Chatting Hoops with Five's Mark Webster

Insider knowledge, a seer’s insight, or blind luck. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.

Way back, before the playoffs, before the season started, before the T-Wolves and Celtics appeared at the O2 even, Five’s Mark Webster predicted a Boston-Lakers final, on record, in a West End pub.

Remember, this was not long after Kobe demanded to be traded and long before Pau Gasol arrived from Memphis in that infamous midseason deal. (Yes, the one that immediately transformed the Lakers into title contenders; the one akin to Tony Parker swapping his wife for Pat Butcher.)

This was the first time I had met the man, so there I sat, bound by the rules of polite society, nodding, stroking my chin, trying to look interested, when all the statement warranted was manic laughter and condescending taunts along the lines of: “LAKERS? YOU FOOL!”

In any case, as the finals unfolded and I watched Webbo hold together his motley crew of pseudo-pundits while occasionally stumbling over his words, I thought back to that balmy London evening and couldn't help but marvel at his pick.

You see, I’ve long been a fan of Webster, but for all his passion, positivism and strange sartorial sense, I always thought his basketball credentials were a little shady.

Even he admits when he started out covering NBA basketball on Channel 4 in 1995, he was not brought on board for his roundball expertise but for his knowledge and understanding of America, particularly young black America.

“I’m a black music aficionado and fan and basketball always kind of fitted with that. I’m not a sports presenter, I was brought in for my cultural knowledge. I got America, and I got the right bit of America; not the fat bastard eating ribs out the back of his truck, with his baseball cap on, his mullet and cowboy boots. That’s not really my end of the market. I got the other end, the cool end, and that’s where I came from.”

Webster began his career in journalism roughly 20 years ago at the UK based urban music magazine Blues and Soul. His first basketball presenting stint was when the Houston Rockets came to town as part of a pre-season event at the Docklands Arena, back when Kenny Smith was still jacking up triples and Robert Horry could bend at the waist.

Sensing a newly found British interest in NBA basketball, Channel 4 picked up the rights to the NBA in a three-year deal and, in a bold move, invested heavily in airtime.

Along with then Slam contributors Scoop Jackson and Dave Lewis (and for a brief period Blues and Soul buddy Carlton Dixon), Webster hosted a game weekly on NBA XXL and fronted its sister programmes NBA 24/7 and NBA Raw, which featured news, results, highlights and lifestyle segments.

“It was unprecedented in terms of what Channel 4 did,” said Webster. “It was a massive, massive commitment to basically finance a dozen of us to go out and live in America.

“Our whole thing was selling the culture, not just the sport. We thought people would get basketball because they could hear it on records and see it in fashion. I spent so much of my time doing non-basketball stuff and talking to non-basketball people to try and build the idea of the world that surrounds basketball.”

During his time in the states, Webster interviewed a host of the game’s biggest stars, including Kobe, who he “got on alright with,” Shaq, who he “ had good relationship to the point where he would take the piss out of me,” and Dennis Rodman: “He was the strangest man I have ever met. Just a big, strange, weird fella.”

But the defining moment of his three years in America, and one of the “most amazing moments” of his life was when he witnessed game five of the 1997 NBA finals between the Bulls and the Jazz, a contest now simply known as Jordan’s “flu game.”

“The guy’s grey and green, those are the only colours in him. He hasn’t slept, he hasn’t eaten. Every time he wasn’t on the ball, he’s bent over clinging his shorts, trying to get air in his lungs. For him to score 38 points and will the team to victory was simply amazing.”

Sadly for hoop heads in Britain, Channel 4’s impressive NBA coverage stopped at three years. For Webster however, life on the road in a foreign country, away from home, his young family, and his beloved West Ham took its toll - three years was quite enough.

“What a job. Someone pays me to live in America and fly around to different cities, but it’s the weirdest thing that by the third year I had made up my mind it was time to finish it. We got out there by the start of All-Star and I looked at the schedule and I actually said out loud ‘Oh, fucking hell, not Miami again’ and no one should ever say ‘not Miami again.’ Clearly it was wasted on me.”

ITV went on to take hold of the NBA reigns on terrestrial TV and produced NBA ’99, a 30 minute Saturday afternoon magazine show presented by former Olympic athlete Derek Redmond (who, on many occasions, ran enthusiastically around the studio in a denim shirt and basketball shorts) and the doe-eyed hoops novice Beverley Turner.

But while Webster was out of the game for the time being, he still kept a watchful eye over things.

“ITV really changed the mix and said, right, we’ll assume no one ever watched basketball on 4 and start again and explain to everyone what basketball is, which I thought was a mistake, but that was their choice. I think the biggest sin of it though was the fact you never saw whole games. How the hell can you interest someone in a sport simply by showing highlights? People aren’t going to want to watch football just by showing goals.”

Webster was back on our screens presenting basketball in 2004, this time on Five, alongside John Amaechi who had retired as a player after being waived by the Houston Rockets in 2003. It was a strange pairing; the chirpy, talkative Essex boy and the succinct, softly spoken Mancunian, but it was obvious the two got on well.

“The geezer is an absolute diamond and the NBA were bloody lucky to have him in their league. He’s not some kind of strange guy from the Royal Shakespeare Company, he’s a good, earthy bloke from the North who isn’t prepared to let himself be stereotyped. ”

On Ameachi’s well documented dispute with former coach Jerry Sloan, his lack of playing time with the Jazz, being traded to the Rockets and eventual departure from the league, Webster believes factors other than his playing ability may have determined his fate.

“I’m interested to know just how much of what happened in John’s career was when certain individuals found out about his sexuality. I wonder how many times something else had been the reason, rather than the excuse. I have talked to him a lot about it but he won’t elucidate too much because he’s not particularly keen at pointing fingers.”

And when Tim Hardaway, who is now better known for his homophobic comments than his crossover dribble and clutch shooting, went on record to say “I hate gay people,” Webster wasn’t taken aback in the slightest.

“I wasn’t particularly surprised. I was surprised how little negative reaction there actually was. I don’t doubt that a high percentage of players were saying ‘can you believe we played with a faggot.’ I don’t doubt umpteen number of players said that, but such is life and John doesn’t care.”

While openly critical of some aspects of the league, its players and its coaches, Webster clearly loves the NBA in its current state.

“The NBA should remain a domestic league, a place where the cream of the basketball world go and play for seven months. What’s the fucking point of having an NBA team in Spain? It doesn’t make any sense?”

Webster has now been covering the league off and on for the past 13 years and during that time he has received his fair share of criticism from the basketball watching public. But for all the knocks on his perceived lack of hoops knowledge, you can’t doubt the man’s enthusiasm for the game.

“I’ve talked to so many fucking bird watching, train spotting individuals who can’t believe my lack of historical or statistical knowledge, but for me that’s not all important. I’ve been doing it so long, it’s part of the fabric of me, it’s a massive part of what I do. So much of my life has been taken up by basketball.

“I’ve seen hundreds of hours of it and been to over 200 games. I admit it, I’m not the one you come to for the game’s history and I don’t remember every player but I really do understand the sport, I really get it.”

Unlike Webster, I certainly didn’t foresee the Celtics and the Lakers squaring off in the finals this summer. Did you?