“And the final horn sounds! The Lakers have won the NBA championship! The Lakers have won the NBA championship! Bedlam is ensuing on the court. Let’s go down to our latest Maxim-model-turned-Hannah-Storm for some player comments.”
Typical Question #1: “So Kobe, how important was that final shot you hit to win the game for the Lakers?”
What he should say: “Well, what the hell do you think? If I wouldn’t have made it, we wouldn’t have won the game. Does that sound important to you?”
Typical Answer: “Oh, no question about it, these are just two great teams out here today, and we both have a lot of respect for each other. I was just going out there, trying to play hard, they were trying to play hard, our coach was trying to get us to play hard, my momma wanted me to play hard, but then we just went out there and, you know, took care of business.”
Sheesh. It makes you long for the days when all we needed to know was that Magic Johnson had just won the NBA championship and he was going to Disneyworld. or was it Disneyland back then? Ah, those were simpler days… and there was a heck of a lot less media involved, too.
Today every cable company with a pulse has its own damn sports show, period. Back home, NBA.com TV is channel 600 on the “dial.” Even AOL is launching its own all-sports programming channel. How long before Schnucks Sports is carrying all of the Cards’ away games?
Typical Question #2: “Talk about what was going through your head when you went on the 12-0 run late in the game.”
What he should say: “We were taking the same shots we were before; they just happened to be going in then.”
Typical Answer: “Oh, no question about it, these are just two great teams out here today, and we both have a lot of respect for each other. I was just going out there, trying to play hard, they were trying to play hard, our coach was trying to get us to play hard, my momma wanted me to play hard, but then we just went out there and, you know, took care of business.”
Are professional athletes today even paying attention to the questions that they are being asked?
The post game interviews nowadays are so bad that they’re hardly worth watching. And the worst part is – you don’t even know who is really to blame. The interviewers are just laying out the same vague questions that they know will get the same canned responses these star athletes have been giving since their junior high days.
Here’s another one of my favorites.
Typical Question #3 (After Game 1 of a playoff series): “How important was it for you guys to come out and steal this game on the road?”
Typical Answer: “You know, we were just trying to come out here and take one of two from these guys.”
Typical Question #4 (After Game 2 of a playoff series): “How important was it for you guys to come out and win this second game on the road?”
Typical Answer: “You know, we were just trying to come out here and take both of these game so we could put their backs up against the wall, but, you know, we’re not counting them out either.”
Take a hint! They are just trying to win every game! No matter how cleverly you dissect the situation, a team never goes into a game trying to lose it. It’s no surprise that the strategy for game 1 is to win game 1. For game 2, it’s to win game 2, and for game 3. you guessed it.
It doesn’t take a Zen master to figure this stuff out.
Or does it?
Whether it’s grabbing players that are only wearing towels just as they step out of the shower or snatching a player in his moment of glory for that special interview as teammates and opponents attempt to congratulate him, I can’t stand it. To me, it’s about as uncomfortable as watching those blind date television shows.
Then there’s the famous “uncomfortable question posed right on national television” (see ‘King of Uncomfortability’ Jim Gray and his Pete Rose interview at the 1999 All-Century team ceremony). The media needs to take a step back and let the game be for the sake of the game.
There’s plenty of time at post-game press conferences to ask the same old questions over and over again and get the same old answers over and over again. Neither party is really listening to the other. Every reporter is afraid of giving away his angle, and every player would rather be attending to his “bidness.”
Let’s get the all-access microphones out of the players’ jock straps and not ruin truly great moments with our own selfish desires for ratings, readership and recognition.