Jackie MacMullan
Jackie MacMullan was a beat reporter, covering the Boston Celtics, in the eighties, then a writer for Sports Illustrated and a columnist for the Boston Globe, and finally a columnist and writer for ESPN. (She also appears frequently on a number of ESPN television shows.) She has co-written autobiographies by Larry Bird, Geno Auriemma, and Shaquille O’Neal, and, with Bird and Magic Johnson, she wrote When the Game Was Ours. Last year, she co-edited, with Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores, Basketball: A Love Story, an oral history of basketball based on the ESPN documentary series of the same name.
From her interview with Louisa Thomas for The New Yorker:
How do you preserve your objectivity?--Marshal Zeringue
It bothers me that people don’t seem to care. We have people at ESPN saying “my team,” or “we won.” I’m like, “What are you doing? No.”
Bill Simmons, who used to be my boss, has made a career out of being a fan—though with him it’s very explicit.
As much as I admire and respect Bill Simmons, every time he does it, I cringe. I’m old school, I guess. Now, I don’t think we should ever stop being a human being when we interview someone. Sometimes people say things they shouldn’t say, and, if they’re young, and inexperienced, I always say, “Are you sure you want to say that?” And I probably shouldn’t do that.
I think you should.
I do. I was doing a story on Chauncey Billups once, when he was a rookie for the Celtics. We did a lunch interview, and he said some things, and I know they didn’t come out the way he wanted. It had to do with race relations in Boston. I didn’t use them. I said, “I like you. I think you should be careful. You don’t want to start out here like that.” I didn’t realize it, but, for the rest of my life, Chauncey Billups is going to have my back. That’s not why I did it. But, to me, that’s different.
But, listen. Josh Beckett is the biggest horse’s ass I’ve ever come across in my life. I couldn’t stand the guy. But he was a great pitcher, and so, when he won big games, I had to write about how good he was. Conversely, I remember Dennis Johnson, at the end of his career, was having some trouble adjusting to the young players taking some of his time, and as much as I adored Dennis Johnson—talk about someone who gave me every chance and then some, went out of his way to give me a platform—I had to write that he was behaving poorly. It’s terrible. It’s the hardest part of...[read on]
