Jones on the NBAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQzpOykERXYThis video honestly almost brought a tear to my eye. I remember the first time an NBA game debuted on NBC back during the 1990-1991 season. This was the intro to the pre-game show called NBA Showtime. The poetic Bob Costas and former Lakers coach, Pat Riley were the hosts of Showtime, while Marv Albert and Mike Fratello were the lead announcers for NBA on NBC games. When you throw in John Tesh’s Roundball Rock theme music and NBC’s in game Miller Genuine Draft Moments, their broadcasts reached absolute perfection.
David Stern loves to come up with reasons for why the NBA television ratings are down. He says it’s because people are getting their NBA coverage through new media such as the internet and video games. I must disagree. People aren’t watching the NBA because the NBA’s TV contract absolutely sucks. The decision to drop NBC and bring on the ESPN/ABC conglomerate was the biggest mistake they could ever make. First of all, ABC has the worst NBA coverage I have ever seen. They have baseball and football play by play men moonlighting as NBA broadcasters. They broadcast a majority of their games on cable and hardly promote the few games they broadcast on ABC throughout the year.
More people still watch network television than cable. Any idiot knows that it’s hard for a major sports league to keep up buzz when most of their games are on cable rather than on network TV. Imagine if the NFL did not have games on network TV every week. On top of that the League’s best announcer does not broadcast the Finals. What the hell is going on here? Last year ESPN/ABC made a big deal about hiring Mike Breen to team up with Hubie Brown for their NBA finals coverage. Listen, Breen was better than Al Michaels, but the best announcer in the NBA has and always will be Marv Albert. His timely uses of calls like “Yeeeesssss”, “Serving up a facial”, “A Sensational Move”, “From Down-town” and “Rejected” lets any real basketball fan know that he/she is watching a big game. How could you expect anyone to take a big game seriously when Marv is not around to make the call?
Then ESPN/ABC has the nerve to treat their theme music as an opportunity to market terrible pop songs. The last two seasons we’ve been treated a coctail of the [Swearing is not permitted at Clublakers. You must edit this post prior to submitting.] Cat Dolls, Rob Thomas and Destiny’s child, while the year prior it was the Black Eyed Peas. Are you kidding me?!?!?! Any real basketball fan associates the NBA and a big game with Tesh’s masterpeice “Roundball Rock” (otherwise known as the NBA on NBC theme). John Tesh tried to sell the rights to the theme to ABC once they retained the rights to the NBA, but noooo….ABC chose not to give it’s NBA fans what they had grown to know and love, and instead decided to get us pumped by torturing us with Rob Thomas’s “This is How a Heart Breaks”. I liken it to when Hulk Hogan left the WWF for WCW and started coming out to some ridiculous new crappy theme song instead of the Derringer classic “Real American”. Trust me, it just wasn’t the same.
If you search all over the blogoshere, everyone says the samething: The NBA on ABC/ESPN sucks. Everyone wants Albert calling the Finals and everyone wants Roundball Rock to be the theme music.
Sports enthusiast Bill Simmons would probably be calling for the same thing if he didn't work for ESPN. Believe me, anyone that thinks Rocky Balboa singlehandedly ended the cold war, worships Hulk Hogan, and watched the NBA during it's Bird/Magic/Jordan glory years also longs for Marv and Round Ball Rock.
Despite my displeasure with ABC's NBA coverage, I do have to admit that the NBA's other broadcast partner, TNT does have pretty good coverage. They employ Marv Albert and their Inside the NBA studio team of Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Kenny “The Jet” Smith is pretty entertaining. But that studio team doesn't cut it for anything after the second round. The NBA should still should pull Costas out for pre-game hosting of the Conference Championship series and the Finals. Consider this Video. Costas might be the greatest broadcast journalist ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up2UONaC65wPeople used to take big NBA games seriously, and this is mostly because NBC knew how to market and broadcast the NBA product. ABC/ESPN has no clue. I’m hoping that when the current TV contract expires, that NBC will join the bidding war and at least capture the right to broadcast the Finals.
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