Sam Amico is a self-professed basketball junkie whose lengthy career in sports journalism now finds the Akron, Ohio native covering the NBA for Sports Illustrated. Yes, that Sports Illustrated.
The one most young men and woman growing up in the 1980s and 1990s waited patiently by the mailbox for, only to quickly tear threw the pages and digest the stories within.
While magazines and subscriptions aren’t what they used to be, SI is still one of the biggest players in the sports media game, especially for those gifted with the ability to tell a tale via the written word and not relying solely on hot takes and video footage.
It’s fitting, as Amico grew up near an NBA city during a time when the Showtime Lakers and the Boston Celtics dominated the scene. There was Larry and Magic, Kareem and Robert. The Bad Boys in Detroit came into their own and a man named Michael took the league, and the world, by storm. The young Amico didn’t have a chance.
Played the Game
He grew into a 5-foot-9 sweet-shooting guard at nearby Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy in nearby Cuyahoga Falls. He parlayed that success into a two-year stint playing for Northeastern Christian Academy across the street from Villanova in Pennsylvania.
While there, he set the school record for most 3-pointers in a game, a mark he’s quick to point out lasted all of there seasons. The school later combined with Ohio Valley College in Parkersburg, W.Va. to become Ohio Valley University. Amico’s old coach, Bill McGee, stayed on board to coach. Amico, meanwhile, turned his attention to his own career.
Originally wanting to get into coaching, he quickly realized that he could utilize his best assets, a great sense of humor and even better gift of written gab and combine that with his love of basketball. He quickly said hello to the world of journalism which initially took him out west to Wyoming and a one-man show at a paper in Rawlins, Utah.
The Report
He still feels his proudest moment came two years later, when he wrote a 14-part series on the history of the Wyoming state basketball tournament while working at a paper in Casper. Additional stops including the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Observer-Reporter in Washington, among others, eventually landed Amico at the Sports Editor at The Intelligencer in Wheeling. Amico experienced success with both the readers and staff. It’s here he began his well-circulated Amico Report, a free newsletter at the time dealing with all things NBA. It was that digital newsletter that eventually catapulted Amico to his current path. He’s also a published author, with his first book, “A Basketball Summer” hitting the shelves in 2002, later followed by three more: “Dribbles of Champions,” “The Ultimate Basketball Trivia Book,” and ‘Three-Ball: The History of Basketball’s Three Point Shot.”
He later lost his job in Wheeling due to an incident he takes full responsibility for and worked his way back north to the Cleveland Area, eventually catching on with Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio. It was there Amico experienced a renewal not only in his professional life, but also his personal one. Lessons were learned, but Amico found happiness again with a second marriage, as and his new wife brought together their blended family and eventually added a third son to the mix soon after. The Amicos now live in Medina, Ohio. Naturally, basketball is still a big part of their lives.
What got you into sports journalism in the first place? You did seem to gravitate to basketball more so than other sports. Was that just an extension of your playing days and your love for basketball as a whole?
It was indeed my love of basketball that led to my career choice. I never set out to become a writer. At first, I wanted to be a coach. I envisioned myself coaching high school basketball while teaching health or typing or some other fairly mundane course. But I also loved to write. I did it in my free time, just as a hobby. My best friend is several years older and became a sports television anchor, and I’d sometimes tag along with him to work. I was fascinated that you could make a career out of this. I loved basketball and writing always came easiest for me in terms of schoolwork. My roommate in college would stay up all night sweating over his essay for English class and bring back a C-minus. I’d crank something out in an hour, maybe less, and always aced it. (As an aside, he got considerably better grades in every other subject.) So, about my junior year of college, it finally dawned on me—why not put together my passion for basketball with the one thing I seemed to do moderately well? When I figured it out, writing about basketball as a career became my mission.
You eventually became an editor at multiple places. But neither was in a basketball-heavy community in terms of the pro game. Did you have a sense deep down that you’d need to get closer to home, or to a major market, to get to where you wanted to be? Was leaving the Wheeling paper a blessing in disguise in that respect?
To be honest, when I took my first newspaper job in a tiny little Wyoming town, I had no clue what I was doing. I showed up for the first day of work and was immediately told to interview the high school swimming coach. I didn’t know anything about swimming, had no idea what to ask. I could barely swim myself. That was the start of a long journey of covering things I had very little knowledge of. In Rawlins, I was a one-man staff. I shot my own photos, wrote 3-5 stories a day, designed my own pages, came up with all the headlines and at times, even helped deliver the paper. Little did I know, it would be great practice for running my own website close to 20 years later. But all the while, yes, I dreamed of getting to an NBA market to cover the NBA. I wasn’t obsessed with it, but it was always in the back of my mind, pushing me to work harder and get better. I never had a sense that it would actually happen. My goal once I started writing a lot was to just to do the best job I could and let the chips fall where they may.
Eventually, when I landed in Wheeling, I decided to start an NBA email newsletter as a hobby on the side. Writing an email cost nothing and receiving it cost nothing. So, I made nothing. But if I remember correctly, we eventually started running it in the sports section, too. That little newsletter is the very reason I am where I am today, in my 12th year covering the NBA on a full-time basis. I will always be grateful for my time in Wheeling and I look back fondly on it today. Ownership, management, the editors and my co-workers allowed me the freedom to write what I wanted and tackle some interesting topics. It was there that I developed a strong work ethic, and it is one I still try to carry into my assignments today. I learned in Wheeling that there was no place for excuses—just do the job. When I lost my job there, deservedly so, it reminded me about the value of integrity. It was an important reminder and lesson I have not forgotten.
You’d previously written “Basketball Summer” and also kept people up to date with League knowledge via the Amico Report. But once covering the NBA was your full-time job, what was it like being that involved, especially given the Cavaliers were your hometown team? As a journalist, you remain impartial, but growing up a fan, was it difficult to keep the two sides of you separate at first?
Actually, while I grew up outside of Akron, I liked the Cavaliers but never considered myself a huge fan by any stretch. Sadly, I lived and died with the Browns, a lost cause of a franchise that remains near and dear to my heart today. I just happened to like the NBA as a total product, growing up in what I still consider the golden era of Magic, Michael and Larry. By the time I finally became a full-time NBA writer covering my “hometown” team, I had learned how to be impartial. That’s one of about 200 reasons why it was a good thing I didn’t get the job straight out of college. I had so much to learn about journalism. I had to spend time in the minors before getting to the big leagues. But I also realize that I am sort of an extension of the fans. I didn’t celebrate in print when the Cavs won the title in 2016, for instance, but I did write with more enthusiasm and the stories were just more positive by nature. It’s always easier to write about a winner. Quite honestly, though, it makes no difference to me. I try to cover the Cavs and NBA with as much fairness and passion as I did when I first got the job. The success and failures of the local team honestly have no bearing on how I approach the job, or even my enjoyment of the job. Sometimes, it’s even better when they’re bad. When LeBron James is in town, so are about 100 other reporters. When he’s not, I’m generally one of about five or six full-time people covering the team.
You wrote for both Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio, and on occasion got to do some on-air analysis and interviews. How did that differ from what you were used to and did your public profile blow up further from that? What was the experience like for your sons and wife to see dad on television, talking basketball? Could you foresee a career path that leads to commentary either courtside or in-studio on a full-time basis?
I’ve been doing television since 2010, less now than most years, but still some. It’s quite a bit different because unlike writing, you don’t have time to sit down and assemble a thought. The lights come on and you just … GO. You also don’t have a delete key, so whatever you say is out there for forever, especially now in the day of social media. The first time I did it, I was terrified. The second time, I was also terrified. The third time, I didn’t even think about it. It just felt natural. My best buddy in TV gave me some good advice: “Look two places, either at the person you’re talking to or at the camera. Sit up. Smile. And for the love of Pete, put your hands on the desk and not below it.” That was a start. I have also done some stand-up reporting for TV, in which I look at nothing but the camera, hold the mic with one hand and still have no idea what to do with the other.
As for my public profile, yes, it did go up a notch locally. The biggest differences I noticed were that total strangers occasionally began asking me for selfies at Cavs games (as opposed to just yelling that I’m a hack), and mostly, the players and coaches and front-office types began calling me by my first name before I had even introduced myself. Earned or not, there’s a level respect that you’re granted with simply being on TV. That said, it’s always been my least favorite part of the job. You have to worry about your hair, about your tie, about how you dress and about not doing natural things like sneezing or yawning. But they ask me to do it and promise a check, so I shut up and make the best of it. It’s never been what I set out to do, though.
My family thought it was cool at first, but those days are long gone. Unless I take them to the studio, they don’t watch. Sometimes even then I’ll look over at them during a commercial break and they’re staring at their phones. The good news is I have a toddler who is fairly animated when I come on the screen. I figure I have another three or four years before he too finds that part of my job to be old news.
Finally, like most kids into sports, you probably grew up reading Sports Illustrated. It was the go-to for sports reporting and feature stories. Working for them now, does the image you might have had in your head match the reality and how has the Amico Report morphed into Amico News in terms of content and readership?
Well, let’s put it this way — when I call a potential source for a story and say I’m from Sports Illustrated, they almost always give me a lot of time, say more interesting things, and are overall just more polite. Between the time I worked for FOX and SI, I launched my own NBA website. Fortunately, my time at FOX provided an audience, and enough of those readers followed me to AmicoHoops to turn it into a full-time job. I actually started to earn more on the website than I did at FOX. Problem was, when you factor in TV work, I was putting in 12-14 hours a day on the website during the season, and that included weekends.
It’s always nice to run your own thing and be your own boss. I did it for four years with a surprising degree of success. But Sports Illustrated made the decision easy for me. They basically wanted me to move what I had been doing on my site and put their brand behind it. I can also say I have never had more readers. That’s not because of anything I’m doing or because I’ve suddenly reinvented the wheel. It’s because everyone knows the name “Sports Illustrated.”
Overall, I really like their modern direction. They have moved away from the longform pieces (though plenty still remain in the magazine), and have assigned or are in the process off assigning a writer to every team in the country — NFL, NBA, MLB, the NCAA power conference programs, and even NHL I believe. Readership has increased significantly for SI across all platforms. Not long ago, I started to suspect the brand was dying, but it feels like it’s become a player again.
My role is actually to cover the entire NBA, while also focusing on the Cavs, much like I did for FOX before they pivoted to video-only in 2015. It’s a great role and one I’ve been comfortable in for at least a decade now. Mostly, I feel very blessed to be where I am in my career and am extremely grateful for each step along the way — from Wyoming to West Virginia to back where I grew up.
