‘I want people to subscribe and discover something new every day’
NBA writer Tom Haberstroh on his big scoring drought story, using the Substack network and what’s next
After he sparked one of my favorite NBA rabbit holes in recent memory, I sent
this email the other night:I don’t want to give you, like, a 17th thing to do this week. But I think the trajectory from this to this is fascinating. We should talk about it.
Tom and I were colleagues at ESPN. Now he’s over here running
, as well as . He also was the first person to publish real info about the NBA’s sudden scoring drought that began before the All-Star break. It sparked conversation and commentary on Substack, big podcasts and national TV broadcasts, while generating some interesting public statements from the league office.I think there’s a lot to learn from this story about reporting, data analysis, running your own subscription content business and the state of sports media. Here’s an edited conversation of Tom and I diving into all of that.
Alright, going back to your first inkling that something was up with NBA scoring, tell me what happened here.
I cover the Portland Trail Blazers on their TV broadcast. I was suddenly working games with final scores with both teams scoring in the 80s and 90s and I was, like, “That’s weird.” I mean, that was a halftime score earlier this season. We had 140- and 150-point games and then Luka Doncic had 73 and Joel Embiid had 70 — that was all anyone could talk about. Suddenly no one was talking about it, because the scores were down.
The absence of something is kind of hard to pick up on. Usually when things happen and you can grab onto them — like a 73-point game from Luka — that burns in your mind. Whereas when that stuff doesn't happen we just kind of lose interest or we don't realize that it's slowed down. And then
, who is a sports betting expert that I used to work with at ESPN, he posted one night that under bets have cashed more than 70% of the time since the All-Star break, meaning that Vegas is even behind this trend of scores being down.So I went into my databases and started doing some research and found a pretty seismic change in the level of scoring around the time of the All-Star break, and that it likely had to do with officiating. Normally I might sit on this and watch what happens. But on Substack, I just run it. If you’ve discovered something that it seems no one else has discovered, just get it out there, and you can update as it goes on. What I realized is that this independence where you can write what you want if you feel strongly about it, it really liberated me to take hold of this story before someone else did.
So you publish this first story saying, “Hey, something’s going on here.” What happened next?
A bunch of people in the media told me, “Wow, I've noticed this too. I didn't realize the numbers were that drastic.” And then coaches and general manager types in the league started reaching out to me saying, “This is big. Thank you for writing this. We felt like something was going on, but until we saw your numbers it didn't really drive it home.” And that's when the light came on. If the teams didn't know that there was some sort of officiating change, that certain fouls were not being called as often, but they were kind of having this inkling, too. That told me something bigger was going on. What exactly that was, I couldn't really identify in the numbers.
But it started to get a life of its own. Kevin O’Connor talked about it on his podcast at The Ringer.
wrote about it, which got picked up by Ryen Russillo and Bill Simmons. Zach Lowe and Kevin Pelton were talking about it on ESPN’s platform, and then if you turned on a game with a national audience of millions of people, Doris Burke was talking about itIt became this mystery. I think everyone was kind of feeling it, but until someone puts it in front of you, maybe you just don't know how to interpret what you're seeing. And this is what I want to do on The Finder. I want people to subscribe and discover something new every day. That's what my favorite Substacks, my favorite writers and my favorite podcasters do. I'm tuning in to feel like I'm ahead of something. That I'm getting an inside look at a world I care about and that I'm going to be one of the first people to know about something. And that kind of magic, that special feeling, that rush of like, “Oh my God, can you believe that that player is doing that thing? That's a new thing.” I want people to discover a new thing like that every time they read my Substack.
In your second story, you provided more data analysis, but you also added insightful reporting. The league told
that there had been no directive to officiate games differently, indicating this was nothing more than a statistical anomaly. You published responses from skeptical NBA coaches and executives. How does that reporting side of things, which is extremely valuable and difficult to do well, fit into your work as an analyst?It’s born from the Heat Index, when LeBron James joined the Miami Heat. There were a lot of analysts at the time, but not a lot of analysts who also had a Rolodex, who talked to people within the league or talked to players to figure out, “Is this thing real?” Who bounced things off of LeBron or Erik Spoelstra, the head coach. I took pride in the fact that I wasn’t just a data analyst and I wasn’t just a reporter. I was blending those two sources of information to either augment my numbers or discredit my numbers and bring a different perspective.
Those two things had historically been in silos — you’re either a reporter or you’re a data person. Finding the intersection is really where I think the magic happens. When I get on phone calls with coaches or GMs, it’s kind of hard to explain what I’m seeing in the numbers until they see it for themselves, right? So that initial article was a way for them to read the research and get it in full. And then we could get on the phone and they could say, “Woah, here’s what I think about that.”
Alright, then on Friday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that points of emphasis memos shared with referees and team officials earlier this year, which focused on offensive players hunting fouls, “are believed to have contributed to a recent decline in scoring” — essentially confirming that, yes, your instincts and reporting were right. Something happened here to cause the decline.
I’m curious: How do you think this story would have played out differently if you were working at a legacy publication like ESPN when you found this info?
At a legacy brand, there are certain gates that you have to pass through to get sign-off on a story like this that might make it more difficult to get it done efficiently. And by the time that it's all ready to go, it might be too late and you might get beat.
For me, that efficiency is really important. If I feel like I have something and I feel good about the data and I feel good about my writing around it, I'm gonna post it. And that quickness serves my readers and that independence is really powerful. That’s not to say that major outlets don't provide a lot of value in vetting a story and getting multiple eyes on it, but sometimes there is also value in speed. There is value in getting this before someone else gets it. I feel like a lot of times I would have more anxiety at a major outlet about getting beat because of the slowness of getting the story from start to finish. And at Substack, being able to hit publish at my own speed is very alluring.
I was thinking about this hypothetical for myself, too. If I had been your editor at ESPN and you came to me with this data, I would have wanted to help make the piece as sharp and as tight as possible, while not actively slowing you down. But after I’m done with my edit, two copy editors read it and send questions, a deputy editor probably reads it and suggests a new structure. And then other people are going to jump in and say, “Wait, is this a news story rather than a column? Is there space on the homepage? Should this run on Wednesday instead? Someone else is working on something similar … can you just send them your data?”
Exactly. I realized I wanted to read something that told me what’s happening in the NBA before everyone knows what’s happening. There was a gap there. And I was frustrated that I wasn't able to find a place that told me about what's happening in the league before the mainstream was talking about it. So I decided to do it myself. This story is kind of the representation of what I want The Finder to be. I found something that no one else had discovered, as far as I could tell, and it changed the way people looked at the game in real time.
You originally paywalled both of your pieces on this topic, before unlocking one of them. Your podcast appearance with Ethan was free. How do you make that free vs. paid call on something like this?
I think I might not know for another six months what's the best way to paywall or unlock a post, but I do think there's value in serving my paid readers. The reason why I unlocked the most recent one is because there was about 48 hours where my paid readers got it exclusively. And I want them to feel loved and appreciated like that, because they're supporting me and I want to feed that energy back to them.
But there’s also this push and pull. Like, Kevin Pelton gave me a shoutout on Zach Lowe’s podcast. And that was very nice of him. If I made it free, I think it’s more likely that other people would just say, “Hey, I read this somewhere.” But because I paywalled it and you had to go to the source to know what that story was about, I feel like that gives anyone at Substack a little bit more ownership over a story.
There's this balance of, like, do I want to get aggregated or do I want to drive subscriptions? Maybe those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Maybe if I made it free, more people would aggregate it and read it and subscribe. But maybe it just gets aggregated with a quote and no link on a big account and there’s nothing driving any new readers to my Substack. Clearly I don’t have the perfect answer or thesis there.
No one does, right? We’re still figuring this thing out. I get asked these kinds of questions all the time, and I have to tailor the answer to the story, the writer and the audience. But I’m interested, from your perspective, how useful the Substack network has been in helping distribute and advance a story like this. Ethan and Stein were on it with you.
has a great, probing piece with a different angle. This felt like a thing.I mean, even though you're independent at Substack, you are part of a team. So a lot of times, if I just love what I read from someone like Ziller, I’ll quote it and cross-post it. And I do that because I really loved it. But also it's a signal to him that, “Hey, I'm trying to do the same thing here. You're doing a great job and I want to learn from you. Like, high five.” And same with
. I thought his NBA season preview was outstanding and I had to write about it and I just wanted to give him a high five and say that was great.I really like that about Substack. There is a certain kinship and community that is really cool. And even though we're all independent and have our own subscribers, it does help to have that network and I want to lean into that a lot more.
Okay, last question: Your Top Chef podcast,
, just launched on Substack over the weekend. The first episode of the season starts on Wednesday. What should people expect now that this thing is over here?We've been doing this show for about six or seven years. It's been awesome. We love it. We've had some great guests on, but a podcast is just one medium and Substack offers multiple mediums to cover the show. There are things I can’t do on the podcast, especially with analytics for the show in an article or a data visualization. So
and I decided to create a home for all of this stuff, for a bigger and better Top Chef community, and for more dynamic coverage of the show.Top Chef is perfect for this because it is a sport. The contestants are athletes. They're sweating and they're making decisions in real time and we're second guessing them. It's a reality show just like sports. It's perfect for Substack. It's perfect for having different ways of covering an episode. I'm really excited about moving to Substack and making it so much more.
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Good insight, thank you
Always like hearing stuff from Tom — the mixture of source-based reporting and analytics is always a nice one to see, and all too rare (at least in the NBA world).