Welcome to Backpack Basketball (and other Olympic genres)- an introduction

If there’s one thing I took away from journalism school, it’s that the lede is everything. Well, not everything, but “everything” just sounds more attention grabbing, don’t it? Hook ‘em in with something catchy, or lose ‘em with something soft, bland, or whatever.

Luckily, a strong lede has eluded me in the first post of my new blog, surely sending away an infinite proportion (0/0) of my reading base. Now I can just start spewing at the mouth. Hopefully all of your dying questions about Backpack Basketball (and other Olympic genres) will be answered in this Q&A format of an introduction.

What the hell is this blog about?

This blog is no different than what every other one is at its core- some dudette/dude waxing poetic on her/his passions (I learned how to put the female noun first thanks to my Chicana/o studies classes at Stanfurd lol!) in life. Generically, that happens to be sports and music for the Dannaman, not unlike hundreds of millions of other people my age.

More specifically, I’m a huge basketball and hip-hop fan (really zeroing in something here)- I have been since the age of four for basketball , ever since I first laid my eyes on Isiah Thomas, and seven for hip-hop, the first time I saw the “Nuthin’ but a G Thang” music video playing on MTV, back when the “M” was an accurate description of the channel.

But as I grew older, the mainstream of both societies wasn’t enough for me. By the time 2002 rolled around and I was heading into my sophomore year of high school, I had just about given up on hip-hop. I could barely listen to the radio, save for Beanie Sigel and Freeway’s “Roc Da Mic” cut; everything else disgusted me. I had heard about “underground” rap thanks to the “Discover” section in Napster, which had led me to my first encounters with Zion I, Dilated Peoples, Juice (the Chicago freestyler, not the dude that was with Black Wallstreet for a fleeting moment), Reks and Edo.G. And then one night, I happened to turn my alarm clock radio to the San Jose State student station just in time to hear “Magnificent” by Epidemic. Alas, a song that wasn’t talking about the tired theme of booze, blunts and booty! I kept the station on and over the course of that summer was introduced to Slug, Brother Ali, Aesop Rock and a ton of other “backpack” rappers. I would never look at music the same way. When I got to college, I would turn my love of the underground into a local hip-hop show at the community radio station, and interviewing all sorts of entertaining MCs who were pretty tight and for the most part also pretty high.

On the other hand, I was always a big fan of the NBA and could barely stand college hoops before tournament time…until I enrolled in Stanford and became a volunteer with the basketball team my freshman year. Volunteer turned into paid student-manager, which turned into being the only head manager in history to have both served under Trent Johnson and Johnny Dawkins (good to know I’m the only one in something). As I became more deeply involved with the Stanford basketball team, so did my intrigue with the then-Pac-10…and the Mountain West, and the WAC, and the WCC, and the Big Sky, and the Horizon League, and the Colonial Athletic Association, and the Big South, and the SWAC, and the MEAC, and the Great West…you get the point. It got to the point where I’d be sitting in class and instead of taking notes, I’d be streaming the Summit League Championship game on ESPN3. It got to the point my senior year when, making the Big Dance was out of the question, I checked NIT bracketology websites five times a day and prayed for one-seeds of low-major and mid-major conference tournaments to win their tourneys to improve my team’s NIT chances.

Hence the name Backpack Basketball. Not to say that I only listen to underground hip-hop- that couldn’t be further from the truth; my favorite MC of all-time is Eminem. Not to say that I only watch games played between the likes of South Dakota State and Eastern Kentucky in some guarantee-game bracket tournament in Cancún every November; my favorite time of the year is still the NBA Finals. But I do tend to follow these things more closely than others.

But I also love the “Olympic” sports, largely because I started getting paid to broadcast them and have developed a deep fondness for college soccer, men’s and women’s volleyball (two totally different sports, both equally exciting in their own right), water polo, lacrosse, softball and field hockey, not to mention gymnastics and wrestling (though I still struggle to understand what the hell is going on in either of the latter two). 

Additionally, I’m not just a fan of hip-hop, but have also become a decent follower of genres of music that don’t get Top 40 buzz, like chillout electronica, drum ‘n bass, 2 step/UK garage, house and mid-‘90s alternative rock (which did get Top 40 buzz back when, well, I’ll save you from a “I used to walk five miles a day to school, uphill both ways” statement for now).

Hence the phrase in parentheses after Backpack Basketball- and other Olympic genres.

If you need any more explanation, just give me a call at 408-781-1922 and I’ll hold your hand a little tighter.

Sounds awesome/mildly intriguing/more boring than the movie “Open Water”. What the hell are you going to post?

A variety of ish. Everything from my play-by-play clips to interviews I’ve done that I’m not embarrassed of- that’s on the video/broadcasting side. On the print side, I’ll probably do some editorial-kinda stuff and have some list countdowns for you- I love lists. The print stuff will probably be more musicy, the video stuff will probably be more sportsy (unless I’m posting a music video from YouTube, which I will certainly do).

Cool/lukewarm/same tired thing. Who are you, anyways?

My name is Kevin Danna, and I live in San José, California. I got my bachelor degree in Spanish from Stanford in 2009 and my Masters of Science in Journalism from the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism in 2011. I am currently a play-by-play broadcaster for Stanford Athletics webcasts, as well as a basketball writer for Stanford’s Scout website- thebootleg.com. If you visit the Pac-12 website much, you may have seen me as a co-host alongside future ESPN Superstar Rosalyn Gold-Onwude for a weekly women’s basketball show entitled “In The Paint” and as a feature writer on current and former Pac-12 athletes. I have also done radio work for Sporting News/Yahoo Sports Radio and Fox Sports Radio as a game-update dude at 49er and Stanford football games. I got my start in radio at the Stanford radio station- KZSU- as a sports talk co-host and play-by-play and color commentator. As I began to mention earlier, I also “DJ”ed a show at KZSU called “408’s Finest”, a local hip-hop show. In addition to that, I worked with the Stanford men’s basketball team for four years; my freshman year as a pseudo-manager, and my last three as a paid student-manager (the last two of those as the head manager).

*turntable scratch* Hey Whoo Kid, bring that ish back! 

While all of the above is true, here is a more honest depiction of myself:

I am 25 years old and live at home in a really comfortable part of San José. My middle name isn’t Clarence, but my parents have a real good marriage and I have pretty much lived off them completely for the last quarter century. I went to private school from 6^th grade on up, and my parents paid for every dime, including Northwestern and Stanford. So while my educational background might look tight, it’s only because of my parents. Thus, I really don’t take much pride in my degrees (though I am probably more proud of my Northwestern one than my Stanford one) because, although I put in a decent amount of work for them, I basically just had to show up to class and turn in my work to get some extra letters after my name. At the very least, I didn’t blow away my parents’ money by snorting lines of yola off girls’ stomachs at frat parties, but that’s about as high as it gets on the redeeming side of things.

Yes, I do webcasts at Stanford, and yes, some of those other things I mentioned do pay me, but it isn’t close to full-time. If it weren’t for my family support, I wouldn’t be able to support myself. So while I like to think of myself as an idealist who won’t give in to capitalistic pressures, it’s only because my family capitalized on the system well enough for me to be so idealistic. I am attempting to obtain more broadcasting work and am finding out years behind other kids my age that hey, maybe everything won’t be handed to you, after all. Woe is me.

So, what do I do? What any other privileged and underemployed kid would do- start a blog!

Since coming back from the Chicago area last June, I have grown to despise marketing, but I realize I have to market myself in this world, I have to network, yada yada yada. This blog is one such attempt to “put my name out there”, so to speak.

In reality, I’ll probably stop posting things to this blog when either a) I get a full-time-ish job in the broadcasting world or b) I get lazy and forget to post stuff, whichever comes first.

Enjoy it while you can.

Ooh-ooh! One more thing I forgot to add: a special thank you goes to Dominic Delfino, Stanford '12, who suggested I start a blog called "Mid-Major Hip-Hop". A very catchy name, but I didn't feel like biting off him, so I decided to go with something along those lines. He was a big inspiration to me starting this. Thanks, bruh.