Sports writing is a large genre of writing in itself which contains many different sub-genres within it like player biographies, season previews and recaps, free agency/trade rumor articles, coach firings and hirings, and individual game previews and summaries. To be specific, I will analyze the conventions and rhetorical features of the NBA game recap between the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers which took place on April 3, 2016. The conventions of this specific genre include an overall summary of the game including the final score, noting the leading scorers from both games, how each team is doing in the current season, details about one important play that happened during the game, and most specific to Lakers post-game reports: which celebrities were in attendance. Each of these conventions play their own role in achieving different rhetorical features which will be explored in this project builder.
In the post-game article published on espn.com, the author immediately mentions, “Isaiah Thomas scored 26 points and the Boston Celtics clinched a playoff berth... with a 107-100 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday night.” With this first sentence, the author directly achieves its purpose of informing their readers of the final outcome of the game, while mentioning the winning team’s leading scorer. This is done because most readers only care for the final score and who scored the most points which is conveniently why it is the first sentence of the article. The author then notes the leading scorer from the losing team, Kobe Bryant, who “scored 34 points in his final showdown with the Lakers' historic rivals, putting up the second highest-scoring performance of his farewell season.” This year’s Laker season has been nostalgic, showed in the tone of the article, because it is Kobe Bryant’s last of 20 years of playing before retirement.
The author then includes brief recaps of how each team’s season is doing to provide background on the greater impact of this specific game. Boston’s season has been more successful than the Lakers’ as, “Boston clinched a playoff berth while...the Lakers recorded a Western Conference worst of 60 losses this season.” This information gives context to the reader that this game is of no matter to the Lakers because they are incapable of making the playoffs while the Celtics qualified for the playoffs with this key victory. Another convention is seen as a key play was detailed within the article as they mention Kobe making a shot with 54 seconds left in the game but not being able to make two other shots in the waning minutes of the game. The inclusion of a key play in the article gives readers a feeling of more than just reading the post-game summary, they now feel like they know of the integral play that may have swayed the game one direction or another. Lastly, something that is almost never in a postgame report of any other NBA regular season game is a list of the celebrities that were in attendance. It included the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr., David Beckham, Casey Affleck, and Yasiel Puig. This would only be included in a Lakers recap because the Staples Center, where the game was played, is one of the only arenas that attracts celebrities consistently. It is also included because most readers of the article who are Los Angeles fans, also have an interest in celebrities, solely due to the fact they live in Los Angeles, home to many celebrities.
Your PB1A was easy to read and I could tell that you were interested in what you were writing about. You did a good job at explaining the conventions and their purposes well! Also, you made it so that anyone could understand what you were talking about regardless of their knowledge of sports. And lastly, you did a good job at tying all of the sports talk back into writing terms. My one criticism is that your sentence structure made it a little hard for me to follow what you were saying occasionally. Some sentences were a bit long, or listed too many items. I think it would be easier to read if you broke those up a bit.
ReplyDeleteI was really curious to read your analysis as to why and how this post-game report was written. The most interesting part to me was the first line of the report, I had never thought about why the first line always included the score and winner. It makes a lot of sense because that really is what most people read the articles for. I also thought it was cool how you explained this particular post-game report was different from the ones of any other games. Your examples of the rivalry, the novelty of Kobe, the location, and the famous people in the crowd opened my eyes as to how the specific report was just as hyped as much as the game actually was.
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