Nostalgic for an NCAA Tournament he wouldn’t see, Max Goren started watching old “One Shining Moment” videos on YouTube. It was a bad idea, the clips depressing him more than they restored him. After a while, the 18-year-old basketball fanatic shut off his laptop, and went to bed. He awoke on Saturday to another empty day, a college kid booted from his campus because of coronavirus, with no classes, no sports, no nothing.
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By Sunday, Max Goren was a damned national hero.
Although he had fewer than 100 followers, his homemade “One Shining Moment” for the truncated 2019-20 season spread across Twitter like wildfire and gobbled up YouTube views, fans grateful for the sappy hoops love song that they otherwise wouldn’t see. “Thank you. We all needed this,’’ one viewer wrote on YouTube. “Made me cry, man. Thanks for this,’’ someone replied on Twitter. Still gobsmacked on Sunday morning, Goren told The Athletic, “I didn’t even think anyone would see it. I just did it for fun, and now my phone is going nonstop.’’
Goren does, however, appreciate the nostalgia. Like many of us, he has been lost without college hoops. His father, Dave, is the executive director of the National Sports Media Association and a veteran of Winston-Salem, N.C., television. Goren was raised on Wake Forest basketball and has always known his own career path would include sports. Though he didn’t choose the Demon Deacons, he poured his life’s lessons of sports allegiance into N.C. State when he arrived on campus in the fall.
Goren attended every basketball game, and as the Wolfpack lived the season on the bubble, checked bracketology and bubble watch sites religiously. A sports management major, he scored a spot as a volunteer at the ACC tournament (N.C. State was closed for spring break, so he wouldn’t miss class), and was there when N.C. State beat Pitt in the second round of the tourney on Wednesday. Goren anxiously awaited a showdown on Thursday with Duke, convinced a win would secure the Pack its NCAA ticket. “I was really looking forward to it,’’ Goren said. Instead, he sat in the Greensboro Coliseum, following on Twitter as the leagues canceled their tournaments in rapid-fire succession, the ACC included. Dejected, Goren headed home.
With no basketball and his campus shutting its doors, a bored Goren decided to tinker on Saturday morning with creating a “One Shining Moment” video just for fun. Using some editing skills he picked up working at PackTV on campus this semester, he opened iMovie on his laptop, crafting the video in about three hours. Calling on his own rabid sports knowledge, he sought out some great moments he remembered — Stephen F. Austin shocking Duke, Kamar Baldwin’s buzzer-beater in Butler’s win against Villanova. “Selfishly, I wanted to do something with that Markell Johnson shot,’’ he said of the Wolfpack senior’s halfcourt heave to beat UNCG. He checked Reddit’s college basketball page for other ideas, and Googled.
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He didn’t really expect anyone to see it, but the streaming site Axios hit him with a direct message after he posted it, asking to share the video. He agreed, still not expecting much, and went out to lunch with his girlfriend. “All of a sudden Seth Davis is tweeting it,’’ Goren said. “I was like, how did he even see it?” By early afternoon on Sunday, the video had received more than 1,100 likes and been retweeted almost 500 times on Twitter.
Naturally, now that his shining moment is starting to gain steam, fans are letting him know of the teams he missed. “Apparently I hate Duke,’’ he said. In retrospect, he wishes he had found some stuff on San Diego State to capture the Aztecs’ magical season, and probably should have added Illinois, but he had no idea anyone except a few buddies would see it. “I just did it for myself, really,’’ he said. “But I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.’’
(Photo: Rob Kinnan / USA Today Sports)
Dana O’Neil, a senior writer for The Athletic, has worked for more than 25 years as a sports writer, covering the Final Four, the Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals and NHL playoffs. She has worked previously at ESPN and the Philadelphia Daily News. She is the author of three books, including "The Big East: Inside the Most Entertaining and Influential Conference in College Basketball History." Follow Dana on Twitter @DanaONeilWriter
