That’s the concern… there aren’t really good Pistons beat writers and the coverage may get even worse in his absence.
Exciting for James that he gets to cover a real basketball team though.
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Yeah, happy for him–really cool opportunity!–but concerning if you’re a Pistons fan.
Eh. Edwards was just the chosen mouthpiece of the Pistons org, and he never really had anything of interest to say that wasn’t leaked by the org for the org’s sake.
Whoever is the Pistons Athletic writer next will likely get the same privileges IMO.
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That is assuming they even bother to replace his role on the beat. Hope they do, but the Athletic has cut a lot of beat writers the last couple years and the Pistons aren’t exactly a popular franchise.
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The verbiage of his post suggests its not a guarantee the Pistons receive beat coverage.
I think Edwards gets more flack than he deserves, it’s kind of hard to cover the past 4-5 years of Pistons basketball without at least attempting to see slivers of hope, because the aggregate has been so obviously horrific - I mean, look at the knots this thread has talked itself into over the past 3 years.
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Edwards gets flack because he always did the, “I know something is coming and after it happens I’ll tell you.” Then nothing would happen.
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There was an on-going joke in the Pistons Forum about how Shams would break a story and give James some credit, or some other reporter would break a story and James would come out with a “Can confirm” tweet.
I don’t know James at all, or follow the Pistons closely, but this is also how the NBA works. How many “beat writers” are breaking stories ahead of Shams or Woj? Especially when Shams works for the same outlet.
Good beat writing in 2024 is able to provide context before or after the fact, add useful color and analysis. IMO at least.
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The difference with that guy is how much whining he did on Twitter about how nobody understands journalism. I didn’t listen to his podcast very often, because the few I turned into were therapy sessions for himself.
Again, don’t really know James or follow the Pistons. So no idea about his pod. But the idea that a beat writer should be consistently out-scooping Woj or Shams (again, he works for the same company as Shams) doesn’t track for me.
All the Pistons beat guys were pretty good. When Casey was the coach and there was more stability you had a good sense of what was going on behind the scenes. Less so with the chaotic last season where it was unclear who was in charge and what their plan was.
I don’t follow any of the beat writers closely and my idea for what they do may be outdated in this (mostly) post-print era. I would think that someone who’s around the team for practices and games might have a little more of an inside track regarding personnel moves, injuries, changes in the line-up, etc. than a national reporter, but I could be wrong. It did seem like Terry Foster and Detroit’s Woj had more coverage back in their day.
And the Pistons Forum (by large) hasn’t found a beat writer over the years that they (sometimes myself included. Mostly Keith Langlois, Chris McCosky, and [the late] Drew Sharp) didn’t or don’t pick at. It’s a tough crowd, for sure. I did find the “can confirm” stuff funny, though.
Well, Woj is retiring to become “The GM of St. Bonaventure Basketball”, so Shams will have the “transcribing agents’ press releases in incredibly stilted sentences” beat to himself.
(seriously, while I don’t have much respect for Woj’s “reporting”, good for him walking away from a ton of money for something he clearly had a passion for)
That’s the biggest Woj-bomb of them all.
He should’ve given that scoop to Shams.
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