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Sugar_glider's avatar

I've personally become less interested over time in Zach Lowe because his role has changed since he first came on the scene as a thoughtful basketball commenter. As he's become more popular, he's gotten more sources, more relationships on the "inside," and all that information hasn't improved his analysis or (IMO) his appeal. It's kind of done the opposite. He's more interested in being a "knower" than being a "sharer", which is an issue when you're supposed to be a journalist. For example, he's happy to tell you that he KNOWS what happened to Andrew Wiggins, but he's not going to tell it to you to protect his sources. He wants you to KNOW that he's heard a lot of trade scuttlebutt, but he won't go into detail about it for you, the basketball fan. He'll share some things that he thinks will happen, but he wants to make sure you know that none of it is sourced, like we're to seriously believe he's not had conversations about it with anyone in the league. As an analyst, he doesn't really criticize players or teams - I'm staring right at his Joel Embiid and Luka Doncic coverage - which makes any praise he has less impactful because it's so indiscriminate. When I listen to his podcast - happening less and less recently - I find myself wondering afterward why I spent any time at all on it since I rarely hear a counterintuitive or interesting thought come out of his mouth. He seems to possess all this information - and he'll remind you again and again of this - but it has no value to anyone but him. I find it to be a really annoying trait and it makes a ton of his content incredibly milquetoast. I know I'm likely in the minority (and, yes, he seems like a really nice person) but I'm not surprised that they're moving on because I'm tuning him out and I'm actually a big basketball fan - I just get my insights from other people at this point.

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Ian Godsey's avatar

The first thing to remember, if you regularly read Zach Lowe and if you subscribe this substack and especially if you are reading this specific comment, you are not the normal NBA viewer/customer who ESPN is focused on.

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