You are one of the few people who lived through the Lakers' three-peat and collapse in the Phil Kobe Shaq era. Much has been written about that difficult time. When you look back at yourself, what do you really remember about all that contradiction? From the joy of victory to the defeat of dissolution
I thought it was a shame that Kobe and Shaq couldn’t find a way to repair their relationship and keep playing together. They could have potentially added another championship or two. Shaq should have finished his career in L.A. But I also know it’s more complicated than that. There were salary-cap issues that made it tough to keep building around them. The supporting cast had gotten old. And Kobe needed room to keep growing and evolving and becoming a leader, which was hard to do as long as Shaq was there.
Now we come to the more general questions:
1.Recently, there has been a heated debate about changing the way the All-Star Game is conducted to make it more competitive, the way it used to be. People seem to be calling for such a change because of the low ratings this year. Do you support this theory or do you think that the All-Star Game is a casual thing to relax the players and that it's okay if they do not compete so much with each other
The NBA needs to seriously reexamine the All-Star Game. The players clearly don’t care who wins or loses, despite all the changes they’ve made in recent years. And if the players don’t care, I don’t see why fans would. Ratings will keep declining. I’m not sure what the solution is.
2.In an article of yours, a tribute to David Stern, you say:
If Stern was sometimes imperious and dictatorial, well, that's arguably what the NBA needed—a swaggering, sharp-tongued street fighter who could keep the wealthy owners in line, hold players to account and wrangle revenue from the network execs and shoe-company power brokers.
What do you think is the best approach to solving the problems currently facing the NBA? (Load management, in some cases Players Empowerment, or the odd scenes with Ja Morant)
The tougher approach of David Stern or the more "relaxed" approach of Adam Silver?
David and Adam are very different personalities, and you can see that in the way each of them has run the league. During his tenure, Stern was often viewed as too heavy-handed, too authoritarian, too much of a disciplinarian. Silver is now viewed (by some people around the league) as leaning too far in the other direction, that he’s been too accommodating not only to the players, but to owners and teams that have broken the rules, whether the issue is tampering, tanking or off-court matters. I don’t know if there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to handle all of the issues that face the NBA. And load management, in particular, is an extremely complex matter. You can’t force an injured player to play. And in many cases, it’s the team medical staff that’s dictating player rest. The NBA can’t tell teams how to manage their players.
3. You've been a voter for the NBA Awards for many years.
What is your thought process in finding the winner? Do advanced analytics play an important role in your decision?
In the new CBA, there will be a game limit so that players will be eligible for NBA awards and All-NBA team selections which will be positionless.
This new rule changes something for you as a voter and how teams will handle the new rule because all of these awards are a major factor in player contracts?
You take into account everything: Personal observations from watching games. Box score stats. Advanced stats. What other players, coaches and scouts say about a player. Team success matters, too, especially for MVP. There’s no perfect or scientific way to fill out a ballot, and there shouldn’t be. You’re just trying to distill all the information you have and make your best judgment. Regarding the new, 65-game requirement: I don’t think it was necessary. The voters already took games played/missed into account. You can see that in the results over the years. (It’s the reason that Malcolm Brogdon beat Joel Embiid for Rookie of the Year in 2017.) I understand what the NBA is doing, though. They want to give players more incentive to play more often, and it’s a good goal. I don’t know how much impact it will actually have, though.
4.With the dissolution of the Nets, the reasons for which are of course not only on court, it seems that the concept of superteams is slowly faltering. Last year's champions were Steph Curry and a bunch of really good players. After the Nets fiasco, do you think teams will rethink and follow the logic of Golden State or the Celtics, i.e. build something from scratch, or whenever a star is available, regardless of whether they have to split a roster, they will make the move?
Teams will always chase superstars. If you’re lucky enough to land one star, you try to get a second star. If you have two, you try to get a third. That’s just the nature of the NBA. But it’s really hard to do! The Superteam model has definitely waned in recent years, because it’s just not that easy to get multiple stars. We’ve had several recent champions with just one MVP-caliber player: the Raptors, with Kawhi Leonard; the Bucks, with Giannis; the Warriors, with Steph. I think that’s a good trend for the league, because it means more teams have a chance to win it all. There’s a more even dispersal of high-end talent. But teams will still try to get as many stars as they can. That’s never going away.
5.2 Months ago, there were reports that Michael Jordan is interested in selling the Charlotte Hornets. Granted, if he leaves the Hornets, he will leave as a failed owner. Do you think the mentality he had as a player, which was to always be a winner, led him to make some hasty moves that ended up being wrong? Or do you just think that it does not matter how good you are as a player on the floor, it has nothing to do with managing a franchise properly. In the end, was the purchase a good move for his legacy or will people always remember him as the best player of all time regardless?
Obviously, being the greatest player of all time doesn’t make a person qualified to run a team. We’ve seen many NBA superstars fail as coaches and GMs over the years. Jordan had the challenge of owning a team in a relatively small market. But he also made a lot of mistakes along the way – the GMs and coaches he hired, etc. Still, he’s Michael Jordan. No one is ever going to care about his record as Hornets owner (or his time running the Wizards). His legacy is secure.
6.In a few years Lebron Steph Lillard will retire. In my opinion, we have come full circle with players who had principles and intangibles beyond their basketball talent that moved the league forward. Personally, I do not see anything comparable in the next generation of stars to the old one that made the NBA a global giant. What's your opinion on that?
Someone always emerges. There was a mild panic when Michael Jordan retired back in the late 1990s, too. But Kobe and Shaq emerged as the new dynasty in the early 2000s. Allen Iverson inspired a whole new generation of fans and players. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade arrived in 2003. There’s always another wave of talent coming. Will they have the same charisma as LeBron and Steph? The same marketability? The popularity? Will they be must-watch TV? That’s harder to predict.
7.As a Dallas fan, I am a little upset about the Kyrie Irving trade. I was against it from the beginning and it seemed to me that the Mavs wanted to correct the mistake with Jalen Brunson, but in the end it looks like it has both significant competitive and lateral losses. For me, it is the best solution to Tank, and probably for the organization as well, given the steps it seems to be taking lately. What do you think about the situation in Dallas? Aside from the basketball talent, I am also starting to worry about Luka’s mindset. Would it make sense for you a Doncic’s Trade?
The Kyrie Irving trade was probably the most catastrophic in-season trade I can recall. It was supposed to put the Mavericks in contention to win the West. It did the opposite. From a practical standpoint, they were right to tank the final two games of the season, to keep their draft pick. But they are still in a very difficult position. Re-signing Kyrie Irving means committing a lot of money to an unreliable, volatile player. But they can’t really afford to let him walk away, either. They just don’t have enough talent around Luka. Will he demand a trade? I think it’s too soon to have that discussion. But this summer might be the most important offseason in Mavericks history. If they can rebuild the roster and become a contender next season, I think Luka will be fine. If they fail to upgrade the roster, next season could be the breaking point.
8.In 2019, you wrote an article titled "Saying Goodbye to the Trips of a Lifetime" in which you wished the Warriors would do it again.
On 2022, they did. This year, with the return of Wiggins, the possibilities of them winning the championship again have increased significantly. What do you think about the Warriors becoming champions again?
Also, do you think it will be the last dance for this team if they can’t lift the trophy?
This has certainly been a strange season for the Warriors. Their inconsistency and their terrible record on the road raised a lot of questions about both their present and their future. Yet here they are, still thriving in the playoffs, with a chance to make the Finals again and defend their title. Can they win this series against LeBron and the Lakers? Can they knock out the Nuggets or Suns in the conference finals? Can they beat whoever comes out of the East? Those are all legitimate questions. But Steph is still playing like an MVP, Klay is even better than he was a year ago, and Draymond is still an elite defender. I think they’ve shown that the dynasty still has some life left in it, and that they deserve a chance to stay together.
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