The Day After: Bobcats Local Media Reaction to the Draft

Whew.  What a night last night was.  Between twitter, ESPN, NBA-TV, BobcatsPlanet.com’s chat, numerous IM and text conversations, I was worn out by midnight when the final picks were rolling in, guys Fran Fraschilla was looking at the camera and shrugging about, Africans and guys he was saying “well, they’re comfortable overseas” and then the un-drafted guys and the big names and all that.  I was trying to gauge reaction around the league, within people I know involved with the Bobcats and then of course fans.  I was at it well into the night, started writing a post around 3:30 AM and just fell asleep with my hands on the keyboard.  After erasing the seemingly endless list of “l” and “;”s that appeared, I realized I was a little punchy and none of what I wrote made sense.  Then this morning all hell broke loose in “real life” so I haven’t had chance to take a look at things again until now.

Yesterday, between Nic and I we posted 8 times.  We had 3 times as many hits yesterday as we did on our previous high mark.  The entire Fansided network was buzzing, especially the NBA side, having overall one of our biggest days ever as a group.  So on a personal note, thanks.  Thanks to Nic, all the guys at BobcatsPlanet.com and other Bobcats blogs around the web.  Thanks for clicking the link that brought you here.  Thanks for reading, thanks for the comments, thanks for the retweets and the mentions.  Thanks to Adam and Zach Best at Fansided, Beckley Mason who runs the NBA group and thanks to everybody for making it so exciting.  I really appreciate the collective feeling and that I’m not typing words that disappear off into the ether that is NBA blog noise.

I’d also like to thank guys like Darin Gantt, who used to think he covered the Panthers but has been taken off that beat for the Winthrop and that area in South Carolina’s high school sports.  I also want to thank my buddy Shrader who is absolutely hating this draft.  Guys like that remind me of my job and that’s to research and analyze the Bobcats and then try to explain things like this to people like them who don’t see the good, or don’t see it as as much of a positive as I do.  It makes me crazy to get the reactions they they spout so quickly after draft picks they don’t understand or agree with.

Guys like Tom Sorensen also give me a little ammunition on days like today.  When I’m seeing it as a tide change, a full on reversal of the team’s fortunes, he tries to tie it to the Panthers, somehow.  What a stretch?  I’m feeling a little full of myself and a little puffed up today but here goes.  Gantt, Sorensen and all the rest of the sports media in this town all have agendas.  They’re all trying to be something or say something on a grand scale every time they write, tweet or speak into the nearest microphone.

I am simply a fan.  I’ve never met any of these guys, never spoken with them or emailed them but you can tell they all are big-timing all of the sports market of this city.  They all have this “been there, done that, got the t-shirt, wore it ironically 15 years later” attitude.  Like they’re all on Bill Simmons level and they just haven’t been discovered yet.  Even the positive toned pieces like Sorensen’s this morning piss me off to no end.  I’ll tell you the mental picture I get: Grandpa gets the paper, opens it up to the sports section, reads Sorensen, Bonnell, Fowler and the rest like they’re gospel, puts it aside and that’s his feeling on the Bobcats.  That is a dis-service.

Every fan that I know, die-hards to guys who just keep up, take everything they say at the Observer with a grain of salt, and then look elsewhere for the real story.  It is absolutely asinine to me that they are the only game in town, outside some of the smaller papers, the AP and the blogs (none of which, as far as I know have access by the way), and then the TV and Radio guys somewhat fall in line right behind them.  It is not a jealousy thing, although I’d love the access they are given.  It’s not a disrespect thing, to make a living in this business for as long as any of them have is a feat unto itself.  My issue is that they all have this know-it-all attitude and the Observer has more columnists than reporters.

I get my info from a few legit sources, from Mike Cranston of the Associated Press and various blogs and twitter feeds from all around the web.  I think it’s odd as well as deeply telling that the blogosphere that covers the NBA is somewhat insulated and isolated from major media.  ESPN doesn’t do well with their coverage of the NBA.  For their army of bloggers, forgetting the TrueHoop Network for a moment, the “talent” they put on tv and their analysts and reporters for web, tv and radio, they do a shit job.  Seriously, the jokes about their coverage last night were funny to a point unless you started to think about the uninitiated that don’t follow the right people on twitter, that may not have their laptop or phone burning through battery quicker than they can recharge and that mental picture of grandpa and the morning paper?  That’s what I assume the general public is on NBA, if they only look to ESPN and their local tv.

It’s rich, interesting and deep industry of truly creative people and if you look to the Darin Gantt’s, Scott Fowler’s and Tom Sorensen’s of the world for your information and analysis, you’re really missing out.  I’d invite you to look through the people I follow @therobertogato and @bigcatbobcat, you will find some really interesting people and insights you don’t get from the local paper and the world-wide leader.