Chad Ford's a Bum

[GMyrberg]

Getting away from the draft per se for a minute. The draft talk is just making my head spin at this point. Wanted to tie this into one thread. Ford's a bum. Much of what he says is wrong, proves to be far off base, or just appears made up. I read over 50 responses to Ford reporting that Belkin killed the Stoudamire deal. Not only does that not make sense, it seems pretty hard to sign off on a deal that Phoenix had never heard of (okay, I can imagine afew scenarios where both could be true). The point is that Ford consistently manages to take a shot at the Hawks, even if he's not really talking about them.

I know the easy answer is "Don't read his stuff." A couple items here. First, I know I'm not adding an awful lot to the discussion, who here thinks highly of Ford? Show of hands. Right. Next, we're all hungry like the wolf for draft information and we are following that addiction to whatever source it leads us to. I'll read less Ford in a couple weeks and almost nothing at all during the season. The last, and biggest, reason is that as one of the main NBA reporters on ESPN, I think he does a big disservice to our team's reputation (even if we deserve a lot of it) and his reputation as a "reporter." I can't help but see that such constant sniping has the potential to marginally hurt the marketability of the franchise in several areas. I don't want to give too much credit to Ford's influence, either. At that point, it's more about ESPN's influence than Ford's. I always figured he defined himself as some kind of journalist. You would think ESPN could do better.

Here's an example. I like Chris Mortensen for "inside" info from the pros. Here's why. First, he tries not to dump on people/franchises, even though you can tell his real opinion many times. That's good journalism since you may have to come back and talk to those same folks later, as well as reporting seems to be about keeping your opinion out of it. Also, sometimes just reporting the facts is damning enough without piling on. This is what gets Mort good information on a constant basis.

Ford says we should take Conley with 3. Guess we'll see how that works out. The Darko praise says it all for me.

[Boondocks]

They should have kept Dave Aldridge. Hollinger and Simmons are alright but not the rest of epsn reporting.