By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
The COVID-19 pandemic may have turned the sports industry upside-down and made our lives a challenge of adjustments and adaptations, but there was always John “Giggy” Maxwell’s Las Vegas Aces injury report to look forward to.
Most sports team PR emails are stunningly serious missives packed with statistics and player availability times on Zoom. But Maxwell’s injury report was not only an update on player injuries but also included an amusing note that the barber for Aces coach Bill Laimbeer was also out of action during the pandemic in the WNBA Bubble at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida an hour south of Tampa on the state’s west coast.
Laimbeer shaggy hair situation and rather gruff facial look inspired Maxwell to spice the injury report with a dash of humor.
“This year’s focus on Bill’s hair was obviously not planned, but it was certainly a gift,” Maxwell told LVSportsBiz.com Thursday.
One look at the Laimbeer locks and it was obvious to Maxwell that he needed to add Laimbeer’s barber to the Aces injury report.
Imagine opening your email from the Las Vegas Aces and getting treated to this hirsute display.
Maxwell’s Laimbeer hair reports in the press release became must-see laptop screen material. Take a look at this:
“I showed him the one with Megan Rapinoe on it and those different hair styles,” Maxwell said of the looks just above.
Maxwell didn’t limit the graphics to just hair styles, though. There were also beards.
As of Wednesday, though, Maxwell will have to come up with fresh injury report humor material because — and this is a shocker — Bay Boy Laimbeer actually got a haircut.
LVSportsBiz.com reached out to Maxwell to find out the genesis of the Laimbeer hair reports. Here’s Maxwell in his own words after a hair stylist tamed the Laimbeer locks:
It truly is the end of an era.
}:>)
I’ve been having some fun with our Injury Reports since the 2018 season. It started with our game against Connecticut on August 5 of that year. That was the game after our 25-hour travel nightmare to Washington where we opted not to play the game due to safety concerns.
For my Connecticut Injury Report I believe I wrote something like “No Injuries To Report … but everybody is tired … very tired.”
Last year I developed a bit of a schtick with the reports. For most of the year, we had no injuries, so it was just coming up with creative ways to show that we had no injuries—a photo of goose eggs. photos of coaches or players holding up the “okay” sign.
As I recall, one time when Carolyn Swords was out, I took a photo of her with a sad face holding up one finger to indicate that she was the lone person on our injured list.
These are really just efforts to use humor in my work to get people to read it. You will find things that I find humorous sprinkled throughout our Game Notes in the hopes that media will be more inclined to comb through them and learn about our story lines.
This year’s focus on Bill’s hair was obviously not planned, but it was certainly a gift. I was putting together the first Injury Report of the season, and looking for some inspiration on what to do with them this year.
I remembered my elementary school friend Dave Abner’s mother at one point coming up to me and saying, “John, I just want to express my condolences to you.”
I looked at her quizzically, and she dead-panned “Given the state of your hair, I assume your barber must have died.”
For some reason, a synapse fired at the start of the season, and I decided to add Bill’s barber to the Injury Report.
That blew up on the socials, and on television and internet coverage of our games, so I decided to keep going with that theme. We were running out of ideas, so thankfully, Bill finally got it cut today.