The Answer to What’s Wrong with Sport’s Commentary has Been Here All Along

ESPN recently has undergone a lot of flak for its sports personalities and reporting. The broadcasting company has rightly seen an ever-increasing amount of criticism for its lackadaisical and repetitive journalism regarding sports.

From the complete lack of knowledge on any team in the NBA apart from LeBron James’s Los Angeles Lakers to belittling the game of football from X’s and O’s to a shouting match about intangibles like passion and desire.

A dearth of expert analysis continues to wear thin with the viewers, and a continued emphasis on base-level entertainment is seen to be undermining its take on sports, yet ESPN does have an answer to this dilemma. It’s an answer that has been present on the network for 22 years.

Around the Horn is a roundtable discussion of sports conducted in the style of a panel game.

Hosted by Tony Reali, the show invites 4 panellists with ties and knowledge of the sporting stratosphere to debate the current state of affairs in sports and its popular topics.

Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves posturized John Collins so badly on Sunday night, that the latter exited the game with a concussion. In what has become a trademark to Edwards’s game – highlights like this typically take over national media the day after.

The Around the Horn show differs from the rest of ESPN’s catalogue by rewarding or deducting points based on how each panellist’s argument is made. Such a premise works in promoting deeper conversation that is brim with knowledge about the event – as how else will you get points?

Whilst Stephen A Smith, a very talented albeit idiosyncratic presenter can go on First Take to describe Edwards’s dunk with the many superlatives he comes up with and add the somewhat tedious comparison to Vince Carter and the 52nd push for him to be the next face of the league, it would likely earn him next to no points on Around the Horn for its repetitive nature.

Now this isn’t a show nor medium for analytical darlings who foam at the mouth for Python-discovered stats, but the segment on Edwards’s dunk on Monday highlighted where a show like this falls on the spectrum of casuals to diehards. Mina Kimes, a well-known ESPN journalist especially for the NFL and crossword enthusiast as per her Twitter bio was present on Around the Horn. Her segment on the dunk and Minnesota Timberwolves scored her six points by host Reali.

In a 50-second slot, Kimes was able to educate the audience on Edwards’s outstanding play this season, especially with fellow All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns out, the offensive capabilities of the Wolves with and without Towns, and name-dropping Nickel Alexander Walker, a name I’d wager many Minnesotans are unfamiliar with, even with his and Naz Reid’s impact off the bench this season.

The superlatives were still present as she described Edwards blushingly as a player who “marries the entertainment factor with substance”. It’s a perspective that relates deeply to the importance of a show like this which serves to entertain and inform.

It’s a format ESPN should look to promote further and if you the reader are tired of Stephen A Smith and Shannon Sharpe, well here’s an alternative.

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