Adam Schefter may be the busiest man at ESPN, and he just got a tad busier.
After losing a host of notable personalities in 2016, ESPN is locking up the most recognizable face in the ‘sports insider’ biz. Altering signing a new 5-year contract extension, “Shefty” had agreed with ESPN management to take on some more roles at the world wide leader in sports, including:
• A new podcast tentatively titled “Know Them From Adam: The Adam Schefter Show” that will debut in January.
• Some NBA sideline reporting assignments during the regular season when Schefter’s NFL workload is light.
• A sideline reporting assignment (with Lisa Salters) for ESPN/ABC’s 2017 NFL Wild Card telecast.
Shcefter told the MMQB’s Peter King on a podcast recently who int he world he ended up in a position where he’s now doing sideline reporting for the NBA.
“The funny thing is, I never had any interest in the NBA,” Schefter told King. “Growing up I did. Growing up, I loved watching the Knicks and Bernard King, and I would listen to Marv Albert in my room on the radio, ’cause nobody’s better at doing a game than Marv Albert. But literally from the time I was a freshman in college, I lost track, forgot and couldn’t care less about the NBA. And then — I don’t even know how all this started — but a couple of years ago, I played these $3 DraftKings games, like, just started doing it.”
“I didn’t know a single player, but then you start studying the statistics like a stock chart almost, and you start programming your life. I did it the first night — it was right after the Super Bowl a couple years ago — my wife walked into our bedroom and I had an NBA game on. She looked at me kind of funny. The second night, she walks in the bedroom and looks at me kind of funny, an NBA game on. The third night, she walked in and looked at me like I had started smoking cigarettes. She said, ‘Since when do you watch basketball games?’ And I started watching when I started playing some of these daily fantasy games, and I love it. I kid around with some of our producers, there’s one guy at ESPN we make out lineups every day together. I say: ‘This is my cigarette break. I take a five-minute break and I fill out my NBA DFS $3 lineup.” It’s literally become one of my biggest hobbies. . . . I love it.
“And so ESPN is aware of my interest, and so they asked, ‘Hey, any interest in doing any sideline reporting for any NBA games?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes!’ Because as you know, Peter, when you get to do something outside your sphere of work, it really fills you with adrenaline. It’s energizing, it’s refreshing, it’s exciting. . . . So I’m just trying to figure out, juggling with football, when we can do this. Because I do want to stick that microphone into LeBron James’s face and ask him some questions about, ‘What were you thinking on that triple-double?’ ”
Interestingly enough, Schefter got into some beef with Golden State Warriors’ Draymond Green earlier this week, and it seems as if he’ll now be reporting on Green and co.
