About The Hosts
The modern game of basketball dates to the 1978-79 school year: the birth of ESPN, the first sneaker contracts, and, of course, the legendary NCAA championship game between Larry Bird’s Indiana State team and Magic Johnson’s Michigan State squad.
That same year, Marty Dobrow was a starter for a high school varsity team in Great Neck, New York. (The team’s 3-16 record goes a long way toward explaining how Dobrow earned a starting position.) Dobrow also began his professional journalism career that year, earning $5/week from the Great Neck Record. Some readers believed he was vastly overpaid.
His playing days were numbered, but the journalism thing would continue. In time he would write a book about college hoops (Going Bigtime: The Spectacular Rise of UMass Basketball); craft stories for publications like The Boston Globe, some of which, shockingly, won national awards; and begin teaching future journalism professionals at Springfield College, the Birthplace
of Basketball. His writing and his teaching have, over the years, turned more and more to issues of social justice.
Dobrow’s set shot is outdated. His journalism game is decidedly old school. But his partner, Kris Rhim, has promised to do what he can to modernize Marty. No more abacus. No more manual typewriter. And you can follow his very occasional Tweets @martydobrow.
About The Hosts
Some of Kris Rhim’s earliest memories as a child had to do with sports. Every morning before school, he would watch ESPN’s SportsCenter, particularly to take in the top ten plays of the day.
His goal was to be on SportsCenter as one of the people making the highlights — throwing a flashy pass or catching an alley oop. After being cut from his high school basketball team he realized that those dreams might be far-fetched.
So he thought, ‘Why can’t I be like one of those guys at the desk at ESPN?’
It was then that Rhim decided he wanted to be a writer and quickly rose to sports editor at his high school newspaper. His love for sports writng continued and led him to winning awards from the Philadelphia Inquirer and gaining internships. Just a few years into his journalism career Rhim turned his interests to the intersection of basketball and social justice.
He still wonders what life would be like if he worked harder on his left hand dribbling skills, and to the disdain of his partner Marty Dobrow, you’ll often hear Rhim comparing his game to NBA point guards. You can follow him on Twitter @Krisrhim1.
