The great basketball writer Jackie MacMullan recently stood at the front of a hotel ballroom in Tampa taking questions after collecting a career achievement award from the Association for Women in Sports Media.
I was in the audience that day. Initially, the questions focused on her early days in basketball as a reporter. But then someone brought up a series of stories MacMullan had written for ESPN last summer on NBA players’ mental health problems. MacMullan called it “probably the most important thing I’ve ever done,” and a nearly 10-minute discussion followed.
The package featured All-Stars Kevin Love and Paul Pierce, among others, discussing their struggles with depression and anxiety. Other big names backed out at the last minute, concerned about the stigma of mental illness and whether it might hurt their ability to land a good contract in free agency, a point MacMullan emphasized when we spoke after the session ended. She said a league source called the problem “rampant.”
It’s not just the NBA where athletes’ struggles with mental health are under scrutiny, either. As the director of the John Curley Center for Sports Jounalisn at Penn State University, I’ve noticed that mental health and sports is a topic gaining attention among athletes and the journalists who cover them.
Wanting to explore why it’s happening now and why it matters, I talked to some experts in the field.