The Write Way to the NBA

Four members of the NBA media (Chris Broussard, Chris Ballard, K.C. Johnson, and Seth Partnow) share their favorite D3 memories

This is Part VII of the “Quintessential D3 Moments” series, our favorite D3 stories from the many interviews we conducted while researching Pipeline to the Pros (pre-order now!). If you enjoy the post, please share with others who might like it. Thank you!

Chris Broussard at an Oberlin alumni game - photo from Oberlin

So far in this space, we’ve covered former Division III basketball players who have carved out careers in the basketball world as coaches or executives. Today, we wanted to highlight another group of D3 hoopers who either hold or have held day jobs in the NBA’s orbit - the sportswriters. 

The indefatigable Fox Sports 1 television personality/radio host/podcaster/writer Chris Broussard first covered college basketball during his time at Oberlin College in the late 1980, but you might have trouble finding some of his articles in the school’s archives. “I probably wrote about five articles on the basketball team while I played during my four years at Oberlin,” Broussard says. “At first, I wrote under my byline, which is crazy because I was covered in the story too. Then I started using a pen name.”

Writing under a pseudonym to disguise the fact that you’re covering games you also played in? Yeah, that’s a quintessential D3 experience. If anyone else is imagining Broussard in the Oberlin locker room holding a recorder, asking a question in a deeper-than-normal voice, then tossing off his press pass, shuffling a few steps to the side, and giving an answer…you’re not alone. 

Like many D3 athletes, Broussard had the luxury of pursuing his post-college dreams while still playing sports. “We knew we weren’t going pro,” Broussard says. “Everybody was studying, hitting the books, trying to make sure they got ready for their career after college. It was cool. It didn’t dominate.”

Longtime Sports Illustrated writer and acclaimed author Chris Ballard had a similarly positive experience with D3 sports. After an unsuccessful attempt to walk on to the team at D1 UC Santa Barbara, Chris Ballard transferred to Pomona College, where he overlapped with future NBA head coach Mike Budenholzer and future NBA executive Jason Levien.  

“I showed up and these guys didn’t know much about me,” Ballard says. “In some ways, you’re assuming someone transferring in might be considered a threat. But it was the opposite. It was like, immediate community, immediate poker night, ‘Let’s hang out.’”

Ballard’s personal Pomona highlight was an in-game dunk in a blowout win against Cal Tech. The slam was preceded by three or four steps, and is caveated with three or four asterisks. 

“I got a steal, and I’m a one foot jumper so I’m kind of getting my steps down,” Ballard says. “But I got them too far out. So I’m just like ‘Oh, I’m just going to do this anyway and really, really hope the ref doesn’t call traveling.’ It wasn’t even really that close. It was pretty obvious with the extra step. But I made the dunk. So I could then say that I dunked in a college game, even if it was against Cal Tech, in a JV game, and I traveled. Talk about the caveats you can have on a dunk. It was all worth it.”

Ballard ended up dropping basketball and joined the varsity track team as a high jumper. “You could have an experience where you were a student, an academic, whatever your identity was in school, and still do sports,” Ballard says. “It didn’t need to be your whole collegiate identity.”

In the mid-to-late 1990s, when Michael Jordan and the Bulls commanded much of the league’s attention and sportswriters frequently descended on Chicago, former D3 players were well represented in the media pickup runs. Broussard, Ballard, and Bulls beat reporter K.C. Johnson kept the glory days alive and sank a few jumpers before throwing on their suits and reporting on the greatest team of all time.

Johnson found that his background as a player at Beloit College helped him navigate the massive personalities and egos that donned Bulls jerseys during the dynasty years. “Having been in locker rooms my whole life,” Johnson said, “I just feel very comfortable dealing with and connecting with players. That just comes from an internal confidence from having played the game.”

If only Jordan and Pippen knew how Johnson’s Beloit College career ended. 

“My last play in college basketball, we made the D3 tournament my senior year,” Johnson says. “I had four fouls. I inbounded the ball and turned it over. Threw away the inbounds pass. I tried to take a charge, got dunked on, and got called for a block. So it was turnover, foul-out to end my college career.”

Of course, Johnson has plenty of fond memories as well. Similar to many of our previous respondents, they revolve not around the games, but around the time between games. Like the van rides.  

“Our frickin’ coach would get lost even though he’d been driving to the same schools for forty years,” Johnson said. “We’d be taping flashlights to the roof of the van playing euchre in the backseat and our coach would be yelling at us to either go to sleep or to study. You’re barrelling through the Midwest in these vans. That’s the quintessential D3 experience to me. Two vans, one driven by the head coach and one by the assistant.”

Carleton College grad Seth Partnow, The Athletic’s basketball analytics whiz, took a unique route to a job covering the NBA. When his daughter was born, he wanted to pick up a hobby he could do at home. So he started a website and began blogging about basketball, with a special emphasis on the tracking data that had just been released to the public.  

“People at teams read everything,” Partnow says, “and some people at teams read some of the things I wrote, liked it, sort of had those conversations, and eventually the Bucks offered me a job. I never really had a formal interview per se for the job with the Bucks, but there were several times over a couple year period where there were conversations that one might term an interview but they were never described thusly.”

Partnow served as the Milwaukee Bucks director of basketball research from 2016 through 2019 before returning to his blogging roots. Like Ballard, Partnow played basketball for only a portion of his college years before switching to another sport (for Partnow, that was ultimate frisbee). But even limited hoops experience at the Division III level went a long way in establishing his bona fides around the Bucks facilities. 

“I think having experience playing, even minimally at a D3 level, helped me more once I was there in so far as being good in staff pickup games and better than your average analytics guy I think helped with credibility,” Partnow says. “You get the intrinsic, ‘Ok, nerd has a jumper.’ Maybe it shouldn’t matter, but it does.”

Partnow’s favorite D3 basketball memory came after he had traded his basketball shoes for ultimate frisbee cleats. Carleton traveled to Augsburg for a conference tournament game, and Partnow made the trip to support his former teammates. Augsburg’s best player was future Los Angeles Laker Devean George, who, during his college tenure, grew well over half a foot and blossomed into one of the greatest prospects to ever play at the Division III level.

“The Carleton students that were there tried to start taunting [George] by chanting ‘CBA! CBA!’” Partnow remembers. “And it’s like, ‘Dude, even if he’s going to the CBA, do you know by how much he’s the best player in Division III?’”

Partnow, Broussard, Ballard, and Johnson are prime examples of how the D3 experience can uniquely position athletes for their dream jobs. Thanks to the lessons learned on and off the court, they found a way to make it in professional basketball. (And not even in the CBA.)