On Tuesday night, Giannis Antetokounmpo scored a career-high 55 points. He’s 20-33 on the field, 15-16 on the line, and made 10 bounces and 7 assists. It’s the kind of performance that people want to see and will search for on social media, Sports Centreor wherever prominent could be — or at least supposedly — be found.
Enter the ESPN app and website, the worst, most annoying resource from a company that is literally built to be DISPLAY HIGHLIGHTS DEAD. Have 10 videos from the game Bucks-Wizards, and five of them were by Giannis’ double-nickel. I guess it’s technically six, but the same two plays are just labeled differently. The other four clips are a Brook Lopez triple, a Bobby Portis jump, and a Pat Connaughton pitch and triple.
The piece de résistance, a two-minute reel dedicated to Freak .’s big night. Antetokounmpo takes 20 shots. There are only 48 minutes of actual live-action for each contest. All I’m asking is for ESPN to put as many goals in the clip as possible. That’s it.
Well, that’s not all correct. One of Giannis’ six videos is a missed pitch, which isn’t the highlight even if it were a poster. This proximal poster display trend started when Ja Morant was nearing the end of Kevin Love’s career and it needs to stop. We don’t slouch when we catch the ball with one hand, or a midfielder almost takes the ball home.
Once again, Antetokounmpo made 20 shots — two zeros —. That’s what people want to see. There are social media accounts dedicated to this. That’s what ESPN used to be, and they either vacated or neglected their corner, which is why there’s such a thing as Featured House. HoH has 38.3 million followers on Instagram. That’s 14 million more than ESPN. In fact, a lot of Bleacher Report bought this brand in 2016.
That was seven years ago, but ESPN’s algorithm still indicates their best course of action is to stomp a dead horse into an unrecognizable pile of meat and hooves for 17 hours a day.
While I understand that there are rights and content that prevent stores from sharing clips, Mothership hires people who have gone to school and have degrees in video editing. The world leader’s Twitter account didn’t even share a photo or highlight from Giannis’ 55-point night or Donovan Mitchell’s 71-point opening game.
Maybe I’m being too strict. Putting footage together takes time and manpower. Social media is its own business, and ESPN isn’t the only media company with an overwhelming online presence. Disney, the parent company of ESPN, seems to have spent more than it anticipated, so who knows what’s going on. There may be a herd of overworked mules in Bristol trying to assemble reels from multibillion dollar games every day while a whip guy asks why Stephen’s latest home video A. Smith has not yet been posted.
I mean, damn you have to watch 15 to 30 seconds non-skippable ads just to watch any ESPN video and when you’re using the app you have to literally restart the app to close the video player because there is no “X” button. It’s just a constant stream of ads, weak highlights and talking heads to see who can get over each other’s feelings.
Essentially, what I’m talking about is that the highlights are dying, and incidentally, ESPN is the leading cause of death.
