NBA essayist takes a World Cup detour
Enclosed is my video preview of the 2022 World Cup as written and narrated for The Sporting News
Nostalgia Alert!
You guys know by now how much I cherish anything that can transport me back to the 1980s (or 1970s) ... if only in my twisted imagination.
This is one of those times.
In my youth, I relished every opportunity to get my hands on a copy of The Sporting News. I'm guessing anyone reading here who's around my age or older feels the same way. It was an incredible weekly sports tabloid and, when I started covering the NBA in February 1994, I was excited to learn that the annual Guide and Register filled with statistical goodness that reporters were handed at the start of every season — which is how we looked things up in those days before being able to just punch up Basketball Reference on the keyboard or ask someone like Justin Kubatko for help — were also TSN publications.
The old Sporting News masthead will thus always hold mythical status for me, which is just one of the reasons I'm so pleased to be able to announce the World Cup collaboration I've struck with the modern-day @SportingNews.
One of my favorite former ESPN teammates of all time — you know him on NBA Twitter as @MicahAdams13 — is a content maestro there and together we hatched a fun idea: Why not let me make a World Cup cameo or two for TSN in video essayist form?
The essay tweeted below, which I’ve also embedded higher in this story in YouTube form, previews the 2022 World Cup. It covers how this will be unlike any previous edition of the world’s foremost singular sporting event and why it already has so many fans of (and participants in) The Beautiful Game feeling so conflicted before it even starts … all because of where and when the tournament is being held.
Please check it out and, if you're a soccer fan away from your NBA obsession, good news: I'll share another one next week.
Enjoyed your writing/commentary through the years. In St Louis, as a long time premium league pass subscriber and huge fan of the games, it can be a little lonely. There is an active fanship around here and we are all deeply knowledgeable, so your newsletter is essential for my quiver. Best of luck to you!!!
Dirty FIFA have ruined this tournament, first missed WC since 1990.