Profile story on Dejounte Murray

By Jack Austin

For this blog post, I chose to read a profile story written on San Antonio Spurs starting point guard Dejounte Murray. The story was titled ‘Can Dejounte Murray be the next great Spur?’ and was written by ESPN Spurs beat writer, Michael C. Wright.

I chose this particular story because I tend to get into profile stories more and I have been following Dejounte Murray this season. I like that the writer chose to profile a player who has received little to no coverage thus far in his young NBA career.

While reading this article, I learned that in order to profile an athlete like an NBA player or a different high-profile sport, you have to craft the story carefully because so much information is available already about them. Especially with a type of story like a more drawn-out feature piece, you have to find the proper balance of drawing your readers in early, while being careful to not give away all of your story before you want to. In this article, I thought the writer did a good job of leading into the story of Murray taking over reigns at point guard by setting the scene of the Spurs’ injury-riddled season. I thought this helped the story flow nicely.

I also learned that you have to include a lot of background and outside detail in order to help set the scene for your story. For example, in this story, the writer went into detail about Murray’s childhood connections who have remained present in his life, what draft day was like for him and how he sees his current role on the team. That is detail which requires both background research and good interviewing skills to cover.

I felt like the writer could have chosen to focus more on the aspect of Murray’s game which is all about him not getting ‘starstruck’. I found it fascinating that at age 20, Murray was not caught up in the glamor party that is the NBA. He says he just goes out and plays with guys like Steph and LeBron, but just sees them as other players who have established themselves already. I found that mindset to be very interesting, especially for such a young kid, and would have liked that to be covered a little bit more.

Story: http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22551995/can-dejounte-murray-next-great-san-antonio-spurs-nba