The Press Box - Celtics Announcer Sean Grande on Calling the NBA Finals, Homerism, and TV vs. Radio

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Bryan is joined by Boston Celtics radio play-by-play announcer Sean Grande to discuss his career in broadcasting, covering basketball compared to other sports, the difference between TV and radio, and what it’s like covering the NBA Finals. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Sean Grande Associate Producers: Erika Cervantes and Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. We're not just reacting to the NBA playoffs on my podcast. We're also doing it on The Ringer NBA show and the Mismatch podcast. They are coming after some of these NBA playoff games. Check it out, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights on the Ringer podcast Network. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to the press box. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Isaiah Blakely.

The NBA finals start tonight. And one thing I love to do this time of year is look at the people who've been covering these two teams all season long, especially when they're really good at their jobs. Sean Grandy is the Boston Celtics radio play-by-play announcer. He got that job 21 years ago, and he has been calling games with his partner, Cedric Maxwell, ever since. And this week, Brandy's job has a kind of structural advantage. Contracts dictate that during the playoffs, the Celtics TV guys have to step aside for ESPN to show the games. But on radio, Randy gets to keep announcing Celtics games all the way to the end. It's fitting.

because radio has always felt like the medium that speaks most directly to the fans, and Grady and Maxwell don't have to leave them until the very end. Grandi flew from Boston to San Francisco on Wednesday, and that night we talked about what it's like to call the NBA Finals, about the concept of homerism, and about how Brandy got his first job in the NBA, and involves a snowstorm in Kevin Harlan.

Here's Sean. All right, Sean, you've been calling NBA games for more than 20 years. What's different about calling a game in the finals? You know what is different about calling a game in the finals is the noise. The noise around you, the a million security people, extra PR, people freaking out when the game is the same game that you did last week, it's the same game that you've been calling for, as you say, 20 years. People say that I've transitioned recently, Brian, into the longtime voice of the Celtics, which is code for. Right, you know what it's code for. You're getting old.

Like, I used to listen to you and I was in high school. He's like, come on. Like, give me a break. I shouldn't have, because I remember where I took this job, there was Mike Gorman and Tommy Heintson and Cedric Maxwell. And I've always been the youngest, I'm the youngest guy in the group, right? They're always the older guys. And then so you don't, it's like Rodney Jagerfield and back to school.

Like you want to look thin, surround yourself with fat people, right? So I was always like the super young guy. And then all of a sudden you turn around and you realize, yeah. a big birthday, and you're doing this for 20-something years. It is, you know, when the game starts, it's the game. And obviously, you're trying to contextualize everything and you're in the moment, but you understand that, you know, it's a place in history and what you're doing and these moments be remembered forever. But really, and you're asking me this now, as we're talking the day before the finals, I'm remembering now the memory thoughts are coming back from 12 years ago and 14 years ago,

but all the other chaos that exists on the side. And that's as a broadcaster. Imagine being a player, getting here for the first time and dealing with Media Day and all the other, the crazy stuff that comes from. And chaos literally means people next to you while you are sitting at the broadcast table,

people whirling around you, that kind of thing? Well, it can be. You know, as I said, when the game starts, at least the game starts, obviously one of the differences, the NBA will have a little, we're all used to being on Zoom anywhere, whole lifespan on Zoom the last two years. And we'll have a,

the NBA will put a little camera up there so they can watch us, you know, during the games. But I think broadcasters generally, we're getting used to that now because that's becoming a popular, you know, cutaway shot to get the broadcasts, like, whoa, oh my gosh, what an amazing play. And Kevin goes, no regard for human life. Because you want to see, you've never seen him when he says it. But then now we all get a chance to peek in. But I think for the most part, again, you know, the commercials are a little longer and it's harder for me to have my pregame conversation with Mike and Jeff and Mark Jackson, whatever, because there's so many people milling around down there. But you, at least

there's a ramp up to it, right? When you've had the second rounds and the conference finals and, but it's really, you long for 907 Eastern time tomorrow when it's back to doing what you do. You remember what you said when the Celtics won the title in 2008? I do. Yes. And I remember what Max said two seconds later. That's how everybody remembers it. Can you give it to the people who have not been watching a loop of Boston sports? Yes, which is obviously most of you. So there's a very long story leading up to it. But suffice to say, we were supposed to have a sideline reporter for the 2008 playoffs for Celtics, for radio.

And it fell through. So the very long story of that is that Max ended up with a poncho on and we sent him off the broadcast to do interviews on the floor. And the Celtics had a slightly, you might remember, in that game. There wasn't a ton of suspense. People ask me all the time, that's a popular question, obviously, Brian. Do you know what you're going to say, right, for a championship? And you have ideas. And this is a perfect example of what just happened yesterday.

I get on the bus afterwards. And a lot of the guys from the front of office, whatever, like, hey, what did you say? What was your big call? And I tried to explain to them what I'm going to. going to explain now, which every announcer would understand. It depends on the game. That game, Game 7 came down to a final play. The ball was in play. You know, Al Horford got a rebound that had to secure the game. So you're not, you know, if you go from that to some rehearsed notion of what you wanted to say at that moment, fans are on it. They know it. They know you're going to some whatever.

Just call it. Now, if the Celtics had won in 2008 in Game 5, and I still remain the most shocking. The shocking result of any game I've ever done said the Celtics lost game five in L.A. Because you don't lose that game, so you can fly 3,000 miles to take a beating, which is what happened. And I couldn't believe that game got away. That would have been different because it was Father's Day. A lot of guys in the Celtics had grown up without fathers, and Doc Rivers' father had died during the season.

And there was a poetry to that day. Well, that all got forgotten. And then you go to the next game, and it's not a buzzer leader. And it's not Kobe rising for a shot missing in the Celtics win. the game was over early in the second quarter. So yeah, I had an idea of how I was going to ramp up and tell the story tying it into, you know, something I had said on opening night. But in any case, this is, by the way, what happens when you ask the broadcast, you to do a long story short. Anyone in my field that uses one word when they can just as easily use 10 is just

not trying hard enough. That's the bottom line of that. The ball was, Big Baby had the ball when the clock hit triple zero. So he threw it up in the air. So I'm doing my, my thing about the 21-year Odyssey, to get, you know, 22-year Odyssey, the full circle has been completed. It's Banner 17. And before I could say the mission statement, which was the company, you know, that was what the owners came in years earlier and said Banner 17 was the name of the company. So the mission statement is mission accomplished. And as I was about to say it, I hear in my headphones, I got the ball, which is Max, the ball had landed in Max's hands. Now, in that moment, I went on because as it's brought.

broadcaster would know, sometimes you get things in your ear that are in queue, as we like to say, or they're not going over the air. So I'm just praying in the moment that the engineer has him in cue and didn't leave his microphone hot. But of course he did. And that is how Max will be remember. I think the next day on all the talk shows, they had him in great moments of history. You would hear Max in the background, like one small step for man, one child. I got the ball. And that's how great moments, great moments happened. But it's so it was organizing. panic and it was local and it's remembered. How did you know as a kid that you wanted to be a broadcaster?

Right. I had great plans to play second base for the Mets. And as most of those kids who grew up in Manhattan, we'll tell you, difficult to launch an athletic career when your knees are gone from playing on concrete at the time you're six or seven years old. I think like a lot of people, there are there are tapes of me getting called to Thanksgiving dinner by my, mother of me trying to call a football game off to, you know, the old-fashioned tape recorder from the late 70s or whatever. It was always a passion. I always loved the announcers that

defined my childhood for me. I was very, you know, lucky enough to grow up in New York where you had so many teams and so many great announcers, obviously to grow up listening to. And there comes that moment when you realize every, every man, 99.9% of men reached point where they realized they're not going to be professional athletes in their life. And I had always envisioned a life in which I would be flying around the country and doing games. And I couldn't imagine anything else. And this was my path. This was either I chose or what was chosen for me. And this is what age you come to this realization? I would say, I'm trying to think probably when like pony league pitcher started striking me out. So by 14 or 15,

I had a pretty good idea that this was going to be. As I said, there are not a lot of kids from. Now, here's the new second base, but he grew up in Greenwich Village. And, you know, usually it's, as I said, I coached my son Little League in Boston. And we realized when we have snow in April, like you realize why very few players come out of the Cambridge, Massachusetts Little League to play in Fenway. I read that growing up in New York, an early influence was Bob Murphy, who was calling Mets games on the radio. at that point. What struck you about the way Bob Murphy sounded? Well, you know, it sounded like baseball when he did it, number one. But also what's interesting is that I'm of the age, the generation

before me grew up with radio and listened to games on radio. Mine really did because by the time I'm a kid, like ESPN is starting. You're watching all the games are on TV if you have cable, if you're lucky enough to have cable. And I kind of came to radio later, but we're going to the games. this was before you could watch on your phone or had even portable TVs you know radio was the way to stay connected to the game at the game and it was going to Mets games

and listening to you know to Bob Murphy and Gary Thorne who did the games with him and again you're just attached to the announcers you grew up with and you know you learn their style and it just feels and then when you

I think at 1516 when I realized okay this might be my thing when you're at the games and you're hearing the play-by-play and you're seeing the same, I'm seeing the same thing that Bob Murphy has seen. Why did he do this?

Why did he do that? And baseball is the perfect sport. Perfect sport for radio. Really, one of my dreams came true nine years ago now. For years, Dave O'Brien came to the Red Sox. And the Red Sox,

we were on the same station, Red Sox and the Celtics. And he was working at ESPN at the time. So there were going to be 15, 20 games every year. He wasn't going to be able to do. And, of course, given my historic great luck, the Celtics got really good at that point. And suddenly we were playing deep into June, so it just didn't work out. And then I think the final year in 2013, we were going to be out by April.

So I ended up, I did 15, 20 Red Soxie games that year. It was the greatest, greatest summer job of all time. It was the true art. I was doing, I'm sitting in San Francisco right now when I got to do a Timlin scum against John Lester, you know, down the street. It's just like, nothing gets better than this. It was such a dream come true. And it was in San Francisco. I did the last game and I got to call the next day saying, yeah, we just traded you to the other radio station.

And the Celtics move. We basically, so Max and I went to the other radio station. And that was the end of my dream summer job, you know, nine years later. But, yeah, I reminisce fondly about it. College in Boston, and you later go to work at WEEI, the big Boston Sports Radio Station. What did you do initially at WEEEI? Well, anything that needed to be done when you're 21 years old and you're not even out of school yet, you do whatever you can do. And that became like I was, I got offered a full-time producer job at 21 or 22 and I'm producing for Glenn Ordway. And it was doing self-to the time at the talk show. And I was doing a lot of play-by-play on the side at B.U and B.C. and anything, as I say to kids now, anything you can do, you do. Just get a hold of it. I was lucky to be, I was. was doing games and I was at BU. I was doing hockey games. I was doing football games.

Anything you can get your hand on, college hockey really became, I was lucky to stumble into that world. And that really became sort of a launching pad for me. But EEI, it was interesting, even being there at the time. And then later when Glenn sort of began, run the station in the mid-90s, I was a very popular number one afternoon drive talk show. And I played sort of a, I did the updates on that show. And I played sort of his character that was similar to what, my good friend Mike Breen was doing in the morning for Imas, which is that, you know, you take stuff out of context and you're just sort of playing counter, playing young generation X guy to the older guys in the studio and just creating that sort of counterbalance.

And a lot of ways I say that was the hardest job I've had because you're writing original comedy every day. And as anyone who's tried to do that, try to write a monologue or whatever, that is, that's really difficult to do. Did I read you were known as Flashboy when you were doing this? That was the character. And I worked very hard. It's funny because when it's radio,

you're largely, it's the same voice. People knew me. But if you do it in a certain case and you perform as a character, it's like, listen, I've got a long, your buddy David Schuemaker and I are long pro wrestling guys and whatever. Sure. It's a, that's the art of it is people want to believe, right? So you just create the Flashboy character.

I built it so that when I eventually left, somebody else could take it over. because the idea was the people in the studio, the main talk guys and women, they're always going to be in their 40s and 50s in their different place. So you want, which, you know, that's ironic, you know, so now I'm 50 and I'm in the opposite place. But that should always be a counterculture. You know, at the time, Flashboy was that kid outside Tower Records on a skateboard. You know, again, Generation X counterculture should always, everybody should be represented on a talk show.

And so it was just a way to, you know, to create a, create a character. And it was a way for a 24-year-old to pay his rent and pay his mortgage until some play-by-play place came home. Yeah, you're the young punk on the show, essentially. That's the idea. That's exactly. And then Celtics play-by-play announcer Howard David can't make a game because it was snowing. Is that correct? It's your research.

You were deeply researched into the fascinating world. Yeah, it was a one of those days you're just wearing jeans. It's funny because now I wear jeans, which costs more than like the suits I had at the time when I was a kid. You're just doing your updates that day. It was like a quiet day right before Christmas. And Howard was doing Monday Night Football, the National Monday Night Football broadcast. And he couldn't get back to Boston because of snow. And that's how a lot of these stories begin, right?

We're not all Kevin Harlan at the University of Kansas and come here as an NBA job at 22 years old. and you know, you walk right in. It was knock on the door at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Howard's not going to make it. Get over to the garden. And those are the moments you have, you know, we usually have them, right? What's the scene from Wall Street or Charlie Sheen? You know, life comes down to a few moments.

This is one of them, right? Like you get in to see Gordon Gecko. And an hour, I ran home, changed clothes. And then I'm sitting in front of Rick Petino doing the pregame. Yeah, doing the pregame. interview and you're just doing the game. And I knew Cedric Maxwell from the show. And it's just, the funny thing is when you're, you know this, if you know anybody in their 20s, anybody with any ambition or drive, whatever, it seems like when you're 24, 25, it's never going to happen.

I'm getting older and it's never going to happen for me. And one day it happens. One day, I forget how old I was then, 26, 27. Here comes the call. Get over to the garden and do the game. And it's not a matter of being ready for that one specific game. You've been preparing your whole life to call games at a high level. And suddenly you go and there's the game and you do what I tell people, I tell kids the sports casting camps, which I never have when I was a kid. You're speaking to college students. Be ready.

Be ready. Do everything you can do because an NBA game, I'm calling game one of the NBA finals tomorrow night. That's the same. I used to go down to the famous 4th Street Cage 6th Avenue. My dad would take me down there when I was a kid. To see the great players right in New York City.

So Nancy Levin in there once like when I was a kid. To see the great players, the game is the game. But, you know, in the NBA finals and in the NBA you'll have the symphony behind you and it'll have that amazing sound in the arena sound and you'll be saying names of, you know, famous players and the greatest players in the world. But the game is the game. And if you can call,

I used to take, when I was in college, local BU baseball and local college baseball in New England is pretty not low level stuff. It gets no media attention. But there were all these games going on. So I would rather than, you know, let's say you're supposed to go to class, take a tape recorder out, right?

And you do your baseball. You just sit out there and turn on a mic and people are staring at you for a while, but pretty soon they're sort of into your play-by-play. And the point is that that game, that's baseball. It's the same game I did when I was doing the Red Sox at Camden Yards. If you can do that, you can do the other.

It's just like every other skill in life. And you do it hundreds of times and thousands of times. You should get pretty good at it after a while. Okay, the game is the game. But how did you feel walking into the garden doing your first Celtics game? Like you kid in my dad's suit? It was such a role when sometimes the best things to do, you know, when you take your kids to the doctor and don't tell them the shots coming.

It's like, don't even, what's going to happen? What? Oh, there was it. That was it. That was a shot. There was no time. You're just in full-on race mode. It wasn't like they said, hey,

listen, Howard's going to miss a game three weeks from Thursday. Or you'd be overthinking it and over-preparing. And, you know, you're just trying to get some kind of sketch of a chart, a very primitive-looking chart.

You know, that was something you always over-prepared when I was doing football at the time, you know, Boston College. And that's like a full week of preparation. When you have these meticulous charts and boards that you've been putting together for a week, here I found out like an hour

before I had to be at the garden that I was doing the game. So you don't have time to be nervous or think about it or any of the above. And the tape from this game is what helps you get the Minnesota Timberwolves job in 1998? I think that and I was always told, I mean, who knows, right? Like, it was, they need someone young and cheap because Harlan was leaving. So we need someone young, who's going to be young. That's what they always say. We want to find the next, you know, the next Kevin Harlan.

We want to find the next grade announcer. I think we know what that means. We don't have a budget. We want to fire someone young who will take this job, you know, no matter what, for their first job in the league. But I think having that tape, Bruce Cornblatt, who worked as a long-time consultant working podcasts for years, he always told me that that term symphony that I used. Having that behind you helps. Having an NBA tape helps just sitting, having sitting that chair for one night, I guess, helps.

It was probably, I was very lucky in that the university that I had done. done games for that I had attended, BU, and bought a TV station in the 90s. So I was 23, 24. I was lucky enough. I was doing games on TV. And that led to doing a sort of college hockey game of the week. And so I was doing a lot of television stuff. And I think that certainly helped too. And I was probably older than my, you know, I missed most of my friends and the people I know and probably the people you know in their 20s and their life. They had sort of looking for fun. right like they had fun they enjoyed their lives they whatever i was taking eight hour bus rides to newark delaware to do basketball games on radio from 50 bucks because that's what i did yeah so i missed

out of but that was my that was what i did and so people say wow you got to the mb you were 27 or 28 you made it to the NBA yeah but that was what i there wasn't a lot of uh 20-something life you kind they give your life to it. And I think it took, you know, until I had, until I had a son, I don't think I ever truly like snapped out of what's important. I finally had to make decisions later and like, it's like, wait a minute. No, I'm not going to fly with the team on this day to stay at a nice hotel and whatever, whatever.

I'm going to be with my son. I'm going to do this. And we were talking before we started about an NBA TV hit I did last night. Or they're like, we watch an NBA TV. I said, I'm going to be at my son in the little league game. I'm not flying with the team. I'm flying the next day, blah, blah, blah. But we still want, okay, but that's what you're going to get is that, you know,

me at the Little League game behind me and the kids doing their Little League chance. And, you know, if you like chicken wings get a hit and all the others. I never understood the correlation, four years of coaching Little League between biking chicken wings and your performance at the plate. But analytics are weird. So as you say, you're not Kevin Harlan getting the first NBA play-by-play job at 21, but you're 28. So you're a young guy.

it like to be a young NBA play-by-play and answer? And following that dude, who is funny because I listen to his pod with you and he did his first game as a preseason game in Milwaukee. And I think we did a preseason game against Milwaukee. He was the first one. I did. What was odd for me, and this is when people hear this, that know my work a little bit, they're like, what?

Really? Basketball, I don't know what my number one sport was coming out, but basketball was distant number four. I think the other three were tied because generally speaking, as a kid in New York, you can be a Knicks fan or you can be a Ranger fan, but it's hard to be a hardcore fan of both because it's all going on. The NBA and the NHL are going on at the same time. I always assumed I would end up in the NHL. That was where I assumed I was going. So basketball, it took a different, you know, I'd done basketball, certainly at the college level, but it wasn't my natural thing. So I was dealing with a new world, this new NBA world, and trying to become the best basketball announcer in the world in a short period of time when it wasn't the way my mind was leaning.

Like I'm going to be a baseball announcer or hockey. It's going to be a major league. The Mets and the Rangers were my dream job, which I think I knew. It's funny. Kenny Albert's a really good friend of mine when I was a kid. There was an article on him in the New York Times, I think, when I was in high school. and about Kenny Albert. He's at NYU.

He's going to do this and that. The other thing. And my own mother is like, how are you going to be the voice of the Rangers? There's already Kenny, I'm like, can I, at least in my house,

can I get a little support? Like, even it's bad enough for what I'm competing with in the real world. I've got to have this article shoved in my face. But, you know, it's really funny. When I,

again, when I talk to kids, I say, what do you want to, who here wants to be the voice of the rest of it? And of course, almost all the hands go off. I'm like,

all right, well, let's do some math. And I said, you have to be ready to be the voice of the Calgary Flames or the voice of the Sacramento Kings or whatever it is that comes up. And the two jobs, that's summer that came up for Nashville had the NHL expansion team. And I had done some NHL radio stuff and worked there before. But Minnesota Timberwolves, we're looking for somebody young.

They had a pretty big connection with Boston, not only Kevin McHale, but some of the broadcast people and whatever. And it all happened outrageously fast, like, you know, a, a, a week of a week later. Okay, come on out, fly out, do an audition with Trent Tucker. And then it just, it happened so incredibly fast. And then your life changes like that. And it was hard in that, the first year I'm in the, my wife at the time was still in Boston,

obviously. I'm in Minnesota and this sort of like commuter apartment, corporate apartment type thing. And it was the lockout year. So that was really strange. You're playing eight games. That was like super lockout. year looked out one of 99 where we played 50 games like 13 weeks. So it was pretty crazy. Everything was going very fast. And you're just looking around to try to get your legs under you.

But again, the game is the game and the reps. The reps were invaluable at that age. So basketball's a little ways down to your power rankings at that point. When do you start to feel I am a basketball guy? My voice is matched to this sport. That's a great question for which you'd almost have to ask anybody but me because now I am to the point where the year I did the Red Sox, people were like, whoa, I didn't know he could do, you know, just from a Cate, because you're speaking different. You're not speaking. They'd heard me do basketball and hockey. And there's a different cadence to it. And it was almost like, well, I didn't know you could talk slow.

What? That's the, that's the, I don't talk that way. real life, not going around doing frantic play-by-play on the subway or whatever of what's, you probably could, right? Like, oh my God, the traffic is going. This guy's just he going to run the yellow. Yeah, he is. And he made it.

But you could, right, apply it to any situation. I don't have an answer for that other than there were different, you know, there are moments that you're feeling comfortable on TV. At the time I was in Minnesota, the following year, I'm doing college football at ABC. So it's a heady time to be 29. and the ABC college football play-by-play group in the year 2000 was Brent Musburger, Keith Jackson, Brad Nessler, Sean McDonough, and me. So as I always said at the time, and to this day, probably can still get away.

I was saying it, a veritable who's who and one who's that. You know, which, and it was hysterical because I always, and this is a true story, and I told him this, I learned more Because to me, Brett was the NFL today growing up And he'd first, he'd come over to ESPN radio He was doing some games, but he didn't like take over that spot But he was in such command Of those college football games

I learned more true story. I learned more about how to do that job By watching his games than preparing to do mine. Like that's how good he was. Just that the airline pilot command is what I call of Brett being in control that game. and he would get, well, I was cursed that year. I think my first game was 63 to 9,

and my entire season, my 2000 college football season, was basically sending my entire audience to whatever game Brett was doing because it was invariably like a great, some great game, whatever we'd start. I had the Oklahoma, Texas game. I'm 29 years old, Oklahoma, Texas, 2000, and this was the game, you know, look it up

when Quentin scored like six touchdowns. They won like 63, 4. It was 42, 7 at the half. audience gone, everything gone. And the funny part of that scene... I'm a Texas guy, so that's a wound. But please continue. Well, that was the, I think the call that day was the eyes of Texas were blackened,

have been blackened today or something like that. I love Macbara, we'd gone down to Austin. We didn't big time college football. Throwback to the old days. Like, they'd fly us in early. We'd go to the campus, meet with that, you know, I'm like, this is just the best ever. I mean, I've been doing college football at Boston University,

which is 1-A had this great run in 93 will beat Northern Iowa with Kurt Warner and then Idaho in the one-double-a playoffs and Doug Nussmeier and Hollis the kickers on the strange things you run into

over the years that this is the and then Boston College is great but it's still Boston College you're still in the Northeast and some of the places are going as Big East football and all of a sudden now I'm at ABC

Clemson and Virginia and Oklahoma, Texas and I'm like oh my God This is just amazing stuff. But the funniest part of that year is the final regular season game like that is Drew Brie's last game at Purdue. It's Purdue, Indiana, Purdue going to the Rose Bowl. One thing we knew when I said that, who's that? We were definitely the number of five teams because we were the only ones that didn't have a sideline reporter.

So in advance, eight years before Max got the ball as of the fake sideline reporter, my analyst, David Norrie goes down to the field. And I'm all by myself calling the game, which is pretty funny because now I'm 29. And I am ABC. I am the American Broadcasting Company calling the end of this game by myself. When I get in my ear, Sean, get ready. ABC News may have to cut in. They may be ready to call the election. This is Bush Gore.

Right. So somebody just realized they've got this kid on the air all by himself. And they're about to call the presidential election. And he's, you know, so it's funny the situations you end up in. Yeah, to your Brent pilot analysis. Like who's who's flying the plane? Oh, that guy. And it's more of a, you know, as, and again, we can say this.

It's funny because gambling and stuff, it's just, it was so robot when I first got in the NBA. And now it's almost like we have analysts who are betting on things during the game with their apps and whatever because that's the way of it. And but the joke, it used to be like a hush, hush joke. But now it doesn't matter. I used to joke that Brent was probably, Brent probably had more riding on my games and I was getting paid to do them, you know, back then. back in the States, but like the thought that somebody could open up, ah, there's a seven point underdog today or whatever else. Three years doing T-Wolves games?

Looking back, what is the difference between Boston sports fans and Minneapolis sports fans? I think, well, remember, I was there during the Garnett years, too. So Garnett, I think, plugged into something that people think of Minnesota as being, you know, as more reserved and, you know, like that. But I think crowds have a lot to do with the teams. you know, if you have a lot of success

and Minnesota was good at that point, and they had Garnett, it was a loud place to play. It was a loud building. Fans were very much into it. I love my time there. When you're, again, 26, you're going there, I thought I'd be there forever. It was never my intention to,

I'm going to go to Minnesota as a springboard job to something national or to come back east. That wasn't the plan. I would have been happy there forever. You're just, you're completely invested and then real life happens and things change. But it was, I guess I wouldn't have anything to compare it to at the time.

You know, looking back now, you can tell us in Boston is insane. It's an insane place to play. There are a lot of arenas like that in the NBA. But at the time, you're just, I'm the voice of the Timberwolves, and I'm going to be the voice of the Timberwolves for 20 years. Like, this is my home, and you're just completely into it at the time. I read when the Celtics came to you with the radio play-by-play job, this is after three years in Minnesota,

that you turned it down a number of times before accepting it. Why did you turn it down? Well, a couple of reasons. I mean, I was happy where I was, number one. Number two, as I often have told people over the years, anybody can go from local radio to NBA television or national TV. It takes a very special pioneer to go the other way. That was a really bold choice.

I thought on my part eventually to do that. Yeah, I know I'm on a. ABC at 29 years old. I'm doing college football and I had this TV job in Minnesota. But you know what? That's the appeal of that much, much smaller audience is just something that I can't turn down. It was my wife at the time was from Boston and she wanted to go home. And I understood that. And at the time, you know, you get you get pitched differently. You get pitched. People are in your ear when you're young, right? hey, come do radio for a couple of years, then you'll slide over and do TV. You have an agent at the time.

It's like, hey, we'll keep you on TV. Don't worry about it. We'll keep the, like, Boston's closer to New York. This is the logic, literally, from the agent's side. Boston's close to New York. So therefore, it'll be, and now you realize, okay, that's a little silly, even if the world has changed. But I didn't, it didn't seem like the right thing to do for a variety of reasons,

but eventually you do it for family. And something that did help change my mind. was when Cedric Maxwell called me that summer trying to pitch me on it. And I said, this could be a thing. This could be, you know, some of the parts, you know, the whole greater than some of the parts type deal. And it's turned out to be not only that, but the longest relationship that either one of us has ever had in our life.

So who knew we would be the soulmates that would be growing old together. And the combo of you and Maxwell works well, why? Opposites. Northeast, younger sensibility, North Carolina, country sensibility. The black guy that likes James Taylor and the white guy that like Jay-Z, the opposite there. I think, you know, he had worked with Howard David, who's tremendous, but Howard has sort of an older sensibility. I think the age difference, the different, the approach of hunting to speak. We're in a time of, and this is evolved. You're not thinking in 2001, when you take this job, you're not envisioning 15 years later of stick to sports and Black Lives Matter.

And you're not envisioning having last week, Brian, to open a game in Miami talking about how 15 years earlier we had taken the same bus ride from the same hotel, to the same arena and I'd had to open the game talking about the massacre of Virginia Tech. And here it is 15 years later. And I couldn't, how many games have I had to open talking about Pulse Nightclub or Sandy Hill or whatever? And it became a change. You know, you're not thinking at the time in 2001 of these life events and you're getting older and then mattering and being able to talk about them.

But to that sensibility also with the two of us that there's something bigger at play here. Now, as we grow older with our audience, we're affected by real life and never been afraid to share. Who do you think of as a typical listener of a Celtics game on the radio? That's a great question. The people who work, people who drive Uber's, people who are out and about it. It's really funny because, you know, sometimes now because you're doing TV here, now I've done more games on TV now and do a lot of pre and post game TV. And so once in a while I get recognized, which I can care less about, but my son finds it's funny because my wife gets recognized all the time.

And he, you know, like he really enjoys that and kind of tries to rub that in my face. That's what they know who she is. Like, whatever. That's like, do you want to eat tonight or not? So I suggest to tone it down. That where I will get the funny, the funny part, the reason I brought it up was, I will sometimes get recognized by my voice in Uber's have. the name or whatever, but in taxes, people who drive around and they'll, you know, you said, yeah, how are you? What's going on? And then they'll realize that they've heard your voice a lot

because they drive around. Listen, I have a job. First of all, the year I was doing the Red Sox, I would always say, Matt, I got, Joe Kisdickleone, the voice of the radio voice of the Red Sox, has the greatest job because he is the voice of, in New England, of summer barbecues and days at the beach and Max and I are the voice of scraping off your car, you know, and these some awful winter things that are, you know, whatever you have to do in New England. But it's, I think, and the funny, all the other funny part is when people always come up to you and say, they have some story as to why they were listening, like they needed an excuse. Hey, my cable went out. I had to listen. I got stuck in the car. I had to hear you. And I'm like,

we do this every day. We're always. here to do this. So I think it, and there's also the people that really, he just want to hear us, they're either fans of us, sometimes the national games are on, players only was a big boon to us when Turner went with that. You know, we get that. And the people, it's harder now in the old days, turn down the sound and watch the game on TV. Now, as you know, the games are delivered in so many different ways. People are getting them on their through a streaming service or they're getting them on satellite. It's very difficult. And oftentimes our audio comes, you can't, you have to work. You really got to put it in work to make it match up. So, dedicated is the answer, the people that

really want to listen. And as we've branched into the social media thing, that's another thing I've had to realize, sometimes the hard way. And it's why I try to do as much as I can on there because it's not a dumpster fire, because it is most of the time. But I reach more people. often. If I hit something on Twitter and it starts bouncing around, that audience is much greater than are hearing me at anyone specific time. I'm a serious guy. Was it a big deal when they started picking up local broadcast like yours and taking them way beyond New England? Here's where that was noticeable. I developed some friendships with some people and you hear from fans in general, but also met people in different industries.

I was going to say out there, out where you are, out here, because we became afternoon drive in California. So I would hear from a lot of people, Ken Levine, former voice of Baltimore Orioles, writer in Cheers and MASH or whatever. I'd get a random note for them. Now, you know, he's a good friend of mine, I've known for years, but I get random notes from people out in California

who would listen because of, So serious, that's how I think serious changed it that way, certainly for the, in the time zones. Where do you fall in the concept of homerism as a local announcer? What is it they say? If it is your, if that's your choice, that's your choice. I used to be as a younger, more, you know, the Billy Joel, angry young man, whatever, like my way's right and your way is wrong. It would make me blanche, right? I hate it.

Now I realize, do what you do your style and make your style work. The Celtics, of course, have the ultimate tradition of that with Johnny Most, it was carried on with Tommy. I think it, I don't think you can do it. You can't do it on radio. And by the way, Johnny wasn't, you know, Johnny in his older days, obviously had his foibles and whatever, but he knew what he was doing. When he was younger, he would get to games in the 60s and he would, the first thing he would ask the engineer is, is this game going to be on TV or not? Because if it wasn't, then it was the Wild West and he could make whatever story he wanted to make out of it.

I think it's irresponsible on radio and TV. What Tommy did, it was awesome. I guess Tommy would go, that's ridiculous. That's not a foul. And of course you could see it. Of course it's a foul. But Tommy do you. I think there are some people in the league that still do it.

And it's style. Gus Johnson has nobody else should be doing what Gus does. He does better than anybody else in the world. don't it's not there's no right or wrong way to as i often tell my wife when she catches me staring at the dance team it's not better or worse honey it's just different and then it's funny that doesn't go well i try it but it doesn't it doesn't really fly but you get the point that ever do what you do and do it well i am a listen i'm meticulous about play by play i'm a student of the history of it it matters to me it is i do i don't take myself seriously but i take it very very seriously so

that is not my style. And I think it hurts your, you know, the credibility is when you praise the Celtics, it means something if you're not doing it all the time. And if you say that wasn't a great call, people know when Max and I say that, it's,

if it was a bad call in favor of the Celtics, we're going to say it because it doesn't mean anything. You can do it the other way around. That's interesting point about radio, that because we can't see the picture. Yeah, there's more of a commitment to calling it like it is. We get, listen, I have a national announcer sensibility, and that once in a while, I will get, listen, when the Jimmy Butler game has happened, first of all, you live long enough, you see everything. You live really long enough. You see everything twice. And I called that game already, sitting in the exact same spot, sitting next to the same guy. I called that game. I saw it. And it was how I told my son about it for years. And then, much to his chagrin, he got to say it live. You got to see it actually happened. And there, you know, you get a few.

Again, you could never react to Twitter. And listen, the smartest, the guy's good friends of mine, Kevin is one, I and Eagles another, they're above it. They don't have to deal with. I do it because it's a way to reach fans. And it's too important. You have to sort of go with the flow and evolve or die or whatever. Once you get to a certain point where you don't have to be on it, God bless you. But once you can't overreact and people come at you because that's three people out of 100,000.

So what does it mean? But I'll get the pushback of, you know, in more colorful language than this, stop saying nice things about LeBron. Stop saying nice things about Jimmy Butler. Who are you announcing for that kind of stuff? But when the Jimmy Butler game is happening, if you don't recognize you're calling a moment in NBA history and that Jimmy Butler is painting this masterpiece

that people are going to be talking about for years, you're not doing your job. If you're doing Johnny in the old days when Bernard King would come up and score, he'd be like, and Bernard for 12, from 12, got it, good. Good, Bernard again, from 28. And you're not, it's just an incredible thing going on.

So you have to, you have to call it. You have to use your voice. This is the whole radio thing. Again, it could go for hours, but you have to use your voice to describe more than what's happening, the tone of your voice and how you're using it in hockey, the best example is in hockey. You can't say everything that's happening.

So you have to use your voice to imply danger, that there's a goal scoring situation. You have to be able to use your voice. Your voice is not just, if you just read it as a transcript, Jason Tatum for three in the corner of good, but it doesn't tell you, you have to use your voice.

That was an amazing shot or it wasn't or it was going to go on. I can't believe that went in. You have to be able to communicate other things with the cadence of your voice. A couple of moments I want to ask you about. 2003, the Boston Globe reported that a foul-smelling substance was released behind the Celtics bench during a game. And your reaction

according to the paper was, I'm about to die but we're on the air. What do you remember about that? Nothing until you brought it up because I haven't thought of that for years other than my favorite part of it is Max, when that turned out, we found out months later that it was, it's funny, you can find this

probably on YouTube because it was a national TV game but they had to clear out the Celtics bench. As it turns out, there was this big giant battery. Like imagine a little 9-volt battery you'd hold in your hand, but it looked like a car battery size. And it had exploded or reached the end of its battery life or whatever. And all of a sudden, these fumes were like coming out near the self-expansion.

And it turns out I was at point zero where it happened. And I remember the only time I felt in my life that I couldn't bring, you were trying to get a gas for the air. And you couldn't, I couldn't breathe for a couple of seconds, which is terrifying. And we were going behind the baseline and grabbing a, we had a wireless mic. Mike, we had some kind of other mic to do interviews or whatever. and just describing what was happening because that's what you do.

I mean, I'm not going to be Edward Aramaro. This is London. Like, this is as close as I'm going to get to reporting from a war here. I'm not going to be in Afghanistan embedded with the troops.

So you're just describing what's happening. And the funny thing is, Max almost since I went home because he thought the night was like, that's as close as I'm getting to any of this stuff. I'm done. I'm out of here. We had James Posey fly over the table

and take me out one time. And Max is like, that's it. I'm done. Like he thought that night's all. over when you get hit by a player. It's officially the end of the night. But it didn't occur to me, wouldn't have occurred to me to do anything else,

but to describe what's happening. Like, give me a mic because, you know, something's happening. And people have to know. This is another one from 2010. And since you just got finished calling a Celtics Heat Playoff series, there was a playoff game in Miami.

And a woman starts screaming at you to sit down during the game. Oh, my gosh. What happened there? The only reason that's fresh in my mind is because we were just in Miami. I have my own little location in Miami. So the Black Day in the history of NBA radio was when, and we believe it to be Mark Cuban, but this has never really been confirmed.

We went to the league in 2006, I believe, and said, we want to sell these seats that the broadcasters are in. And that has begun the eventual process of all the broadcasters. the TV guys now, too, moved off of courtside to various locations throughout the arena. Some are absolutely horrific, including mine in Boston, which is we can't again, the word I'm looking for, see

the game from where I sit. I was very well prepared for the pandemic and calling games off TV. We put it that way. I was extremely well. People are, wow, you're doing a good job of that. Yeah, I've had some little practice doing that. But that one was in Miami, they moved us upstairs. And

for years, you can't really, if you sit in the spot. You're like, you're so high. You're too low to really see the, and I'm fine standing. I've done hockey and football for years. Standing's great. For first standing, it's fine. But there was never anybody in the seats behind us in 2000, tell me we got to the playoffs, and they had sold the seats behind us. And so I'm just calling the game like I always had. And then eventually there's this woman like yelling and screaming, you know, to sit down. Like, security's coming. Instead of like moving her, they're talking to me. I'm like, during the broadcast. It was, I've never seen anything. I mean,

NBA wasn't too happy with that. But it was really, and then at the end, Paul Pearson, a game winner, I think. It was game three. Paul Pearson's a game winner. I would kind of go into the postgame show, and I pulled out a chair, the chair of whatever, and I sat down next to Max. And I think she went to the shark when she saw. I had a chair the whole time and, like, yeah, threw a bottle of water or whatever.

So it happens when you put the announcers up in the crowd. Scary stuff can be. She throws a ball of water at you at the end of the game. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I, listen, again, going back to my pro wrestling thing. So like Mick Foley,

all these guys are good friends of mine. They've had much worse while they've been working like thrown. Well, yeah, you know, but you're not really required to, you know, fall through a steel cage when you're calling a Celtics playoff game. Could listeners on the air tell that anything had happened during this holiday?

They could tell because I had to go off the air at one point because the security guy was talking me while I was calling the game. And I literally had to stop like, you know, they were so out of what, not understanding what was happening that there was a real life. again, some of that happens when you move the broadcasts are going to feel less important if you move them up into the crowd or into the middle of, a lot of these buildings weren't equipped.

And this area in Miami is like a lot of places where fans could sort of walk behind you to get to their seats. It's not a real, you know, booth. You're not really isolated or protect, you know, from the fans. So this is, that's a new level. But hey, if you can call games not being able to see the court, if you can call a game, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Like if you can dodge a bottle of water calling a playoff game, I would think that would add to your resume.

Like, well, imagine what he could do if we weren't throwing things in him. Like, you know, during this amazing moment. That's the joke. They moved us in Boston after the championship. That was the last game we ever did. It was going to won the championship. And then they moved us. And I was compared it to when they raised the mound after Maris and Mantle hit all the home runs.

Like, well, it's obviously too easy for him being able to see it. So let's see how good he is when he can't see the game. Let's find out now. A few of my ringer teammates have moonlighted as a color analyst on your broadcast. I want you to give me your review of them, your best Chad Finn here. Jackie McMullen did at least one game with you. How did she fare? Years ago, Jackie's the best.

She just wrote that story on email token today. I've known Jackie for so long. And I remember I remembered she was, I brought up the story when she sat down of one of my favorite Jackie's story. But she always told about Red Hourback when she would cover. because Jackie is like, she's pioneer beyond pioneer. You should see the younger women who go into this field. And when they know that I know Jackie or they see Jackie and it's like, it's really, it's pretty cool.

But I remember her sitting down and telling the story of one of the first time she met Red Hourback, she was at a college game at Boston Garden, you know, writing, covering it. And at halftime, Red came over to ask her what she thought. And she said, well, I like Michael Adam. He's sort of, you know, the way he breaks down the defense, whatever, and Red stops, is, and what did you think of the cheerleaders? Aren't you like the cheerleader? You know, geez.

So we've come a long way. I love, we had a period of time where we have a lot of different guests in. I just felt like Max and I, it was like the sitcom when you get to the ninth season or the 10th season. It just start bringing in guest stars because it's, you know, just a different perspective every time. Can we got a new kid in here to get this, get some plot lines? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Max, you have like a younger cousin or something we could pretend it's like your new kid. Also read that Ryan Rosillo, well known for his career in AA baseball, sat in on a few games.

How did he do? He did great. And you know what? It's funny. When Ryan, Ryan is somebody that we had with us at the radio station with a self-export, I guess this is almost 20 years ago now. And what's funny was in 2003, 2004, I remember saying this to people, you knew Ryan was going to be a star. Ryan was good, but what he was going to be great at and has played out this way, hadn't been invented in 2004.

It didn't exist yet. His role, think about what Ryan was still is and his impact in all the different areas. That didn't really exist in 2000. So he would, he actually, there was a year he filled in for me. I used, you know, filling in and play by play. I think, I'm sure we did a game to get a couple games together or whatever. He was famously on the, the first thing he'll tell you is he was on the flight. but it was like a shaky flight

where they had to like nose dive to avoid a collision with another plane and they all thought they were going down of course that was the one flight there was a whole separate joke about that that Mike Gorman and I were the only two people not on this flight because I was doing the Frozen Four

and Mike was a New York game so Mike was just driving to it and the joke would have been that the entire organization would have been wiped out and I still wouldn't have moved up because Mike and I would have been the only two that survived but Brian And, you know, again, he just had, he just had a different perspective, right, from the beginning.

And I just, to me, the number of different voices you can have from different places. Because you, Max and I, it's 20 years, so it's 2,000 games we've done together. It's not, I don't say it's an echo chamber, but it's really nice to bring in somebody different, especially somebody, you know, these names you're mentioning are deeply respected people who've been around. but it's good, it's good to break it up. To 20 plus years of calling NBA games, what's still hard for you to do on a night by night basis? Afternoon games.

When you asked me to do this, I said, well, listen, what's on Eastern time? It's what, it's after 11 o'clock, Eastern time right now. I'm like, I just flew across country today. I'm good. The joke, the running joke with me has always been like, if I stayed in this job, like, who knows, I can end up in the Hall of Fame than my job.

Every game is an afternoon game. I'd be out of work and no, I just can't. Airline pilots, drug dealers, and us were the only people whose jobs start eight hours earlier the next day, which was another part going back to baseball. The first taste I got, I loved every minute of doing the Red Sox. It was a dream come true. That first taste I got of day game after a night game, whoa. That was a whole different.

Because that, you know, baseball is a season long cumulative preparation of being at the ballpark and being around. And it was always, what's fascinating to me about that was, I struggled at first, being in the clubhouse, just talking to guys, because in my head,

I was, you got to get upstairs, you got to finish your stuff, you've got to do your work and get ready for the game and have everything, whatever, when you're in these casual conversations.

And it took me finally about three weeks, four weeks into it, I finally had the moment of, this is the job. This is the job. Talking to Dustin Padroia about the Sacramento Kings

and talking to Mike carp about where his kids are going to go to school and different things about different pitchers and whatever. This comes up later. Like you may use the stuff, you may not, but that is the job. And what's, I've always felt the true art of this of the guys that do different sports, and Mike Torrico and I always talked about this. We always sort of like commiserated, but realize that a conversation you have with an offensive coordinator in a meeting on Friday before a college football game might teach you something you use in a basketball game a year later. Like, especially now when coaches all want to be tied in.

I'm doing college hockey game. I go to the Frozen Four every year and do that, which is a, you know, true labor of love. And I have the younger college hockey coaches say, hey, can I get Brad Stevens number? Because I want to talk to him about, and you realize that the younger people don't see boundaries. Like hockey coaches see things that basketball coaches are doing and the football coaches are doing and they all want to be, you know, they want to be interchangeable and whatever.

A couple more for you. You mentioned the ABC football stuff. Is a network job something that's still interesting to you? It's all interesting to me. I started doing the MMA thing a few years ago was a jump off a cliff because I literally knew nothing about it. And I said, can I do this at the highest level? Can I be the number two play-by-play announcer in a sport

that I know nothing. I'm starting from scratch. And it wasn't like studying the history of the Visigoths. I mean, it was 20 years old. You could study a lot of sport and most of it was available on YouTube, you know, at the time, and you could do it. And it was a challenge. Challenges matter. Listen, when I was, of course, when I was 25, 30 years old, that was the dream. And I realized that for me, as I said, I do take it, I take it too seriously. Of course I do. I want to be great and what I do. I love when my friends, these are dear friends of mine,

Mike Brain and Kevin and I and whatever, I like it when they're doing the game because I want to do a better broadcast than them, not because I don't love them to death, but because they're the best. And I want to be, you know, that's the level that I aspire to be every night. Like the only thing, people say,

do you want to do this and you want to do that. It really becomes more, I want people when they hear me, when they hear a broadcast to know, yeah, he's got him. Like, he's one of those guys. Because that's the, you know, the work you put in, it's not the hardest thing for kids to understand. Because I didn't understand it when I was a kid because I grew up playing sports. And when you play sports, the best players play.

And the best players make it to the NBA. The best players make it. This is not a meritocracy. Never has been. And it never will be. And you can't, you've got to do whatever. is the job in front of you, do that as well as you can possibly do it. And, you know, of course, when you're younger, yeah, you want to do the World Series, you want to do this,

and you want to be recognized. And then you realize, and again, being a dad changes that. Being a dad has been through some of the things that, you know, I've been somewhat public about this. I had a very long, ugly custody fight for my son, which I won, but it took years away from, you say years away from what you were focused on. Well, that was, that became the most important. thing to me. And, you know, my whole life was, I want to be the best play-by-play announcer there ever was. And then you say, well, now I want to be the best dad, but it was. And there are nights I still listen. When the light goes on tomorrow night, and it's game one, of course, I want it to be, I want it to be great. I want it to be special. But you can't, you get caught up chasing things

that you can't control. You know, it's like it will drive you. It'll, it'll, it'll, it'll, driving it look crazy. I was listening. As you said, I was 29 years old. I was in that spot. I was the next, you know, whatever. Strange things happen. You know, people and you don't, people are in spots because they're in spots and you want to, you have to be lucky and you have to be good. And control what you can control, I guess, is the, is the answer to that. Well, in here, you flew from Boston to San Francisco today. You're going to call game one in the finals tomorrow night. But then you promised your son you're going to take into the file. So then what happens after that?

But I have to go back and get them after game one and bring them out for game two. And it reminded me of, you know, when I was doing the MMA, I had signed on to do a certain number of shows. And it was a brand new world. And it was exciting. And the company that I worked for, Bellator on Spike TV, they started expanding international. And suddenly I was doing crazy international shows in the middle of the NBACs.

and I was going to Italy and then I'd fly back to the States and do a couple of games and go to San Antonio and Atlanta and then meet the rest of the crew back in, you know, Budapest or London or Dublin for the, you know, the other half of the European tour. And you're not sleeping and you're losing your mind. You're focused on your work. And I had this picture of my son who was five at the time and he's wheeling my bag to the elevator by, by walking with me wheeling my bag and he's got a huge smile on his face. Oh, I'm helping dad. And the picture used to make me smile.

And one day, it stopped making me smile. And I realized I can't, I need to be with my son if that hurts me professionally. It hurts me professionally. But there was just a point where, you know, enough is enough. And I've been lucky enough to go back last year. I did a bunch of shows. And, you know, you have, we want to deliver moments.

And again, you're thinking when you grow up, you're thinking, I want to call the Super Bowl, right? and I want to be in the chair where Joe Bucky is and where the elite guys are. I got to do an event in Dublin last year, and you guys can YouTube it where we had a walk to the ring, where we knew to the cage, where we knew the fans were going to be very much involved in it.

And the people who might be watching might not know the backstory of the song that Doloresa Whirden wrote, the cranberries, you know, whatever. And so you can tell this, story and you realize that whatever it is, if you're doing a high school game, doing an NBA finals game, if you're doing a fight in Dublin, there's so much drama in life. There's so many real stories of real people. And it maybe comes from growing up watching the Olympics and stuff

like where the storytelling was so good that you realize there's, these are shared experiences. And the real world, as we discussed earlier, can get pretty ugly. We come to this because it makes us feel good, not because it's an escape, but because there's cool, real world stuff in sports. Happening, too. And it's, you know,

amazing to be able to tell those stories no matter what they were. We're here. I'm in San Francisco now. I always remember this one. In 2006, we had a rookie named Leon Poe, later played in the championship team.

In 2008, he had, he grew up in this area, very poor. A lot of the guys who had this extraordinary success. And he ended up, mom to make ends meet used to sell things in the flea market that they would have every Sunday outside what was Oracle Arena in that parking lot. And that was they did that to survive. And I got to call the moment he walked onto that floor for the first time as an NBA player.

And these are the little things that, and that was 15 years ago. And I remember that moment because it's a, it's a human story. And it's why those of us. who were lucky enough to get to do it, chose a life, rather than carrying in a briefcase and having a fancy job, we get on airplanes to call games because it captivated us and drew us in as kids. And I heard, again, your conversation with Kevin Harle and talking about enthusiasm, how can you not be enthusiastic and want to deliver these moments the way they were delivered to you as a kid? Every game I go to, probably won't see too many kids there tomorrow because we won't be able to afford $2,000 seats. But every game I go to, I try to find a kid, an 8-year-old kid and 10-year-old kid,

just seen walking around with that look on their face. I remember that was me. And I would try, my friends and I would wait for four innings, scouting out some good seat behind home plate or near that, you'd sneak into it. And I didn't have money to ride the usher, so we'd get kicked out right away, whatever. And that was a moment in that 2010 in the finals in Game 7. Another dear friend of my, Doris, Bork and I were sitting together that whole series. And at the end of the first quarter, it was seventh game of the NBA finals, sitting courtside while Eddie Murphy and Steven Spielberg and Dustin Hop, they're all behind us, right? There are a few rows behind us.

So she goes to interview doc at the end of the first quarter and they hand out the stat sheets. They're just like, you know, they put like pieces of paper right in front of us. And I turned one, I turned mine over and I put two circles on it, one little tiny circle, one big circle. And I put it back in front of her when she sat down. And the big circle said world and a little tiny circle and the middle said us. and we were just kicking each other on the table during that series. Like, do you realize where we are? So, of course, it's a job. And, of course, it's difficult some days to get out of bed when you haven't slept and take your kid to school and then fly across country. But come on. This is how many of us are lucky enough to get to do what we wanted to do from the time we were 12.

So make the most of it. You know, try to do it well. Sean Grandy, thanks for coming on the press box. A pleasure, Brian. It's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about Top Gun Maverick was high praise to the danger clone. As promised, today's headline is also about summer movies.

It comes from Dana Stanley. It originated in the LA Times but was printed in multiple newspapers. David, it's about Dr. Strange in the movie. multiverse of madness. Okay. In this case, I want you to think about C.S. Lewis and one of his most famous books, what was the LA Times' strained pun headline? Well, this has got to be the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe, right?

Because Scarlet Witch is a part of this. There we go. The lion. So what are we doing with lion? Something that rhymes. Something that might be in a superhero movie. The flying. There we go.

The flying, the witch, and the war. The flying the witch and the... Flying the witch and the... What does Dr. Strange wear? Oh, red robe? There we go. Oh, great. The flying, the witch, and the red robe.

If you have to change the syncopation, if you have to change the way that you push the words out of your mouth, it might not be the perfect pun, but I'll give him some credit. Same here. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes, Shoemaker, and I'm back Monday. with more loopwarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.