Brian Windhorst is becoming the NBA’s unofficial ombudsman

I’ve had the privilege of covering hundreds of NBA games in person over the course of my career. I’ve been to big events like the draft combine and Summer League. I’ve watched LeBron James hold court with Lakers beat reporters, watched a sly Chris Paul run clueless media gaggles through the wringer. I’ve seen most of the national NBA media do their jobs, in live press conferences and the shadows of an arena concourse.

Nobody knows more people or gets along better than Brian Windhorst.

ESPN’s senior NBA writer came up the long way, starting as a beat reporter for his hometown Cavaliers before rising to the national stage with ESPN about a decade ago. At a time when we chide ESPN for failing to develop homegrown talent or to feature real reporters in their game coverage, Windhorst may well be a unicorn.

The benefit of that long climb through the industry shows up as he holds court with decision-makers across the NBA. Watch him before a game, and he will hold long conversations with team figures that only the longtime locals know about. What he learns in those conversations fuels the viral appearances for which Windhorst has come to be known on First Take and NBA Countdown.

Brian Windhorst understands that while he has a short supply of scorching takes, he has a fount of scooplets to tease. The finger-pointing Utah Jazz meme became Windhorst’s signature because it is emblematic of the character he has come to play in the NBA media universe.

Some time after ESPN hired Adrian Wojnarowski to deliver basketball news across the network’s platforms, Windhorst stopped having to break so much news and rested into this role. An insider in spirit, if not in the nomenclature of the Worldwide Leader. The Windhorst you can see operating at an NBA game (or at the Olympics, or in the home of a teenage Victor Wembanyama) is the same one who appears on ESPN programming.

Windhorst solved the NBA information game. And then he solved the NBA content game. He now hosts one of the biggest basketball podcasts and appears on game coverage and the NBA Draft. He is your favorite podcaster’s favorite NBA guest.

With such vast experience and tentacles spread across the industry, Windhorst has also recently become the unofficial ombudsman for basketball media. He formed his position around the time he joined Thanasis Antetokounmpo’s (yes, him) podcast and reamed the NBA and its media assemblage for failing at storytelling.

Since then, Brian Windhorst has put on the ombudsman hat every few months, his thesis largely being that the league’s popularity declined as it insulated its stars and its media partners obsessed over transactions. These trends came together, Windhorst has argued, to shift the focus away from the on-court product and the stories of star players.

In between, in a saga he would likely gladly have rather avoided, but which dramatically hammered home his point, Windhorst also found himself catching straws from the biggest star in the league. Even LeBron James, who preaches the beauty of basketball and the sadness of the media on his podcast, blew through much of his social currency by mocking Windhorst in order to perpetuate a senseless tabloid beef with Stephen A. Smith.

Even as Windhorst weathered blows from James and took on the league and even active player commentators, he has maintained an effusive positivity about the sport itself. Listen to a single interview with Windhorst, and it is clear that few can rival his passion for basketball. The man can spend 45 minutes talking about obscure international competitions from the late 2000s. This is rare among the information traders who dominate sports media today.

The timing here is no accident. The business of the NBA is doing just fine, fresh off a monster TV deal with momentum toward adding two new teams and launching a league in Europe. While NBA viewership is up more than 30 percent this season, viewership has slumped in the years since the 2019-20 Covid-shortened season, and, more importantly, the league’s perception is trending straight downward. Everyone knows the length of the season and the modern style of play are chewing through players’ bodies, and no iconic American player has come up to replace James and Steph Curry.

This all happened over the course of Windhorst’s career. Changing it will take time, and some of these problems are beyond the NBA’s control.

Still, Windhorst is using his own social currency to call for steps in the right direction. Open up access, not to players’ hand-picked producers but to professional storytellers. Cut bait with things like the All-Star game that don’t work, and be imaginative toward new solutions. Showcase the miraculous feats of athleticism and artistry on the court every night rather than transactions and deal-making.

Best I can see, Brian Windhorst is the only one at or near his level doing this. Not everything he suggests will work or may even be possible. A lot of it will fall on deaf ears.

So many in Windhorst’s shoes, though, gulp up the access they are given, pocket their money, and ride out their years. The industry pays a lot of Windhorst types to simply shoot out a tweet or a TV hit at all costs, no matter the blatant favor-trading it took to get the news first.

Windhorst isn’t perfect, and he won’t be everyone’s favorite commentator. It is nevertheless commendable that he has used his growing platform and influence across the league to call for better, when many of his peers take the easy win of bashing the NBA or, worse, adding to the problems it faces.