Draft Express closing, Givony joining ESPN

He Filled it Up · Post #21 » by **He Filled it Up** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:14 pm

CKB wrote:ESPN is moving in the right direction. Replacing all the bad NBA writers/analysts with Woj, Bobby Marks and the guys from DX. People might actually pay for ESPN Insiders now to read quality content...

How much did people pay for that content when it wasn't on ESPN?

MC3 · Post #22 » by **MC3** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:16 pm

LofJ wrote:
MC3 wrote:ESPN is that blackhole which keep swallowing everything around it. First Woj, now draft express. This hurts. Glad man got paid, but this seriously sucks for basketball fans. We will likely not be anymore given same treatment to all players, hype to certain prospects and pushing for them, no more proper breakdown analysis, and this will now become glorified ballmixhopes crap for big network.

It's a good opportunity for someone else out there to replicate what DX did.

I dont know if anyone can. They had legit scouting network. If it does it will take time.

LeMasta · Post #23 » by **LeMasta** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:16 pm

whats going to happen to the yt channel?

LakerLegend · Post #24 » by **LakerLegend** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:17 pm

MC3 wrote:
LofJ wrote:
MC3 wrote:ESPN is that blackhole which keep swallowing everything around it. First Woj, now draft express. This hurts. Glad man got paid, but this seriously sucks for basketball fans. We will likely not be anymore given same treatment to all players, hype to certain prospects and pushing for them, no more proper breakdown analysis, and this will now become glorified ballmixhopes crap for big network.

It's a good opportunity for someone else out there to replicate what DX did.

I dont know if anyone can. They had legit scouting network. If it does it will take time.

. It's funny, nbadraft.net is actually older but for some reason the site is exactly the same as it was 15 years ago.

OptionZero · Post #25 » by **OptionZero** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:17 pm

We knew this was coming. Chad Ford, their previous draft guy, was fired in April.

With Woj coming on board, we knew he was bringing his guys over. Bobby Marks, Jonathan Giovanny, and Mike Schmitz are GOOD at their jobs, so they are welcome, if not surprising additions. Hopefully they get big spotlights and a corresponding pay raise, since they deserve that

Shams seems to be doing just fine (or better . . .). I don't care much for Chris Mannix

LofJ · Post #26 » by **LofJ** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:20 pm

MC3 wrote:
LofJ wrote:
MC3 wrote:ESPN is that blackhole which keep swallowing everything around it. First Woj, now draft express. This hurts. Glad man got paid, but this seriously sucks for basketball fans. We will likely not be anymore given same treatment to all players, hype to certain prospects and pushing for them, no more proper breakdown analysis, and this will now become glorified ballmixhopes crap for big network.

It's a good opportunity for someone else out there to replicate what DX did.

I dont know if anyone can. They had legit scouting network. If it does it will take time.

It won't be easy; but there are smart basketball junkies all over the world that would love to contribute to something like DX. International collaboration, especially for something like an online publication, has never had fewer barriers.

MC3 · Post #27 » by **MC3** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:21 pm

http://www.espn.com/nba/insider/story/_/id/20118034/scouting-potential-no-1-pick-rj-barrett-more-top-prospects-fiba-u19s-nba-draft

It's already behind pay-wall. This seriously sucks. **** ESPN.

PlatinumState · Post #28 » by **PlatinumState** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:24 pm

I dont like this one bit

Hangtime84 · Post #29 » by **Hangtime84** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:27 pm

OptionZero wrote:We knew this was coming. Chad Ford, their previous draft guy, was fired in April.

With Woj coming on board, we knew he was bringing his guys over. Bobby Marks, Jonathan Giovanny, and Mike Schmitz are GOOD at their jobs, so they are welcome, if not surprising additions. Hopefully they get big spotlights and a corresponding pay raise, since they deserve that

Shams seems to be doing just fine (or better . . .). I don't care much for Chris Mannix

DX got the top 10 down right last year

Post #30 » by **ATTL** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:30 pm

There will be a void now that ESPN bought out a competitor. Maybe some posters from this site could make a new draft site to fill that void, I remember givony asking for writers on this board when he first started up.

Hangtime84 · Post #31 » by **Hangtime84** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:31 pm

LofJ wrote:
MC3 wrote:ESPN is that blackhole which keep swallowing everything around it. First Woj, now draft express. This hurts. Glad man got paid, but this seriously sucks for basketball fans. We will likely not be anymore given same treatment to all players, hype to certain prospects and pushing for them, proper breakdown analysis, and this will now become glorified ballmixhopes crap for big network.

It's a good opportunity for someone else out there to replicate what DX did.

Mark Deeks aka sham sports

Or coach Nick

Karate Diop · Post #32 » by **Karate Diop** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:37 pm

Ambrose wrote:
My Main Man wrote:Time for nbadraft.net to step up its game.

Aran may have to start shelling out some dough for that.

Eh... NBAdraft.net doesn't hold a candle to DraftExpress though... NBAdraft.net tends to just regurgitate a lot of what other people say about prospects into a nice and (kind of) neat format.

Correct me if I'm wrong - but I don't think they do their own scouting... At least not at the level and detail DX did.

whitehops · Post #33 » by **whitehops** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:42 pm

Hangtime84 wrote:
LofJ wrote:It's a good opportunity for someone else out there to replicate what DX did.

coach Nick

he's lucky his YouTube channel is as big as it is, i wouldn't be surprised if he's overtaken by a new (and much better) channel.

OptionZero · Post #34 » by **OptionZero** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:50 pm

Competitor to watch:
The Athletic.

Real GM's own Danny Leroux writes for the San Francisco Region of the company
They just hired Tim Kawakami (SJ Merc columnist, formerly covered the lakers) and Marcus Thompson (long time warriors beat writer, became columnist, wrote Steph Curry book, guest on TrueHoop)

They are building up region specific sites

Also, Nate Duncan and Danny Leroux are probably the best independent, hardest core news coverage and analysis outlet out there with Dunc'D on. They do podcasts with alarming frequency and do cover the draft. As of now, they do not write together, so its audio mostly

nickhx2 · Post #35 » by **nickhx2** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:53 pm

someone who is smart and wants to parlay his draft site into the next big thing will step into this role. it just might take some time.

glad for givony. when dx first came out i always wondered where it'd go and if givony could ever quit his day job. i'm sure once sponsored ads and stuff became a thing he became very well off for some time, but now with an actual ESPN job you can't really do better.

Brauer · Post #36 » by **Brauer** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:56 pm

Can't wait for The Ringer or something like that to step up their free stuff.

europeanfan · Post #37 » by **europeanfan** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 4:59 pm

Didn't see it coming.

Pretty shocking.

Don't think anyone is ready right now to fill the void at the moment, but someone will for sure in time. Givony and Schmitz were great but I'm not paying for that stuff, especially when the other insider content is Kevin Pelton' stuff.

Thing is they were everywhere, had great interviews, nice video editing, not that easy to do.

europeanfan · Post #38 » by **europeanfan** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 5:02 pm

Brauer wrote:Can't wait for The Ringer or something like that to step up their free stuff.

That would be terrible, their guys would be afraid to contradict Bill Simmons and would be forced to put guys like Malik Monk above Fultz because Simmons saw him more often on tv and just loves him to death.

The Ringer publishes some entertaining content, but it's not about fair and deep analysis. Hell their main basketball guy Kevin O'Connor comes from celticsblog...

MemphisX · Post #39 » by **MemphisX** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 5:08 pm

CKB wrote:ESPN is moving in the right direction. Replacing all the bad NBA writers/analysts with Woj, Bobby Marks and the guys from DX. People might actually pay for ESPN Insiders now to read quality content...

You do realize some of the guys ESPN fired were bloggers from way back right. The system corrupts. They will be trash in a few years. Woj has already started slipping.

Purch · Post #40 » by **Purch** » Fri Jul 21, 2017 5:14 pm

whitehops wrote:
Hangtime84 wrote:
LofJ wrote:It's a good opportunity for someone else out there to replicate what DX did.

coach Nick

he's lucky his YouTube channel is as big as it is, i wouldn't be surprised if he's overtaken by a new (and much better) channel.

Lucky? That dude grinded from literally like 10 subscribers. I remember because I was one of his earliest subscribers, and I'd tell him about Insidehoops, realgm, Prosportsdaily, and he'd create accounts all to try to reach a bigger audience. The amount of effort he put into videos when no one was even watching them speaks to his commitment.

Luck has nothing to do with it. It's all about grind. He didn't start off being able to interview coaches and scouts, he literally was just a high school coach who built his way up.