Media MonsterNBA

Whoever Breaks The LeBron Story Will Be Instantly Famous

In “Movers and Shakers”, we track who’s made dramatic leaps (or who’s fallen off) on our Power Grid. Today, we evaluate the effects of NBA Free Agency and also take a look at the voices of the world’s most exciting event (No, not Free Agency).

LeBron James (#2 in News Buzz), Chris Bosh (#5 in News Buzz) and Dwyane Wade (#6 in News Buzz):

No explanation needed.

If you have visited ESPN.com or SI.com within the past few days, watched SportsCenter within the last 12 hours (Don’t you love the LeBron category on the Bottom Line? If so, just like every individual Bottom Line–i.e. Tiger or Favre–you’ll learn to hate it.), or done neither of these but own a decent degree of basic intuition, then you understand why this is the case. NBA Free Agency has long been understood to be the summer’s biggest story (not named the World Cup), and, naturally, as we’re finally here, the biggest players are getting the most attention.

Welcome to the first day of (Copyright Trey Wingo) “Lebronakkah.” (Note: Jewish bias. He also dubbed today, “Lebronamas” and “Lebramadan.”) Our guess is the hype lasts longer than 8 days.

Stephen A. Smith (#5 in Twitter), Ric Bucher (#9 in Twitter), Marc Stein (#14 in Twitter), and Chris Broussard (#36 in Twitter):

As we’ve spoken to, Twitter has played a huge part in keeping Free Agent reports up to date.  And thus, it makes sense that the guys who bring us these reports currently have some of the most-followed twitters.

But, of course, these guys aren’t just tweeting out.  They have made appearances (at least Stephen A., Bucher, and Broussard have) on a variety of different TV shows–without a doubt, they will continue to do so–and, obviously, they have, without fail, continued to write free-agent-related articles for their respective sites.

It has been this versatility that has contributed to their ubiquitousness (Seriously, these guys are everywhere.  Every time I close my eyes, I hear Broussard saying “Chicago, Miami, New Jersey, and, to a lesser extent, New York are all in play…”) and, consequently, their upward movement in Overall Ranking for Writers.

Martin Tyler (#5 in News Buzz), Ian Darke (#7 in News Buzz), and John Harkes (#9 in News Buzz):

For the majority of World Cup matches, at least one of the voices that has struggled to speak over the cacophonous buzzing of the vuvuzelas has belonged to either Martin Tyler, Ian Darke, or John Harkes.  These men have undoubtedly been the most relevant TV announcers over the past month (Martin Tyler will be so again in the summer of 2014), and for this reason, we are not surprised to see them all ranking in the Top 10.

Alas, their standing will likely fall after July 11th.  And, alas, Harkes and Darke may very well fall back into obscurity for most Americans. But at least, for lovers of the Champions League and–probably a larger percentage of people in the US– for lovers of FIFA ’10, Martin Tyler will never be too far away.