Welcome back to Bucholtz Sports Media! This post is free for everyone thanks to our premium subscribers. Join them here, or sign up to receive all free posts here.
Back in July 2023, The New York Times announced that it would shut down its Sports desk. That move was done in favor of replacing their previous sports section with coverage from The Athletic, which they had acquired in February 2022. And that meant their existing NYT Sports staffers either left the paper entirely or wound up in other sections. But, as a new "How a Las Vegas Casino Mogul Helped Bring N.B.A. Games Back to China" investigative feature that appeared on the front page of the paper Saturday illustrates, many of those staffers still at the Times continue to make an impact on the sports world, and there are some advantages to their coverage coming in other sections of the paper.
That piece, credited to Tania Ganguli and Mara Hvistendahl with files from three other reporters and research from two others, is a in-depth and thoughtful look at how the NBA (no, we're not doing N.Y.T.-style abbreviation here)'s relationship with China went from the 2019 blowup over Daryl Morey's "Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong" tweet in support of protests there to the 2020 mild return to having a couple games broadcast in China, the 2022 return to a full broadcast schedule there, and, most critically, this weekend's Brooklyn Nets-Phoenix Suns preseason games in Macau, part of a planned five-year NBA-China return. And it pinpoints the central role of Patrick Dumont, whose 2021 proposal for preseason games in Macau at the Venetian Arena (part of the Las Vegas Sands casino and hotel chain where he's the president and COO, and which is owned by his family, particularly mother-in-law Miriam Adelson) was critical to not just this trip, but wider NBA-China relationship rebuilding. (Interestingly enough, Adelson and Dumont bought a controlling interest in the NBA's Dallas Mavericks two years later; NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the Times that the China deal wasn't a factor in the approval of the Mavericks' sale, but it's certainly valuable for them to have this project led by a team owner and governor rather than an outsider.)
There are a lot of notable tidbits in that Times feature on the specifics of how the NBA-China relationship went awry and how it's been rebuilt. Silver "is adamant the NBA made no concessions," but the league certainly made plenty of moves to placate the Chinese government; that included a February 2020 move to send $2.65 million in supplies to Hubei Province, center of the COVID-19 outbreak (this was later specifically cited in the return of a few NBA games to Chinese broadcasts that October), the maintenance of the NBA's China office even amidst the tensions, the selection of Michael Ma (son of a well-regarded former state TV executive) as the head of that office in 2020, and then all of the details on how this deal for games in Macau (one of China's two semi-autonomous regions alongside Hong Kong) came together. And some of the quotes are excellent; it's valuable to have Silver on the record with lines such as "We’re not looking to go over and poke anyone in the eye. We’re not setting out to create a diplomatic incident" (while still maintaining that the league will defend the rights of players and coaches to speak freely). There's also a significant companion piece from Hvistendahl and Ganguli on the mess that has arisen from a Communist Party newspaper printing LeBron James' comments to media as an op-ed supposedly from him, and how Silver and the NBA have reacted. But perhaps the most interesting part of this feature is how it came in the Times, and how ex-Times Sports figures were key to it.
Ganguli is one of the former Times Sports staffers who stayed on at the paper, and she didn't even leave the sports beat. Indeed, her current role is described as writing "about money, power and influence in sports and how it impacts the broader culture," often in the business section but sometimes in other places. She's been at the Times since October 2021, coming in as a sports business reporter after time covering a variety of sports (but especially the NFL) at the Los Angeles Times, ESPN, The Houston Chronicle, and The Florida Times-Union. And while she probably didn't expect that her role would eventually be its 2025 version of covering sports at a paper without a dedicated internal sports section, the Times was smart to find ways to retain her and some of her talented Times Sports colleagues in other sections.
That list also includes two long-time stars of business and sports coverage, Kevin Draper and Tariq Panja, both who contributed reporting on this story. Combine that with the international reporting background of Hvistendahl (who was on the ground in Macau reporting this story) and the Times' array of other reporters and researchers (researcher/reporter Joy Dong also contributed reporting here, while Sheelagh McNeill and Susan C. Beachy contributed research), plus the Times' ability as a publication to dedicate reporting time and resources to a long-term project like this, convince key figures to talk, and even eventually deliver a front-page slot for this, and you wind up with a great mix. And it's one that shows how non-Athletic staffers at the paper are still making impacts in sports coverage.
The pros and cons of the Times' move to shutter NYT Sports as a standalone section and replace it with coverage from The Athletic can still be debated. There are plenty of ways that makes sense for them, but there are also significant drawbacks to it for staffers and readers. The Athletic delivers a lot of strong coverage, including of sports business and sports media, but Times Sports as a section remains missed as a regular destination, especially by those of us who are particularly interested in coverage beyond the field of play. But this NBA-Macau feature illustrates some of the excellent work still being done in sports coverage by people at the Times proper, even if they're no longer in a specific sports section.
Coverage note: I'll be off for a few days for a camping trip. Regular Bucholtz Sports Media programming will resume Thursday. You can always reach me at andrew@andrewbucholtz.com. Top image from The Venetian Macau.
