Sometimes in this business, one quote can stand out from an interview subject and it can potentially get taken out of context of what the entire statement was. For ESPN NBA insider Brian Windhorst, he understands what an NBA player can go through with having their words taken out of context.
Windhorst was a guest on the That’s What She Said with Sarah Spain podcast and he said having what he says aggregated by newspaper or blogs or websites has changed the way he goes about interviewing NBA players.
“It’s completely changed the way I deal with NBA players because I now am way, way, way more sensitive to what can happen to their words and totally guilty of it many times in my career of pulling one thing the player says out of six paragraphs and making it a headline. Probably will be guilty of it again, although I really try to avoid it.”
Windhorst understands that his readers might not want to read a long quote from a player, but from his own personal experiences, he has to be careful with judging what is important news.
“Sometimes, it’s warranted because some of that is news judgment. Sometimes, you listen to a player answer 11 questions and his answer on the 7th question could be really important. There is all these shades of grey in there. It’s happened to me so many times that I can now understand what someone like LeBron goes through. I admit I have aggregated LeBron. It wasn’t called that, but I have absolutely been guilty of that. I’m way more cognizant of trying to keep the context. If a player answers a question in 200 words, you can’t put 200 words there. The reader will be like I can’t take it. There’s a nuance there.”
As Windhorst told Spain, he knows that a site such as this one will probably use what he says from the interview and he knows that whenever he does an interview, there’s a chance it will happen again and it’s changed how he has looked at the industry as a whole.
“There’s a chance that something that I said during this podcast will get aggregated that will cause me a headache. I know when I’m asked to do interviews, I know that I’m like ‘Well, probably going to face a blowback for something I said here…It’s changed the way I’ve looked at the business.”
