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Disagree that pop wants good questions and wants smart interviews during games.
He clearly dislikes the entire mid game interview and his blood boils everytime ha has to do it.
Simple as that.
But what's a good question? As FWD said, Pop won't talk real strategy, so instead he just wants questions the narrow band between too general and too specific, whereas most coaches don't have that extra barrier. The burden to get good interviews isn't just on the media here.
That being said, I think that Pop is probably more gracious off-camera than he seems on it. Just look at his relationship with Craig Sager.
Disagree that pop wants good questions and wants smart interviews during games.
He clearly dislikes the entire mid game interview and his blood boils everytime ha has to do it.
Simple as that.
This thread wasn't about the in-game interview -- obviously, Pop doesn't like those and he treats them accordingly (and is particularly harsh on bad questions in that context).
This thread was about the post-game interview last night, and Pop was asked some pretty dumb questions in that context.
Others can disagree with me, but I don't blame Pop for giving direct and short answers to bad questions.
Here are a couple of examples from the presser after Game 7 of the Clippers series last year:
Q. Have you lost a series where it felt like your team did so many things to win a series?
GREGG POPOVICH: You know, that's a great question. I'm sure there's an exception, but usually in the past, if we've won a series, we've pretty much won it hands down, or if we got beat, we got beat pretty easily. This was a grind every‑‑ well, six of the seven games were a grind. It was a little different in that way, but it was a great series, a great series.
* * * *
Q. As a coach, is it harder to reconcile a series like this where a couple plays may have gone either way, maybe you advance, you said you played really well as opposed to a past series where guys didn't show up and underperformed to your expectations?
GREGG POPOVICH: Oh, sure, but if people play hard and they're both competing and executing and you lose, you know, that's life. You've got to be bigger than that loss. If guys didn't perform or weren't giving it or weren't running back on defense or blah blah blah, then you can get after that, probably even curse, which I rarely do.
http://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=108755
lol @ "they're just trying to do their jobs."
These are the same guys who will eviscerate you with their keyboards the moment players, coaches and team staff when trying to do their jobs.
Pop's reaction to the election results wasn't a mean response. I think he checked himself and just shook his head so that he DIDN'T say something that would get him in trouble. He clearly responded to the question in his non-verbal, however, and that response was sufficiently meaningful to get the reporter laughing. I thought it was fine last night. Sometimes Pop is just in a pissy mood and it shows. Last night wasn't one of those times, though, I think.
I would like to see Pop smile broadly as he delivers the same answers we have all come to expect.
That's what I mean. Those are feature-article questions. They aren't news-article questions. You can't cut up those answers and use them as the outline of a game summary. You need the basic, "We didn't rebound", or "X played really well" -- those kind of answers. You can also use strategy for parts. You can't use the philosophical answers unless that's the angle the article takes -- and they can't all take that angle.
So reporters have to elicit certain answers from Pop to do their jobs, and Pop should understand that. Maybe some of the reporters are completely inane, but those types of questions won't go away, so they have to keep asking them. I can understand Pop being terse when it comes to in-game interviews. But post-game interviews are different.
Okay, but these guys have to stop asking closed ended questions if they want more than a one word answer. There was a time in the not too distant past when most beat writers were journalism school graduates. Now, the post game media sessions are polluted with bloggers that have press credentials.
And that can be cleaned up, but look the OP. Those weren't closed-ended questions. Pop just made them seem that way. I get that the blog and sound-bite era encourages people give give short, but somehow informative answers and that Pop is sort of protesting that by doing the least he can possibly do. But there isn't enough time anymore to do the slow-paced sit-down interviews that can provide the full range of content.
Pop wants to philosophize and not talk about basic stuff you can get from watching the game. Who knows what the reporters want, but they certainly need that latter stuff. There are stupid questions out there, but the general nature of the interviews isn't a bad as Pop's reactions would have one believe.
I think it's more annoying seeing other coaches try to be like Pop. Kerr tried to be short and bland last night iirc, just made him seem dismissive imo
Maybe it's because I'm just a cranky old guy like Pop, but we're just going to have to agree to disagree about the quality of modern day sports journalism. When I was your age I was a voracious consumer of printed sports journalism, the decline in quality has been precipitous.
wasn't the interview done on-court? that's a in game interview
Chinook is as NASF as it gets. Not that I'm "old" or anything, but yeah.
No. The page with quotes from Pop posted earlier in this thread is from his post-game meeting with the media. His in-game interview with David Aldridge was short, too, but involved different questions.
Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with you on the decline of journalism. But I think that the questions that Pop doesn't like answer will be asked anyway, because those ARE what make up basis of print journalism (which was a field of employment for me -- albeit brief). You're never going to be passed those basic "Is this what happened" questions. They don't let you print articles without getting quotes which pretty much say what the reporter can paraphrase in a more concise manner.
For example:
From: http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/14...geles-clippersDuring Wednesday's shootaround, coach Doc Rivers said the team is ready to move on from the incident.
"It's just nice to have it over with, and now we can kind of move on," Rivers said.
Or:
From:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us...mary.html?_r=0At his victory party, Mr. Sanders, flashing a wide, toothy grin, pointed to the large voter turnout as evidence that only he could energize the Democratic electorate to defeat the Republicans in November.
“Together we have sent a message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California,” Mr. Sanders said. “And that is that the government of our great country belongs to all of the people, and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors and their ‘super PACs.’ ”
Finally:
From:http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/10/mi...-us/index.htmlErdogan suggested he's not sure after U.S. President Barack Obama's envoy on ISIS, Brett McGurk, met with PYD leaders in Kobani, Syria.
"How will we ever be able trust you?" the Turkish leader said Wednesday about the U.S. government, according to state broadcaster TRT. "Am I your regional partner or are the terrorists in Kobani?"
Like what are the quotes adding to the story other than showing that someone actually said something? I'm sure that if I were to look through old papers, I'd see the same thing. I'm not disagreeing about there being more hack journalism now than there was back then. But there is a structure to news stories that doesn't really allow for creative questions very often.
Thanks for the detailed response.
Yeah, those questions always have been, and always will be asked. I'm just not mad at Pop for treating them with disdain.
I'm in my 30s but I can see the dynamic you are talking about. Newspapers got desperate starting in the 90s as they have been marginalized by blogs and the like. The SA Light, NO Times Picayune and a whole slew of papers went under. Sports journalists have always had questionable ethics but now they are deseperate for an audience so they are more shrill and sensational jumping the shark.
The only thing that disturbs me is how the unnamed and unassociated source is becoming a mainstay in their writing. The DMN in particular is bad about this.
Yep. Especially when it's obvious that the source was just something that popped up in their Twitter feed.
On if the Spurs put an emphasis on O rebounding tonight.
WTF??? these guys are trying to make a living...you can be a reticent once in a while but not go overboard with it, tbh...
(Shakes head).
What is such a negative about asking about O rebounding?
It's like Pops response has turned into some stupid Mean Girls schtick where acting dismissive is seen as some power trip.
The case I am talking about was the DMN was taking information from David Wells who was serving as Dez Bryant's 'mentor' and not citing his relation to Bryant. Wells fed them his rehab schedule and tried to leak a video etc. It finally came out what Wells was doing but not after 2 years of him manipulating his client against his wishes in the media and not disclosing it.
At the very least its unethical. Twitter at least is verifiable to a certain extent. What they did there was insidious.
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." - Drucker
I was not aware of that history, but it's certainly the sort of thing that would not gotten past a major newspaper editor in the relatively recent past.
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