ESPN will air a 20-hour documentary called Basketball: A Love Story. ESPN will present it in 10 two-hour parts. The Dan Klores directed series clocks in at 90 minutes longer than Ken Burns’s exhaustive 1994 Baseball. According to ESPN, Basketball: A Love Story will trace the history of the pro sport through 60 interconnected short stories.
Klores and his team conducted over 500 hours of interviews for the series. Those interviews include some of the biggest names in the history of the game like Mike Krzyzewski, Phil Jackson, and Charles Barkley. They include current players like Anthony Davis and Dirk Nowitzki. They include influential members of the basketball media like Bob Ryan, Stephen A. Smith, and Bill Simmons.
Wait…Bill Simmons?
That’s right. The Sports Guy is returning to ESPN (ever so briefly, mind you) to participate in Basketball: A Love Story. It is likely a one-off collaboration, as Simmons recently signed a new deal to remain at HBO, but given Simmons’s history with ESPN and the NBA, this makes sense.
Simmons was part of the network’s NBA Countdown crew until his departure in 2015. He also released the 2009 New York Times bestseller The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy. He is also responsible for the creation of 30 for 30, which revolutionized ESPN’s documentary presentation.
Basketball: A Love Story will debut in a unique way. Each individual short story will be made available on the ESPN app starting on September 18. The stories will be presented as a woven narrative beginning October 9. New chapters will debut each Tuesday.
