Glad it wasn't just me noticing this thanks for the heads up! Yeah.. His posts or articles always seem to be garbage. I have np with good critique on a player/team but he seems like he's on a mission. I mean it's no secret harden is insane on offense and defense needs work on some plays... , but you could easily make similar videos of anyone else out there. He's like going out of his way to damage his rep and he's supposed to write for Houston. I'm sure the Warriors could post some videos of Curry doing some garbage defense too, what's sad is when a writer that possibly has extra access to the team vs just reg press goes out of their way to pull this ****. I'm surprised this has lasted as long as it has, maybe he got upset with having to report on Houston vs Dallas..
Is this thread redirecting to espn for anyone else? I can't see the vid and just get taken to an error page on espn
I think Calvin has publicly shown fandom for certain players and a bit of favoritism towards Dallas teams. At least that's what I've gotten from his Twitter for non-Rocket related things. Being critical is fine, I welcome it. But ESPN tends to create narratives and run with it. It's a bit underhanded to assign a reporter that has ties to a rival team to be the go-to representative of ESPN "Houston." He basically controls the perception of the team and the city. Imagine if ESPN assigned someone from Boston to be the beat writer for ESPN New York.
Didn't he write that story about Harden being a diva and then acted on Twitter like he didn't know why there was that perception...i remember thinking "didn't you just write.."
He's just not a very good writer, period. His pieces are filled with vapid analysis and awkward turns of phrase.
ESPN days are not numbered and no they are not out to bash the rockets...last year the rockets brought it upon themselves. The media does not have a secret plot to make houston look bad, so just stop.
I some what agree with this. The thing is they just don't acknowledge when we or any team has any succes. They only cover the California, New York, Boston Chicago markets tbh. And I get it those cities win a lot have championships in all major sports and frankly are the biggest media markets. But yes it is annoying because outside of having Lebron on your team or winning the championship the rockets or any Houston team for that matter is never going to get any major love from Espn.
Much as I hate Ethan Sherwood Strauss, I'd probably love him as the Rockets beat writer. He at least shows that he cares about his writing and does research. This guy, Calvin Watkins, is a hack. It's not even that he's not a pro-Rockets guy - it's that he's so shitty at his job. ESPN could probably create a bot that churns out better work than this guy.
ESPN will probably outlive all of us, but their peak days are behind them. You can tell by the layoffs they have already had to make to their highest paid television and internet personalities. This is all a result of the cord-cutting generation. As sports leagues increasingly take their programming off the main channels and make on-demand direct-to-consumer viewing a real life entity, ESPN will suffer even more. They will no longer be the arbiters of "taste" in the sports world, of who the mass man roots for or against, of who wears white and who wears black in the sports narrative, of which cities are cool and which cities suck. ESPN will become the next generation's newspaper companies. The revolution will not be televised.
Can someone post a sample of this reporter's horrible writing? Maybe I didn't pay much attention, but it seemed like typical beat writer content to me from what I remember. And Harden's defense was horrible last year. If he provided video evidence of that, then he was fulfilling his journalistic duty of reporting the truth, as far as I'm concerned.
We are well aware of harden's defense. the issue is when we win a game or harden goes for 45+. The only highlight he would put on his articles are of harden's few defensive miscues. Which happens to every player on every single night. On every single offensive possession, a defender makes a mistake or loses his man. We don't see any other player nitpicked like this. Especially not by their own team reporters.
