The Athletic has been periodically expanding their various verticals, and today, and it’s the NBA’s turn. The subscription based sports site that already features such NBA reporters as David Aldridge and Shams Charania has added another well-known reporter to their stable, announcing that Frank Isola is joining The Athletic.
Formerly at the New York Daily News, Isola was part of a reduction this summer that resulted in the Daily News just keeping nine people from a 35 person sports staff. The Daily News’ loss is The Athletic’s gain, as Isola is joining them to cover the NBA, Knicks, and Nets.
Isola was one of many people announced by The Athletic today. In addition, Sam Amick from USA Today and Zach Harper of CBS Sports also joined.
https://twitter.com/TheAthleticNBA/status/1044224939400749061
The Athletic took care of their national NBA vertical, but they also hired a bunch of team focused writers. The Athletic added Brett Dawson (Thunder), Jason Jones (Kings), Tony Jones (Jazz), Blake Murphy (Raptors), Jason Quick (Blazers), Joe Vardon (Cavs), and Jabari Young (Spurs) heading into this season, with more likely to follow.
With preseason starting Friday, The Athletic is getting ready to hit the ground running. With their local writers, The Athletic has local coverage for 25 of 30 teams and I’ll take an educated guess and believe they will have coverage of all 30 teams by the beginning of the regular season in October.
About Phillip Bupp
Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.
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