Grizz Gaming GM Lang Whitaker: “It’s Like Real Sports”

6:40-8:33: “I cohosted the Hang Time Podcast for NBA.com the last few years, and one of my cohosts was Rick Fox. And I was just sitting next to Rick the last few years as he was putting together what became Echo Fox, which is now one of the big teams in eSports. So I watched him as he kind of learned about it and figured out what he wanted Echo Fox to become and so that was sort of my introduction to this thing. But look, eSports probably had around 400 million viewers in 2017. They’re projecting revenues of $1.5 billion by 2020, so this is a huge thing. I think there’s probably a little bit of an educational curve here on this depending on your age; younger people are way more into this, it seems like, than a lot of the older people are… The fact that there’s a league and you’re competing against people, but it’s in a video game…that can be confusing to some people. I think really the best way to understand it is to watch it…There’s a winner and there’s a loser, and it’s like real sports.”

10:18-10:37: “To me, that was sort of an eye-opening experience, to see this guy, sitting there, talking into the air and realizing, ‘Oh, he’s talking to tens of thousands of people.’ So, it was interesting for me to come at it from that standpoint and to see really what the future holds for this thing.”

12:19-12:56: “Specifically to this league, I also think basketball IQ is going to be really important…Maybe you’ve got the best stick skills in the world, but you don’t understand basketball that well. To me, at least when I’m going to be looking at these players, I’m going to value basketball IQ very highly.”

18:58-19:26: “I don’t know 1,000 percent what kind of team we’re going to put together. I don’t know what kind of players are going to be available to me. And, look, it’s also going to depend on what draft position we end up with and who gets picked ahead of me and who gets picked after me and all that stuff. So I kind of look at this a little bit like as a journalist when you’re interviewing somebody: the worst thing you can do, to me, is to go into it with an agenda.”

24:36-25:10: “Actually, on that last road trip [Hang Time Podcast] show we did, we went to the 2K offices outside of San Francisco, and we played it [the game]. I’m good enough to beat Rick [Fox] and people like that who don’t play all the time. I feel like the things I’m really good at are like knowing where to run on a fast break and how to throw the pass and not hold the ball and not get points deducted from my grade from that kind of stuff. My basketball IQ is really good. I’m not the best stick skill person in the world, but I don’t have to be. I’m going to draft the people who have the best stick skills.”

*Interested in further reading? 

• Here’s Brian Mazique on what happens now that the NBA 2K League combine has ended.
• Last October, USA Today’s Alysha Tsuji wrote a piece on Rick Fox’s impact over at Echo Fox.
• Or if audio is your thing, check out Mike Ozanian’s interview with Fox for Forbes.