Press Pass | Andrew Greif of the L.A. Times Talks the Clippers' Free Agency Hopes, Jerome Robinson's Potential, and Going From Copy Editor to Beat Writer

Andrew Greif is the Los Angeles Clippers’ beat writer for the L.A. Times. Previously, he covered Oregon Ducks football for The Oregonian in Portland. He took the time to chat with The Big Lead about the possibility of Kawhi Leonard becoming a Clipper, how he worked his way up the ranks in the industry, and more. 

Liam McKeone: Hi, Andrew, thanks for taking the time to chat today. In your own words, describe your journey in sports media and how you ended up as a beat writer for the Los Angeles Times.

Andrew Greif: I’d say wanting to write about sports is something, for me, [that] goes back to fifth or sixth grade. I did some of the steps you’d probably assume to get here. I worked at my high school newspaper, went to the University of Oregon and went to the journalism school there. I worked at the school paper there, The Daily, as the sports editor and sports copy editor my junior and senior years. That allowed me to get a lot of connections in the local market. I would freelance for the Register-Guard in Eugene, and that really helped me get my foot in the door and kind of started it off. 

From college, I worked as a news copy editor at the Corvallis Gazette-Times in Oregon, then sports copy editor at the Register-Guard. I covered Oregon Ducks football at The Oregonian in Portland starting in 2013. The whole time, when I was out of college until I started writing at The Oregonian, I freelanced everywhere I could to just keep writing, keep that [writing] muscle exercising. I freelanced for Dime Magazine. That was an important one for me; it was basketball coverage, and it just kept me writing during a period where I otherwise really wasn’t. I wasn’t strictly freelancing, but I would write in the mornings, and this was for about a two-year period, I would write in the mornings from 8 or 9 am to 2 pm, then I would go work on the copy desk from 3 till midnight. I’d repeat that 4-5 days a week. 

In September, I started at the L.A. Times. I had been talking to one of their editors for a little bit, and last summer, he got back to me and said “we have an opening to cover the Clippers ,would you be interested?” I was obviously thrilled. It was wonderful because I had wanted to cover a pro beat for a while, and the NBA was the league I followed the most anyway. I really felt really fortunate. 

McKeone: How was your first year on the beat?

It was a really great year to start on an NBA beat because the Clippers were a great storyline from beginning to end. They had a good locker room of people who were good talkers and good characters, people you could sit down and have a conversation with, even off the record. The team itself overachieved, and their success led to a lot of good stories, stories about “How is this happening?” I was on this story from day one, and other people were kind of realizing what was going on later.

It felt nice to be in early on a story about a team that was overachieving. It was a really enjoyable season. The travel is a lot, and I enjoyed it, but it was also hard. I felt I had a lot of great leeway and freedom from my editors to write about whatever I wanted. From the team side and the Times side, I had a lot of leeway to write about topics I found most interesting. 

McKeone: In a recent interview with David Cobb from Commercial Appeal down in Memphis, he told me the biggest difference between a pro beat and a college beat was the amount of media access. As a fellow rookie beat writer who made the jump from college, do you feel the same way?

Greemf: That ems absolutely the bemggest demfference between the college beat as I knew emt and the NBA beat. In college, medema access ems doled out school by school. There’s no unemversal access. Whereas the NBA, obvemously, there are bemg rules governemng these sorts of themngs. The abemlemty to be around Shaem Gemlgeous-Alexander, for example. He was a rookeme thems year, I belemeve he was 19 or turned 20 duremng the season, and there were some days you’d see hemm or talk to hemm three temmes. There’s probably 19-year-olds on the college football team I used to cover at Oregon who you memght maybe get to talk wemth them once a week.

There’s a lot of access, and I think it leads to great stories. That was, by far, the biggest benefit of making the jump because the more time you’re around people, you get to know them better. From that, there are lots of little stories that will come out. I can definitely feel like I wrote better stories because of that access. 

McKeone: If that was the biggest benefit, what was your biggest challenge in your transition from college to the pros?

Greif: I think the biggest challenge is just, no matter how versed you are as a fan in the NBA, some of the structural things… The CBA [for example]. I mean, there’s just so many complexities to the league that just take time. Whereas in college football, although the NCAA rulebook is huge, there’s fewer things like that to worry about. That’s really the only downside, and even that is just something you work at. It’s nothing that can’t be solved, clearly. That’s probably the only difference. 

Five Big Things

McKeone: There’s always a lot of rumors flying every which way during NBA free agency. How realistic do you feel a Kawhi Leonard signing is for the Clippers?

Greif: I do think it’s realistic, with the caveat being only Kawhi really knows what he will do. There’s a lot of belief he could join the Clippers. The Clippers have made a good case all year, and I’m sure they’ll revisit the reasons why they think they’re a good destination in their meeting in free agency. But it’s still completely shrouded in secrecy, his decision. But along with Toronto, they’re the two strongest contenders for him right now. 

McKeone: If they can’t land Leonard or someone of his caliber, what would you consider to be a successful offseason for the organization?

Greif: They were a pretty good team this past season, and that was despite turning over their roster mid-season pretty dramatically. If they could re-sign guys like JaMychal Green and Patrick Beverly and essentially run it back, with maybe a mid-tier FA signing. Maybe not the household name that everyone knows, but still a good solid player. They’re not going to vault into the top of the Western Conference playoff race overnight like they would with Kawhi, but they’ll still be a pretty good team and a contender for at least a playoff spot next year, because the West is so wide open. 

Overall, my sense is that the Clippers don’t want to burn themselves unnecessarily with huge contracts that could compromise their future just because they have the cap space this year. I think they still want to look at this young core of Shai, Landry Shamet, even Montrezl Harrell and Jerome Robinson, and say “We want to make sure we don’t compromise our future building around these guys.” 

McKeone: A lot has been made about how far along the Clippers’ young players have come. As someone who had an up-close-and-personal view of their development, how did Doc Rivers allow his rookies to succeed?

Greif: I would say this: Shai and Landry were starters, essentially from the get-go. I think Shai, it took him 10-15 games to become a starter, and Landry was a starter by game two. So they were given every opportunity from the jump to be immediate contributors. The only thing that really held back Jerome, in my belief, was his foot injury. He had a foot injury that nagged him all year, and just didn’t allow him to get on the court very much until the playoff series.

Doc gave them a world of opportunities, and there was a lot of tough love. Sam Cassell, the assistant coach, has been really important working with Shai in particular, molding him as a point guard. I’ve never heard a complaint that Doc isn’t giving the young guys a chance, because those guys in the playoffs, I believe they were the only two rookie starters in the playoffs. They were counted on not as token players, but as legitimate contributors. 

McKeone: Speaking of those young players, what can Clippers fans expect from Jerome Robinson after an injury-plagued rookie year?

Greif: I think he’s going to be a player who’s really given the green light to shoot, a lot. I’d like to see what he can do off the dribble, too. He was the top scorer in the ACC his final year of college, and that was really something that intrigued Clippers officials before they drafted him. A lot of guys in that draft class said he was the toughest guy to guard in the ACC. 

He could be, at times his rookie season, a little more willing to defer to other players in terms of looking for his shot. By the end, what you saw was a guy who understood he had the ability to shoot and had the green light to go ahead and find his own shot. I’d like to see just what that extra confidence and experience can do for him. He’s got really good length defensively, but I’d like to see him in more situations defending on the ball or off the ball… but he’s definitely intriguing. Especially when you look at Shai and Landry, you feel like you have a pretty good idea for what they can become, but Jerome still feels like more of an open book. 

McKeone: I discussed the idea of the little brother eclipsing the big brother with Anthony Puccio last week in regards to the Nets and Knicks, so I’ll pose a similar question to you. With the Clippers being considered as a legitimate destination by some of the best basketball players in the world, are they starting to move out of the Lakers’ shadow as the second-tier team in Los Angeles?

Greif: I think so, but I’m also someone who has only recently moved to southern California. Once you get down here, one thing I realized is that there are such stark territorial lines draw, where people grow up as fans of one of the two teams and they just don’t root for the other team, ever. They’re set in their ways, Lakers or Clippers fans. Fans outside the market, I think, are a little more malleable in their willingness to see that the franchise is kind of changing reputations. 

With the Clippers, I think the Lob City years showed they were competitive, but what Steve Ballmer has done as an owner for almost five years… He’s restocked the whole staff. They hired up in great numbers. They brought in a really respected front office. They’re absolutely changing the way we think about the old Clippers. There seems to be a plan there, and I’m not sure if you could’ve said that ten, fifteen years ago about them. 

Five Little Things

McKeone: Favorite arena in the NBA?

Greif: For professional reasons, Memphis and Oklahoma City were great. The press sit so close to the action. I mean, you’re basically right behind the head coach of the opposing team. I love that because it allows you to hear more of the game, not just see it. It’s nice to hear what Doc is saying to the officials, to the players. You have a little bit more of a sense of how the game is played when you’re that close to the action. 

For personal reasons, Madison Square Garden was a lot of fun because I had only been there once before. It was a game with my dad when I was a freshman in high school, we scalped tickets and saw the game from the very top row. This was years ago, and [this year] was my first time back, so it was fun to go here and think about that memory. The press row seating there is near the very top, too, so I had a very similar feel. 

McKeone: Favorite interviewee so far?

Greif: Patrick Beverly. I most appreciated his willingness to talk when things were not only good, but bad. After he got into a little skirmish with Russ in OKC this year, he didn’t shy away from answering questions at his locker about what happened. When he and a fan got into it in Dallas in December, it was the same exact thing. That’s not always the case. A lot of guys will skip the locker room access after a loss or if things haven’t gone well, and Pat was always ready to talk, always willing to take questions. 

When he did give you [answers], they were always great too. Candid, always had time for me. I was always really glad when Pat was available to talk. He was great to deal with from the very first day of training camp, honestly. I introduced myself and he said “Well come on over here, let’s talk.” And it was like that till the very end, when I walked with him to the bus at Oracle Arena for a couple extra questions after the press availability and he was willing to talk. You can’t thank anyone more than that. 

McKeone: Go-to place to eat in Oregon?

Greif: This is like picking between my children… There’s a really reliable lunch spot that I always like to go to in Portland called Meat, Cheese, Bread. Loved it. Just loved it. Good sandwiches, great breakfast burritos, Not the first place people might think of in Portland, but I probably went there a dozen times in my four or five years and loved it. 

McKeone: What’s something about this job you feel like other people don’t know?

Greif: Well, that’s the good thing about NBA Twitter. There does seem to be a lot of recognition about how we do our jobs. There’s some transparency for the writers themselves, and interest and genuine curiosity from the consumers of our work. It’s a really well-informed fanbase about how a beat writer does their job. My interactions with Clippers fans have actually been pretty good on social media. 

This goes back to my college football days, but some people still believe beat writers work for the team. That’s a longstanding one. It doesn’t exist a whole lot anymore, but every now and then you do run into it, and that always made me scratch my head, because we’re pretty far along now. I thought it’d be pretty clear that beat writers from media outlets do not work for the team. But we see less of less of that, and that’s a good thing. From when I started in 2013 in terms of interactions with readers, I’ve seen that go down. 

McKeone: What’s something you wish you knew before you started in sports media?

Greif: When I was just graduating college in 2009, Twitter was in its infancy. There was, at the time, always the notion that its [just] newspaper writers would be behind the byline, and you wouldn’t be a personality. That has changed so much, and something technology has completely changed. Again, I think it’s for the better, because it holds journalists more accountable and there’s more interplay between the readers and writers.

But that’s just something that’s been so different. I remember being told in journalism school, you aren’t supposed to be the face of a story. Building your brand was never a thing that was taught in J School, and it’s been a fascinating change.