When our managing editor, Ralph Amsden, asked me to be a part of this project, my first thought was, ‘who exactly is this?’ After I figured it out, my second thought was that I wanted to use at least part of this digital playground to talk to some of the media members, athletes, broadcasters, oaches and content creators that I’ve always respected and found interesting. Thus ‘The Four’ was born.

The premise is simple. I asked my guest four questions. The first three can be wide ranging about anything, but the fourth question will always be about what the person truly believes.

For the first edition I wanted to catch up with a writer who, for better or worse, had a massive impact on my style. He’s the Ironman to my Spider-Man. Or, probably more apt, Steve Nash to my Goran Dragic. I’m speaking of Suns beat writer emeritus and former Heat Index columnist for the Arizona Republic, Bob Young.

His style and willingness to intertwine pop culture references and humor in his writing opened my eyes like the lead singer of Ace of Base in “The Sign”. He opened my eyes to the possibilities of the written word. Instead of a world with strict rules and lacking fun, Bob made writing entertaining and approachable. Unique and quirky. His Heat Index gave me, and other young writers in the Valley, the license to express ourselves in ways we hadn’t imagined before. That’s why I’m honored to have him as my guest. So, without further ado, The Four with Bob Young.

So, you’re already cheating. This is two questions, but that’s OK. I do it all the time.

There are a lot of great memories, and I could easily default to covering the 1992-93 season, and the NBA Finals and some of those great games. But my favorite memory about my time on the beat was probably just getting to know people during that first season.

I had met them, and interviewed them, but that was in a day when beat reporters had access to most practices and shootarounds. I also made it a point to stay in the team hotel for the first couple of seasons, partly to be able to find people if something happened but also so that players, coaches and staff saw my face.

I remember walking through a mall in Houston with Danny Ainge, just talking on background about the team and the season. I had some great talks sitting courtside with assistant coach Scotty Robertson, who taught me a lot about the game and had a million stories about the game and its characters. Same with Cotton Fitzsimmons, who used to address me as “Youngie” before diving into a critique of a story I had written, or sharing another story.

I got to know Lionel Hollins, who was also an assistant, which wasn’t easy. He didn’t particularly trust the media and was very guarded, but eventually I was able to gain his trust and he opened up for a lot of stories.

Of course, covering Charles Barkley was a blast, and I often say that he wrote more of my stories than I did. There were many times when I went into the locker room wondering what I would write about another game that was basically over before the fourth quarter started. Then Charles would do or say something funny or controversial or contradictory and I’d have a story.

And maybe the part of it I enjoyed most was getting to know Paul Westphal. He was the ultimate truth teller. I don’t think he ever lied or misled me about anything I asked him. If he didn’t think I should know, he’d just tell me he wasn’t going to tell me, or couldn’t answer. But he was a great story teller, and I think he had a special appreciation for writers.

Some of my colleagues in television will attest that they would sometimes ask how we got such good stuff from Westy because he would give them anything, And it’s true. He definitely saved his A material for writers!

So that’s a long-winded answer to the first part of the two-part question. As for the favorite story, it was probably when I broke the news that Barkley had been traded to Houston. Others have said they also had that story, but I’m going to dispute that. Everybody was chasing that story and there had been plenty of speculation about Houston and other teams, but I had it definitively and with the particulars – all the players and the picks.

Two memories of my reporting that night:

An assistant managing editor, who had been sports editor before that, called and asked if I was absolutely sure about the story. I told him it was rock solid. He said, “OK, I’m going to banner it on A-1, but if it’s wrong it'll be your ass, not mine.”

I think he was kidding.

The sports editor at the time was married to my competitor, who was a good, experienced reporter. The assistant working that Saturday night called her house to let her know the story would be in the Sunday paper. He got her answering machine because she and the hubby had gone to a Phoenix Firebirds game. He didn’t want to leave it on the machine, fearing the competition might hit “play” before she did. Nobody carried cellphones at that point. So he left something like, “Hey, give me a call if you get a chance. Just a couple things I wanted to discuss.”

She got home after the deadline and didn’t call. So she found out Barkley had been traded like everybody else did – when she picked the paper up off the driveway. As did the competition.

Mark Faller, who is the Sports Director at The Arizona Republic/azcentral still, was my boss. He gave several writers an opportunity to write it before offering it to me. It was pretty clear that they wanted something different, but really hadn’t defined it.

I think humor had always been part of my writing style, and I always tried to incorporate current events and pop culture into my writing. My approach, and I told Mark this at the time, was to just write it the way I wanted to write it, and if they decided that was what they wanted, great. If not, I was perfectly happy on the Suns beat.

Mark and my assistant editor, Jay Dieffenbach, were my guardrails. There were a lot of times when I left some scrapes and scratches on ‘em, too.

One of the things I also tried to do was make it visual. We had some really good graphic artists and page producers at the time, and I could go to them – sometimes at the last minute – and tell them I needed an illustration, or that I was going to do something based on a game board or an imaginary movie poster, and they’d turn that sucker around. It was great.

When we started moving to more of an on-line product, I pushed for a “virtual” page, which was not uncommon at that time. You’d see the entire page, and when you scrolled the mouse over an element on the page, it would pop up. It made perfect sense for that page, especially with the art-driven items that we did. It was such a good idea, but they never did it. They settled on a PDF of the page, instead, which sucked.

This one is easy. It seemed like such a good idea at the time…

So, there used to be a fan that sat a few rows behind press row at Suns games. He was obnoxious, possibly inebriated on most nights, and he would rail on Steve Nash. Constantly. Game after game.

He would also rail on the reporters who had written anything positive about Steve Nash. And was there ever anything negative to write about Steve Nash?

No.

So, to me, that’s the classic man-bites-dog example of news. How can a Suns fan – a season ticket holder – hate on a two-time MVP, who has revolutionized the NBA along with his coach, Mike D’Antoni?

So I asked him.

I honestly wanted to hear from the guy, and most of his complaints to me – and in his rants during games – were based on Nash’s defense. Thing is, a lot of players have defensive faults. Others have offensive faults. I think it was pretty obvious in those years that Nash’s defensive shortcomings were far outweighed by his offensive production, creativity, and genius.

About on a scale of Oliver Miller outweighing Elliot Perry (youngins can look them up).

Anyway, I wrote a column about him, let him have his say and then pretty much ripped him for it. I probably should have ravaged him even more, but I thought it was fair enough.

However, that was on a day when none of those aforementioned great graphics and layout people were working. We had somebody from news on loan, and he produced this ridiculous illustration that was worthy of Donald Trump.

It was a photo of Nash with what looked like a Snidely Whiplash mustache drawn on him with a Sharpie.

It was terrible, and made what had seemed like a pretty balanced column look like a cheap shot at Nash. Robert Sarver actually walked down the street to our building to yell at me, which was actually kind of funny because it was a frickin’ hot day.

I asked him if he objected to what I wrote or if he objected to the stupid illustration. He agreed the column wasn’t that bad, but questioned why I would even give the guy a voice. It was a fair question. I argued that it was newsworthy because, when do you ever hear of a team’s fan and season-ticket holder hating its most popular and accomplished player and doing it in such a public way?

But to be fair, I probably should have just ignored that idiot and not given him a platform.

I believe that, at a time when the media is really under attack, both economically and politically, journalism is going to be just fine. Sports reporting is going to be just fine.

I have seen it while working at Arizona State’s Cronkite School. The passion is there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the current environment spawns a whole new wave of journalists much as the Washington Post’s Watergate reporting in the Nixon era inspired a whole generation of journalists (like me).

The platforms are evolving, but people still want great content and they still want truth telling. As you know, I’ve done some freelancing for The Athletic the last couple of seasons, and I think that’s a good example of the business adapting.

I don’t know if The Athletic’s business model will work long-term or not. I sure hope it does. But I loved the product enough to subscribe before I was approached about contributing there.

It’s great content, and it’s packaged so cleanly without pop-up advertising or auto-play videos that, to me, are the scourge of newspaper websites. It’s a storyteller's platform, and there will always be a demand for that.

Greg Esposito is host of the podcast The Solar Panel. Former Senior Digital Manager and voice of the Phoenix Suns social media channels.

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