Describing to the world who I – Sepouh Navasartian – am, has never been easy. The one thing that I do know for sure, and that I tell everyone around me, is that my life revolves around sports. Ever since I was a little child, barely knowing how to speak, I was clustered to the TV watching my idols run around a pitch and executing the most fascinating moves known to man. It started with football – or soccer as Americans like to call it, a term I refuse to use – the sport I hold dear in my heart until this day.
It all started with Real Madrid. The club my father loves, and the club I fell in love with immediately. At that age, you don’t even understand why you support a team, you just KNOW that you’re immediately tied to them until death. However, like most kids growing up in that era (the 2000’s), my idol was Cristiano Ronaldo. The perfect example of a hardworking, complete footballer. By the time Ronaldo joined Madrid, I already wanted to be a footballer myself, like almost every kid that has a love for the biggest sport in the world. It is so easy to fall in love with that ball at your feet, wanting to perform those same tricks and skills we saw on the screen. I signed up when I was 7 and played up until my 14th. I loved the game, I truly did, but not everyone can make it as a pro.
By then I also developed a growing interest in basketball, and the NBA in particular. Kobe Bryant got me into the game, and I instantly knew that I liked this. I wanted to know more about this sport. Over the years, I started becoming a fan. When I was in Tampa, Fl. visiting my aunt for a summer, there was a kid coming up in the 2012 draft that I really liked. His name was Damian Lillard, and I started to follow him, and it didn’t take me much to become a full-blown Blazer fan. I already liked Brandon Roy, because he was my cousin’s favourite player, so I was familiar with Portland, but it was Dame that now had me staying up past 4 in the morning to watch games (other than All-Star Weekend or the Finals).
Now I was sure, I wanted to become a journalist. I commentated over my own games on FIFA or NBA 2K, I analysed the games I watched, I talked about it constantly with my father… I wanted to know everything and be able to talk about it all.
In 2019 I launched this website, Thecourtsidenews.com. I wanted to be a basketball journalist more than a football journalist for whatever reason. I also want to be a coach, but I’d rather be a football coach than a basketball coach. It’s weird, I have different ways of loving my favourite sports. But back to the topic: I finally thought it was time to begin writing. I started with a few articles here and there, and I was already studying to become a journalist. First I started with applied linguistics, but that wasn’t for me so I switched to the Howest in Kortrijk, Belgium. It was the only school that had specific courses for sports journalism in their journalism education.
A year later in 2020, I also created a Twitter-account (now X) to go with my site, where I’m very active. Some of my proudest moments as a journalist came from X. I got quote-tweeted by Damian Lillard when I tweeted the mind-blowing clutch statistics that he had. It was a moment of validation, that what I was doing, was trending the right way. I had interactions with Stephen A. Smith and Slam-Dunk champion Brent Barry follows me. It was necessary to be active on this platform, to gain more visibility and credibility. Recently, I also launched a YouTube-page, where I’m starting to explore how the platform works to finally begin producing content in video-format as well, something I’ve been planning on doing for a long time.
With my diploma in sight, I already gained a lot of experience in the work-field. I did my internship with Eleven Sports/DAZN, where I was responsible for a lot of NBA-related content. I was the admin of the NBA-page on Facebook, where I implemented some cool new ideas like the stat-template you see here, posted a lot of highlights (even after my internship during the NBA Finals) and news, but also had some creative say in the “Made in USA”-programs that were aired on TV during game-breaks. I was there from the March until June 2023, and it was a big learning experience for me personally, as it was the first time that I really got to work in the journalistic field and it was big for me that I got to work on the NBA so much!
I also work as a copywriter for my cousins company, BeMore Visuals. He’s an amazing photo- and videographer who creates content at an extremely high level. His eye for angles, lighting and surroundings is one of the best I’ve ever seen. I love to help him as a copywriter for his posts on Instagram, but also for his website. Be sure to check out his work!
Lastly, I wanted to mention that I recently finished my thesis, an extensive study on the correlation of positions and injuries in the NBA. It is a huge chunk of literature study, topped off with separate data-analysis of more than 18.000 missed games due to injuries. For the moment, there’s only a Dutch version, but an English version is coming very soon. Read it below!
Courtside 