Matt Giles | Longreads | October 2017 | 7 minutes (1,769 words)

When Erik Malinowski was wrapping up the proposal for what would eventually become Betaball: How Silicon Valley and Science Built One of the Greatest Basketball Teams in History, he happened to spot the latest cover story for the New York Times Magazine and his heart nearly stopped. The feature, written by Bruce Schoenfeld in March 2016, detailed the rise of the Golden State Warriors through the guise of its front office and the team’s devotion to analytics and data, which sounded much like the book Malinowski was trying to pitch.

“I was gutted at first,” says Malinowski, a prolific freelance writer who also hosts one of the most insightful and interesting sports writing newsletters. “I thought [the New York Times Magazine] blew up my spot. The story’s framework was in parallel of what I was proposing with book.” But then he took a step back and realized there was so much more to the rise of the Warriors (which has won two of the last three NBA titles) than could be covered in just one magazine piece. It was proof of concept: “If the New York Times Magazine put a story on the Warriors on the cover, then this is a thing people want to read about.”

One year later, Malinowski’s book is a deep-dive into not only the fraught history of the Warriors’ franchise, a once proud team at the NBA’s founding that had been reduced to a bumbling and mismanaged group of castaways, but also a team that had essentially redefined the NBA. Sure, having a player like Steph Curry, a once-in-a-generation talent with endless range, helped fuel its rise, but Malinowski also details how the Warriors helped to drag basketball into the modern age—and, in the process, transformed into an annual title contender.

I recently spoke with Malinowski about the ordeals of writing his book, whether this type of embedded sports journalism is still possible, and why the Warriors represent not just a shift in playing style but also political and societal awareness.

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As a beat writer, there is a familiarity with a team, especially while reporting a book like this. Were you concerned about a lack of transparency because the players and coaches might not feel comfortable with your presence?

I had been around the team for the preceding three seasons, and then I also wrote about them sporadically going back to the spring of 2011, when no one was writing about the Warriors, so I wasn’t too concerned. I had a lot of reporting built up over the years, and I knew I had to round out the reporting as I covered the team last season. All of that went pretty much as I expected.

How did the Warriors’ front office react to the news of the book? I can’t imagine they were thrilled, even if it was good publicity.

The team was at a detente. They knew I was writing a book, but we didn’t talk about it out loud, so even if they didn’t officially participate in some way, they were upfront with me. ‘This is not something we will make difficult for you to accomplish.’ And they could have made it extremely difficult. They could have revoked my credentials at any time.

David Halberstam set the template for embedded sports reporting with Breaks of the Game, which is arguably one of the greatest sports books ever written. Did that concern you when you were pitching this book? To do something that had already been accomplished by one of the greats?

Right after last season, after the Warriors blew the finals in game seven, I am sitting down to get some words on the page, and I offhandedly began rereading Breaks of the Game, which was the worst thing I could have done. As a first time book writer, I immediately came away thinking ‘Why am I doing this? I made a terrible mistake!’ I am never going to get the level of access I need, and this book will never be as good as Halberstam’s. For about a month, I thought this would be a foolish endeavor, and then I snapped out of it, which allowed me time to do more reporting and research.

Did you feel that the various ins and outs of what you were reporting would be at the mercy of the beat writers who cover the team daily and would be able to land various scoops? And would that have been detrimental to your book?

There are only so many things you have control over. You need to do the best job you can in whatever ways you can do it. External factors will come into the process later on, and wreak havoc with this thing you created, but there is nothing you can do about it, so in a way, it is liberating. My strength as a reporter is not in the scoop-y stuff. I like to talk to people and find out about things people didn’t know before. I won’t drop a bomb like Woj [ESPN reporter Adrian Wojnarowski]. My strength relies on bringing context to things, and doing the deep dive research, which comes from being a magazine fact-checker for seven years.

That’s where my strength as a reporter lies. Not doing a notebook dump and throwing everything I find in there. It’s about the proper level of context, and I think I achieved that with Betaball without losing the sense of immediacy.

Much of the Warriors’ strength is derived from the team’s use of technology and algorithms that—though now commonplace across the NBA—still give the team an edge. Did it surprise you when someone like [Golden State general manager] Bob Myers didn’t speak with you? I got the sense from reading you didn’t speak with him—is that right?

It was not unexpected. While the things we are talking about don’t have geopolitical ramifications, they are proprietary. Multiple billions of dollars have been spent to try and gain a competitive edge. And they are not going to give that away for free.

In the past few months, the Warriors, including Curry and coach Steve Kerr, have been very vocal about the state of the country’s politics, and about some of the societal inequalities that continue nationwide. Was that part of your proposal from the beginning? Or was that added only after you started reporting?