Backpack Basketball: A Re-Introduction

Well hello again. For those of you who have been putting your life on hold since my last post until now, you probably could have beaten Wintermute from Neuromancer in a wall-staring contest. But fear not, because I have returned to resurrect the blog (for now, and probably for no longer than part of the summer, but hey, maybe I’ll keep it going longer than the expected 12 minutes).

The reason I started Backpack Basketball was to make myself feel like I was doing something productive in the midst of a quarter-life crisis where I thought I shot myself in the foot career-wise. Didn’t look like I was going to make much of a living in this sports media thang.

Luckily, my “the world is going to end” moment lasted all of 24 hours. Literally one day after my big proposal didn’t fly, I was offered a blogging job for the Pac-12 official website (Sam Silverstein/Kirk Reynolds ’16: Change We Can Believe In). One month after that, I got hooked up with a play-by-play gig for Serra HS football (what up, Alan Epstein?). Then I got a weekly sit-down interview thingy with David Shaw for the football season a month after that (all praise Bud Anderson, and Khari Jones for Deity while I’m at it).

And then the big mama came- radio play-by-play for the Santa Cruz Warriors of the NBA Development League (Kirk Lacob/Andrew Loomis, rock on). Don’t get me wrong- I love every job that pays me and am grateful for all the work I have been allowed to do, but for an aspiring radio play-by-play broadcaster, this was the holy grail. I get to do at least 50 games a year of a very high level of basketball? And I get to spend a couple of weeks in Reno interspersed throughout the year???? Hell yeah. I lucked out bigtime.

It’s my time in the D-League that has sort of re-spawned Backpack Basketball. I have completed two seasons of broadcasting in the D-League, and sometime during the second season, one of the many loyal Santa Cruz Warriors fans suggested that I put my recorded halftime interviews online (what’s good, Idris Nolan). I had also been thinking about putting other interviews up there as well, so I was thinking I should blog it up again. And hey, the D-League, to some extent, is Backpack Basketball- a bunch of under-the-radar dudes with loads of talent (though I guess backpack MCs don’t necessarily want to go mainstream or make it to the big leagues). So, why not restart this bad boy?

So let me quickly backtrack in case you’re not familiar with the term “backpack.” It refers to underground hip-hop artists, and from there, definitions are amorphous. The best way I can put it is by using one of those certain statements that I forgot the name to that they teach you in school: All backpack rappers are underground rappers, but not all underground rappers are backpack rappers (you have to be considered to be on some conscious tip to be considered backpack, from what I remember). Honestly, I don’t even know if that term is used anymore since I haven’t had a keen ear to the underground in a minute, but I’ll use it here.

So, what shall you expect from the new Backpack Basketball? First off, let me tell you what not to expect. I’m not using this blog to “make it big” or “dish the scoop”. I may work in sports media, but I am far from a journalist. Going to grad school in journalism, I know what a real journalist is. It’s someone to be respected for doing a thankless and extremely difficult and mostly low-paying job; trust me, I’m no journalist. My job is easy, really. I don’t have to deal with people being afraid to talk to me or editors pressing me to press a source for hard news. You want real journalism? Don’t come here (I can see my Medill instructors shaking their heads in disgust).

I’m also not that negative of a person when it comes to my opinions. My feeling is, and especially since I’m not paid to give critiques, that I don’t really have much business criticizing an athlete or musician on their craft when they’re about a million times the athlete or musician than I’ll ever be. But hey, I’ll give you a little bonus for this post. Here’s my Edward Norton bathroom scene in 25^th Hour list to satisfy the Negative Nancy in all of us:

          San Jose being denied the rights to the Oakland A’s by the San Francisco Giants: I’m actually fuming as I type this sentence. Want to get me riled up? Just mention the phrase “territorial rights” in front of me. This citizen of San Jose is not property of San Francisco, foo. And here’s a personal guarantee: I will never pay for a ticket to a Giants game as long as those territorial rights are in place (but the ballpark is nice as hell, so I wouldn’t mind someone taking me out to one of those games provided they pay for my ticket, my parking and my food and drink).
·         People referring to San Francisco as “the city”: Where else in the world is the second-largest city in a 50-mile radius referred to as “the city?” San Jose is the 10^th-largest city in the nation, has well more than 100,000 more people than San Francisco and is much bigger in physical size (#factsonly), but supposedly San Francisco is the end-all, be-all. I know San Francisco has more of a downtown feel and more “culture,” as folks like to say; whatever, base your rationale on esoteric definitions (are you noticing a theme yet?). 
·         The Tuck Rule Game: 12 years have healed a lot of wounds, but I personally felt wronged by that playoff game in Foxboro. I know the date Jan. 19, 2002, as well as I know my birthday.
·         The criticism LeBron James received for going to Miami and “The Decision”: Don’t start with me.
·         People who say LeBron James isn’t clutch when he passes the ball in crunch time when it’s a better basketball play: Not much else explanation needed here.
·         The Shell gas station car wash: This thing broke down midway through my wash that I paid $7 for, meaning it didn’t do the air-dry thing and left all sorts of water streaks on my car. I was supposed to meet up with my Lyft mentor so I could start getting paid to drive, but these water marks made my car look disgusting so I had to get my whip waxed for $54.99 to undo what this drive-through car wash did to the Civic. Weak sauce. I broke one of my plastic cups in disgust in the aftermath.
·         The Machine: Maybe one day I’ll rage against it.

Here’s something else you shouldn’t expect from Backpack Basketball: perfect grammar. I proofread and fact check every weekday and whenever I have Pac-12 work on the weekends, so if I were to painstakingly read through this thing prior to every post, I would quickly lose interest. I’m trying to enjoy myself with this blog while somewhat providing a service, so I’m not going to bother myself with doing extra work on something that I don’t get paid for. Remember: I ain’t no journalist (full disclosure: I read through this once just to make sure everything was Gucci). Also, this is gonna be super low-tech, so don't expect any fancy-shmansy stuff.

Ok… so what can you expect? Hopefully, if I don’t get lazy during the basketball season (and, well, I probably will get lazy during the basketball season on everything that isn’t calling Santa Cruz Warriors games, provided I’m lucky enough to have the gig for a third year), I’ll post my pregame interviews with coaches and halftime interviews with players. I might even post some of my calls if something catches my family.

“But it’s not D-League season, Kevo. What are you going to do?”

Glad you asked. In the meantime, I’ll post a reflection or two from the past couple of seasons, do some music blogging, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I have a couple of articles thought out already, but the execution of them will take a bit. So yeah, a lot of underground music and underground hoops (and maybe some above-the-ground stuff as well). Backpack basketball, if you will.

And oh yeah, you can also expect a whole lot of parenthetical phrases (it’s sort of a thing). I also like using capital letters in my heds, to the dismay of news outlets across America.