Q&A: Jason Concepción, Wizard of the Viral NBA
He’s in DC this Saturday as part of Pop-Up Magazine at Warner Theater .
Pop-Up Magazine is a place where people who don’t fit in, do. The genre-smashing publication welcomes documentarians, photographers, social media personalities, science writers, musicians, food writers, journalists and anyone else who can captivate an audience with a short article, presented live.
Jason Concepción (☕netw3rk) fits the bill.
Bill Simmons, founder of The Ringer, became popular for his relatable columns that took sports writing to a fan’s perspective. Concepción, who writes at The Ringer, takes that even further with an approach that looks at sports, especially the NBA, from a pop-culture lens. He is somehow able to talk about the NBA as if it is a reality show; reality shows as if they are dramas; and dramas as if they are sports. He has asked “Who Won ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’?” and spilled “deep Thrones knowledge” on the YouTube series “Ask the Meister.” He stanned for “Naked and Afraid XL” and took the group house Google Doc to new heights with the NBA Desktop series.
The NBA, for whatever reason, is ripe with these dramatic storylines. Just this week, the league’s two best players over seven feet tall demanded trades, kickstarting the trade-rumor cottage industry and leading one supersized ex-Knick to tweet that fans need to “STAY WOKE,” as if the treachery of NBA owners is comparable to, uh, the context in which that phrase originated. Even DC alone has seen its share of high basketball drama: Gilbert Arenas pulled a gun over a locker-room card game. Andre Iguodala denied he owned Northeast strip joint Stadium Club. Dwight Howard has been accused of using intimidation and harrassment to keep an ex-boyfriend quiet. And that’s ignoring the years of on-court drama as the Wizards continue a Sisyphean struggle towards the top of the East.
We emailed with Jason ahead of his Pop-Up appearance to discuss how Wizard fans can cope, what social movements can learn from sports, and who he’d take a long walk around the Mall with.
Read on to get to know Jason, and use discount code 5SUPPORTER to knock $5 off each ticket for 730DC subscribers.
Will your Pop-Up Magazine performance be anything like NBA Desktop (the weekly video series on The Ringer)? Can we expect a Google Doc?
There will be no Google Doc! But the subject is sports-related, though in a more existential sense. That’s vague, I know, but I’d hate to spoil anything.
The Wizards are essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place with a cap sheet of a contender and a roster of a…not contender. Ted Leonsis, the owner, has said he won’t blow the team up to tank. If that’s not an option, and being good isn’t either, how do Wizards fans survive the next few seasons? You’re a Knicks fan, right? You should have ideas about this. (Related: Where are Ernie Grunfeld’s horcruxes?)
The outlook for the Wizards is DIRE. And I say that as a Knicks fan in the wake of the team trading my favorite player, their budding young star Kristaps Porzingis, basically for cap space while trying to spin it to make it look like his fault. ANYWAY.
For Wiz fans, I would suggest self-care, in whatever form is most useful. Long walks; Netflix binges; yoga; read a book; whatever. You can’t control the fact that Ernie Grunfeld inexplicably has the most secure job of anyone seemingly in the world. Ernie could commit a murder and he’d still be running Wiz from his prison cell. It’s mystifying. Maybe he has incriminating evidence on Ted. Honestly, who knows.
Why is the NBA such a fertile ground for supplementary creative content? (lol this just sounds like fanfic) Did media change, or did the game change?
Media changed, but the NBA was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the changes. The NBA has always marketed its stars first and its teams second. There’s a famous picture of the old Madison Square Garden marquee with “MIKAN VS KNICKS” blaring out in block letters. So that player-centric approach set the stage. The introduction of the Internet and later social media provided the medium by which fans could sate their interest in their favorite players and players could express their personalities outside of the team brand. The NBA has also, wisely, been relatively open-handed (compared to the NFL and MLB) about fans sharing content on social media.
Our thing with 730DC is sticking with local news and politics, but we’re constantly dealing with national politics — you can’t escape it here — and one of the most annoying tropes, especially in media, is treating politics as if it is a sport. And I hate that. But…is there anything politicians, or maybe people who care about creating radical political change in this country, really should take away from sports?
Perhaps that ideologies are constructs which even the most fervent proponents can and do amend according to context. For instance — team owners are, by and large, right-leaning believers in letting the free market decide. AND YET our three major sports all utilize some kind of revenue sharing model by which the highest earning and spending teams subsidize their less fortunate, less profligate fellows. Players in our three major sports (who are both the employees and the product) enjoy the support of robust unions. I find it quite interesting that men like Stan Kroenke and Dan Gilbert and Dan Snyder happily take part in businesses utilizing socialist revenue sharing structures in conjunction and collaboration with robust unions. It almost seems like those ideas can work.
What convinced you that you wanted to perform/present with Pop-Up Magazine?
The tenacity of my producer and editor Haley Howle.
Quick Hits
We’re a newsletter, got to share the newsletter love — what’s the best NBA newsletter?
The NBA subreddit.
Who’s your favorite Wizard, and who should be a Wizard fan’s favorite Wizard?
Dumbledore/Bradley Beal.
What Game of Thrones house would Dwight Howard belong to?
House Dalt of Dorne. Their coat of arms is lemons strewn across a purple field.
If I share an Uber with John Wall, I should…
Make him pay.
Which Pop-Up Magazine peer’s performance is most likely to blow us away?
All of them.
If you could take anyone on a long walk around the National Mall, who would it be?
AOC.
What is the One Weird Trick I need to dominate my rec league?
Learn to Eurostep.
Thanks, Jason!
