'Too stubborn to give up:' Dan Marang carves his own path

Dan Marang had always dreamed of a career in sports. He had a deep love for basketball especially, proudly supporting his hometown Portland Trail Blazers and hoping one day to get a job covering them.

But then 9/11 happened, and his perspective changed. Everything else suddenly felt trivial. So that's when Marang decided to change course.

"9/10 I was going to business school. 9/12 I was enlisted in the Air Force,” Marang said. “My life took a pretty dramatic change and all that stuff chasing journalism, sports broadcasting, play-by-play announcer, analyst, all that stuff went on hold.”

After the Air Force Marang took advantage of the 100% tuition assistance, earning a degree in international business and working as a business analyst. But he still had the sports bug, a desire to work in the sports media realm he had always dreamed of. Fast forward over a decade and Marang now co-hosts a TV show, podcast, and writes all about the team he grew up loving, carving his own path. 

"There are two paths: straight line...and the other one is where you work your ass off,” Marang said. “You have to get a break somewhere, and you can make your own breaks by being really good or you can be like me and be too stubborn to give up.”

Marang started making his own luck with Blazer’s Edge, infusing his passion for analytics with basketball. He contacted Dave Deckard, the managing editor of Blazer's Edge, with an endorsement from the Washington Post's Ben Golliver, who Marang went to high school with. Soon enough, Marang was writing deep statistical analyses on anything and everything Blazers.

"The first three or four articles I wrote there were 4,000 words each or more," Marang said. “I mean, they were in depth features, and it was on, like, how Mason Plumlee operates spatially in the pick and roll. It was ridiculous.”

As ridiculous as it may have been, he garnered clout from it. He soon started the Blazer's Edge podcast and began to increase his social media presence. He was getting invitations to talk Blazers on local radio shows and was suddenly talking to GMs and NBA owners at Summer League. All of these things led to him eventually being pegged as the host for the Blazers Outsiders show on NBC Sports Northwest, a post-game show he hosts with Joe Simons.

“If I went back five years in time and told myself that I had my own TV show, I’d be like ‘Okay, the drugs have gotten really good in five years,’” Marang said. “I never would’ve thought that would happen.”

Marang finds great joy in doing what he considers the best job in the world. He still feels the toll of the work, especially on long nights where the Blazers lose to Knicks by 30 and somehow he has to make content out of it. But even then, he finds it hard to complain about being able to watch his favorite team play his favorite sport

For Marang though, his favorite memories aren’t what happened on the court as much as it is what happens off it. The culmination of people’s stories -- whether it’s watching Meyers Leonard donate $1,000 to a Miami Heat beat reporter whose house burnt down or live-streaming with Anfernee Simons -- are what really stands out.

“Just seeing these things come together over the years, I think those are the moments that mean the most,” Marang said.

For Marang, if there’s one thing he’s learned about this job, it’s to just be true to yourself no matter how hard it gets. If you can do that, things may fall into place.

“You have to be willing to accept that you may not make it as far as you want to in this industry but that you should cherish what you can get,” Marang said. “It’s one of those things where it’s like ‘You know what, this is real.’ I have done this and made this happen, and I did this because I was true to myself. And if I don’t ever go anywhere beyond this, I will still be happy with what I’ve successfully done, but only because I did it my way.”

Marang remains too stubborn to give up.