In addition to her work in the Turner Sports studios on Tuesday night, Candace Parker has had the opportunity to be a color commentator during games this season. Parker enjoys both being at games and in the studio and there is one skill she is still trying to master.
Parker was a guest on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch Podcast this week and she said that she is still trying to figure out in this age of analytics, how to turn numbers into a storyline for the audience:
“I think the big part I’m learning still is how do you turn numbers into a storyline. How do you connect the numbers to what you want to talk about? There’s one thing to say ‘hey, he’s shooting 77% from the free throw line’ but there’s another thing to say ‘he worked with a shooting coach this past summer. Because of that shooting coach, he was able to raise his free throw percentage by 3%’. There’s a different way and level you can do that. I look at the numbers and try to connect that to a storyline that I find online or what I hear on a podcast or different topics of conversation.”
Parker mentioned that when she does get the chance to talk to the coaches at a production meeting, she tries to see what those numbers mean from a big-picture perspective.
“Sometimes, 90% of the notes that I have you don’t use and then when it comes to talking to the coaches, you bring in those numbers and you try to get them to expand on what they are working on, what they are individually trying to do as a unit, where they are big picture.”
As for her studio work, Parker listens to a lot of podcasts and reads what the beat writers have to say during her preparation. Plus, she always has past notes ready to go with a tool that she is able to use to go back into past notes.
“I’m a big believer in you always use what knowledge you have now and compare it to before. You compare it to something that happened previously either this season or in the playoffs a year before. I just generally watch basketball and I think through that then I’ll watch the team 2-3 times before and it can be a quarter, it can be a whole game.
“I use OneNote. That helps me a lot. I use that and I use it every time I’m on television. When I’m on television on a different time, I can always pull up the notes I had previously. I’m not a big paper-to-pen. I write everything there so I have something to reflect on in the future.”
Parker has always been a big basketball fan and she told Deitsch she always looks for what’s next, which led her to doing work at NBATV and Turner Sports. She enjoys being able to have conversations about sports with people and feeling like she is at a dinner table.
“I found out that when you get to NBATV or TNT, yes you have to be seasoned a little bit, but it really is fun because you are sitting like you are at the dinner table talking about sports, but with people that you grew up idolizing. Once I figured that out, that’s when I was like this is really what I want to do. This is the second-best job ever, second to only playing, to be able to talk and analyze sports.”
