Jack McCallum was in the office last week, which occasioned the retelling of my favorite McCallum story, immortalized by our mutual friend and colleague Alex Wolff in Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure. It was 1999, and Alex was in Bhutan reporting for the book. He was greeted by Karma Lam Dorji of the country’s basketball federation in a state of near rapture: “Sports Illustrated! Do you know this Jack McCallum? His stories about the playoffs are so good, I think it is almost better to read his descriptions than to be there oneself.”
Two years ago, when the idea of a basketball-only website was first floated here, I suggested that it be called McCallum, a riff off the late, great site Grantland.