When Jackie MacMullan joined the Boston Globe as an intern in the news department, in 1982, the N.B.A. was just beginning its ascent to major national—and, later, international—popularity. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird had entered the league a few years before; CBS was still airing some playoff games on tape delay. MacMullan did more than witness the league’s growth; she became one of its most influential chroniclers. She was a beat reporter, covering the Boston Celtics, in the eighties, then a writer for Sports Illustrated and a columnist for the Globe, and finally a columnist and writer for ESPN. (She also appears frequently on a number of ESPN television shows.) She has co-written autobiographies by Larry Bird, Geno Auriemma, and Shaquille O’Neal, and, with Bird and Magic Johnson, she wrote “When the Game Was Ours.” Last year, she co-edited, with Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores, “Basketball: A Love Story,” an oral history of basketball based on the ESPN documentary series of the same name.

In 2010, the Basketball Hall of Fame awarded her the Curt Gowdy Award, which is given to members of the media who have made significant contributions to the game. She was the first woman to win it. (She remains the only woman to have won the print award; last year, Doris Burke was a recipient in the electronic category.) Earlier this year, she became the first woman to win the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sportswriting. I spoke with her recently, in Boston, about the course of her career, the evolution of the N.B.A., and the state of sportswriting. We later talked on the phone. Our conversations have been edited and condensed.

I know you have a good story about how you got into journalism.

I went to Westwood High School in Westwood, Massachusetts. We had all these great sports teams for the girls, and the women’s basketball team hadn’t lost a league game in—I think it was seventeen years. And, every time I picked up the local paper, they never wrote about the girls. I used to stomp around the house complaining about it. Finally, my dad said to me one day, “Why don’t you stop complaining about it and do something about it?” And I’m, like, “Well, maybe I will.” And he said, “Well, why don’t you call the sports editor?” So he stood there and watched me. I called the guy—his name was John Wall. He smoked a cigar. He was an old-school newspaper guy. And, of course, all of a sudden, I lost my nerve. I was like “Uh, I’m kind of wondering, maybe . . .” He said, “Look, I don’t have a big staff and so I don’t have anybody do it. Do you want to do it?” And I said, “Well, I’m fifteen.” And he said, “Yeah, well, if it stinks, I won’t run it.” So that’s how it happened. I would write a story out longhand and drop it at the front office at Westwood High School, and he’d come pick it up and put it in the paper. I still can’t believe it. I only wrote about the girls. I refused to write about the boys. Even if there was a good story, I just wouldn’t do it.

After college, you got a job at the Boston Globe. Did you have a sense of yourself as breaking ground as a female sports reporter?

I didn’t know how few people had done it before. I’m being dead serious. When you’re twenty-one, and you’re at the Boston Globe, you’re just so happy to be there. I noticed at the games when I was the only woman, but I never noticed it in the newsroom.

Was that a kind of blessing?

The blessing for me was that my name was Jackie MacMullan. Everyone thought I was an Irish-Catholic guy from Southie. I got to write under a cloak. I don’t think I realized at the time what a gift that was, because Boston’s a really tough town, and very set in their ways. And yet they embraced me, and once they did they were, like, “Oh, my gosh, she’s a woman.” And then they were, like, “O.K.”

What’s tough about Boston in particular?

Boston is—once you become one of them, and they decide you are one of them, they will protect you and support you in the most emotional and strong and incredible way. This idea that it’s this tough sports town . . . When they embrace you—oh, my God—they hold on so tight.

There are stories about Red Auerbach, who’d run the Celtics for decades by then, blowing cigar smoke in your face when he met you—and assuming that you were the coach of the cheerleaders. How do you withstand that—and then have the generosity to give people the time to come around?

Red is an iconic figure. I thought, well, I’ve just got to make my way with this man. I thought, If I can get Red Auerbach to come around, I’ll have everybody.

That could make someone resentful, having to make that effort just because you’re a woman.

I never felt that way, because I was so young, and so grateful to be at the Globe. I remember my first day—no one told me what time to come to the office. I sat there for an hour and a half before anyone spoke to me. I had no idea what my job was. So, after that, I just thought, O.K., whatever happens, I just have to deal with it.

Back then, practice was open to reporters. When the Globe finally gave me a chance to do the beat, the Celtics had two-a-days. All the writers went in the morning, because that’s when the access was. I went to both. I was terrified I was going to miss something. And, by doing that, I got very big stories early on. Then I thought, “O.K. This is the gig. Make sure you’re there, all the time.” It’s really very basic. But for me it was motivated by an absolute terror of failing.

At what point did you step back and say, you know what, I’m actually good at my job, I’m not going to get fired tomorrow.

Have I done that yet? I’m not sure I’ve done that yet.

The thrill of our business for me, in the early going, because I really wasn’t a very good writer, was breaking stories. That was just the biggest rush in the world, having something that someone else doesn’t have. This seems like the Dark Ages now, but I can remember having stories and getting up in the morning and running to the 7-Eleven to see: Does the Herald have it?

Social media has changed that.

Now when I have something—because I don’t use Twitter—I either give the scoop to someone else or try to hang onto it in the hope that I can get it into a story before someone else does. It doesn’t always work.

You wrote a five-part series on mental health in the N.B.A. One way to insure that it won’t get scooped is to make it too big to contain in a tweet.