Ramona Shelburne is a versatile NBA reporter, writer, and on-air talent at ESPN. Here are five things she says she still has left to accomplish.
1 and 2. Maintain balance with health and rest.
We’ve all, over the last 1.5 years, learned how to do our jobs remotely. Some of us adapted better than others. I tended to really like being home and spending all this time with my son. I feel like I took care of myself much better than I normally do in my grind — flying, traveling, getting home late from games, getting up early for shows. It’s tough on your body and it’s tough on your life.
I felt like, during my time in quarantine, I was much better at eating, resting, and taking care of myself. I lost a bunch of weight, I ate healthy. I worked out every day. I still feel like I have enough connections and relationships that I can do my job well without always being on that intense grind on the road. I just want to keep that balance, as we return to games and seeing people. I realize I’m better as a person, a mom, a writer, a reporter — all those things — when I have that balance.
An example: the other night, I got home from the Lakers game around midnight, and I hadn’t done my daily swim. I was like I just gotta do it, and got in the pool for a half-hour. I just want to keep that up. We are all so much better when we’re healthier and balanced, and this job can kind of turn you off the path of health and wellness.
I tend to be a night owl. I do a lot of my writing at night. While it’s also the time when my son is sleeping, I’ve always been a night owl. Before my kid, I used to stay up all night and write. My editors laughed at the times I sent stories to them. I’d sent it at 4 am on the west coast, which meant they’d wake up to it at 7 am ET.
But now, it’s not super healthy to do that, because I have to get up in the morning, be a mom, and go do my job whether it’s in the radio or TV studio or wherever I’m going that day. I’ve been trying to scale back on my all-nighters; before my kid, I was even worse — I used to hole myself up in a hotel room, intensely focused for 2-3 days, and put together 6,000-word stories. I couldn’t do it at home. I’d get distracted. That was my way of literally locking myself in a room and doing it.
That’s something you can pull off in your 20s and 30s. When you’re in your 40s, and you’ve got a kid to take care of, it’s a little harder. I’m trying to be more balanced, and have more focus on my health and sleep. I’ve found out that you can do that and still do good work. I used to think as a writer that you needed to suffer and face mental and physical exhaustion to pull out greatness. I’ve had to be more strategic and focused. I actually don’t need all that pain.
3. Make stories that cut through and matter.
It’s harder to find these stories when we aren’t seeing each other in person, but they’re still out there. I just did one a week or two ago with Ben Simmons, where I told the much bigger, deeper story as opposed to the daily news. It’s valuable to take a longer, deeper look at a story. Nowadays, people read a headline and three paragraphs on their phones. I just believe that people also have an appetite for deeper dives like that.
I’m not saying everything needs to be 10,000 words, but if you do the work and you tell a good story and really get to the heart and humanity of the matter — people find them. They’re hard to do, especially without in-person access, but I want to keep challenging myself to do those. Those are where I can separate myself.
4. I’d really like to do another longform 30 for 30 podcast.
I think podcasts are a great medium for this day and age. People just love long-form narrative podcasts — almost more than long-form narrative written stories now. I love to read good writing, but I am always driving around and I listen to podcasts when I swim. If I find a good one, I can swim for an hour!
I did The Sterling Affairs. I’d really like to do another one of those. It’s hard to get off the ground, because I do have a day job, but I have a bunch of ideas that I want to take from stories that I’ve done that I think can be longer and better and lend themselves to the podcast format. I want to do another one of them, and I think I will relatively soon.
It’s a lot of work to do them. I had a great producer — Julia Lowrie Henderson, who is leaving ESPN for a great new opportunity, and I want to make sure she gets a shoutout. She was just incredible to work with. I can’t imagine a better podcast producer in the business. Creatively, I don’t know if I’ve sparked with anybody as much as with her when we worked on The Sterling Affairs.
5. Be optimistic.
It’s been a rough couple of years. I’ve had a lot of joy, but it’s been rough for a lot of people, whether they lost their jobs, got Covid, lost loved ones. People were separated from friends and family and got lonely — I just thought that my theme of 2021 and 2022 is to be optimistic. This is gonna pass. It’s gonna get better. It’s gonna get back to some version of normal — it might not be the version we left behind, but hopefully, it’ll be better.
Whenever we get kind of bummed about what’s going on in our lives or work, I think we just need to be optimistic again. It’s been pretty heavy. But, sports have been great! The baseball playoffs, every night they’ve been awesome. We’ve been having amazing nights of sports.
We got away from a lot of the fun stuff we do in our jobs — actually going to games, experiencing live sports, being around people and not just talking about the pandemic all the time. It’s still going on — it’s heavy — so I just want to be optimistic about getting back to a version of our lives that is happy and we can enjoy each other’s company again. I don’t know when, but I’m optimistic that it’s coming.
Ryan Glasspiegel is a contributor for BSM. He has previously worked for Outkick, The Big Lead, and Sports Illustrated. In addition to covering the sports media business, Ryan creates promotional products for brands and companies including t-shirts, hats, hoodies, and various types of swag. For business inquiries email him at Glasspiegel.Ryan@gmail.com or find him on Twitter @sportsrapport.
