Columnist roysj writes that he has mixed emotions 'as a former employer, The New York Times, shuttered its sports department.' 'I cherish those Times years, which offered me a foundation for writing and reporting that remains invaluable to me today.'
Enter your email to subscribe to Roy’s weekly newsletter, The Barbershop:The New York Times, shuttered its sports department.Last year the New York Times spent $550 million on The Athletic. From that moment, sports at The Times was going to change. Today, itI began there in 1981, three years out of college, lured by the man who remains one of my industry mentors,.
I was hired to cover the New Jersey Nets, who are moving from Piscataway to a new arena just across the Hudson from Manhattan. They had a new coach in the mercurial Larry Brown, and young rookies Buck Williams and Albert King, a nucleus for a team that would be as intriguing as any in the league over the next few years: Michael Ray Richardson, Otis Birdsong, Darryl Dawkins. NBA old heads know those names.
They were good—good enough to stun the Dr. J/Moses Malone-led defending NBA champion Philadelphia 76ers three-games-to-two in the best-of-five opening round of the ‘83-84 playoffs. Infamously, Julius Erving, after the Sixers won game 4 in New Jersey to tie the series and send the deciding game to Philly, said in the locker room: “You can mail in the stats.” Yeah, he did.
My years covering the Nets also happened to coincide with the emergence of an era lead led by two distinctively different yet similar stars: Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Thus, I had a front-row seat to witness a critical transition that brought the league from years of dangerous darkness when it was widely criticized by white fans for being “too Black.
My tenure at The Times included many significant stories in other sports. I was covering the U.S. Open when Martina Navratilova, then the most dominant woman in sports, saw her 61-match win streak end on the racket of her doubles partner.
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