The Press Box - Ian Eagle on NBA Announcing, Being a Comedian's Son, First-Game Flop Sweat, and Going 10 Years Without a Mistake

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Bryan is joined by CBS’s Ian Eagle to discuss his career as a sports play-by-play announcer. They dive into Eagle’s background growing up with a singer mother and a comedian father, discuss his experience announcing basketball at Syracuse to the professional level, touch on Marv Albert’s influence, and more! Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Ian Eagle Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis and producer Erica Servantes here. You know the NBA playoffs is basically a holiday here at the Ringer, and it's up to me to remind you that there are only 10 shopping days left till the postseason. The guy I wanted to talk to you today is Ian Eagle, the play-by-play announcer from Yes Network and Turner Sports. Now, Eagle and I talked about a ton of stuff, but I had two big questions.

One was, what's the Iron Eagle origin story? How did the son of a comedian and a singer who was part of their stage act at a young age get one of the biggest jobs in NBA broadcasting? That's sort of part one of this interview. And the second part is me fishing around for an answer to a question I think is even more interesting, which is, what is it about Iron Eagle's sensibility that matches so well with the NBA? The answer, I think, is this subtle thing. Eagle can do with his voice. Listen to him during the playoffs. A player will hit back-to-back

three-pointers in the first quarter. An Eagle will be exactly as excited as he should be. No more, no less. And when the next major highlight comes along, Eagle's voice matches that moment perfectly, too. Listening to Eagle call an NBA game is like riding in the passenger seat of a car and relaxing, because you know the driver is never going to go too fast, and you know the driver. You know the is never going to go too slow. How do you learn to drive like that? Here's Ian Eagle. We'll start here, Ryan.

What makes announcing a basketball game different than announcing other sports? I think the speed of it and the fact that there are very quick crescendos, you get these jolts of action. Football, you know that there's a certain routine and regimen that it follows. And yeah, occasionally you get the big play

and you get the explosion, but normally it builds to something. You're building towards the touchdown. And in basketball, you could have a superior play eight seconds into the game, an athletic play that you just haven't seen before, or it could be at the end of regulation. It could be the end of a quarter. It could be an overtime. It could be any time. So I think as an announcer, you have to be ready.

If you're not ready for those big moments, you're going to be very upset. said after the fact because it passed by without you nailing it. And I think doing the NBA probably helped me understand that. It could happen at any moment. If you're stuck looking at your notes, looking at the bio, trying to read a stat, it'll just go right by you. And nobody goes back on YouTube and says, man, I wonder if the announcer just wasn't paying attention at that point. They just say that you missed it. It's that simple. The crescendo anytime. Is that more fun for you as announcer, more nerve-wracking? It can be. I don't know if it's more nerve-wracking. I think I'm used to it. I think with play-by-play, there's something about the fact that you're on the Autobahn, and it's your job to slow it down.

It's going 100 miles an hour, whether you can relay that information or not. The goal is to be able to put it in a digestible form so that the audience, radio or TV, can process it. And if you're frenetic with the pace, the audience will feel that. If you can remain calm or reflect what's happening on the field, on the ice, on the court, then I think you're meeting the moment. And oftentimes with all-time great calls, what stands out? The announcer met the moment, sometimes enhanced the moment, because they had the right word, the right inflection, or the right pause. All of these things have to happen in order to have a superior call. And now look, there are great moments in sports where the call wasn't that great and you still remember the moment and the call blends in

and maybe after some time you'd appreciate it more or appreciate it less. But nowadays, I think the call is attached to the moment probably more than ever before because you can get it so quickly. It's on your phone. Somebody tweeted it. Someone texted it to you. There's no delay. It's immediate.

And that immediacy probably calls for a little more pressure in delivering in that moment. because within seconds it's being disseminated. It's going to be on Twitter. It's not going to be on a VHS tape. I have to pay $9.99 for and get in six days. We graduated to DVDs, Brian. That was like the big thing. When I started at CBS, if you wanted to watch the team's game from the previous week,

if you had the Steelers and the Bengals and you wanted to watch Pittsburgh's game from the previous week and Cincinnati's game, CBS would send you a VHS tape, And by the end of the year, I would have 300 CBS VHS tapes. And I would go to like a local dump. And I don't know what the person there thought I was into, but I would have a bag full of tapes and I would just get rid of it. Then we graduated the DVDs. And I thought, oh, my goodness, this is going to be incredible.

And now I can't even find a DVD player if I wanted to. I'm not sure that they exist on the open market. Now, as a play-by-play announcer, So do you have a lot more to do during a basketball game than, say, a football game? I don't think you have more to do. I think, believe it or not, it might be the opposite with football based on the fact that there are so many moving parts, football is the perfect television sport. It's laid out perfectly for a production team and for the audience.

Now, of course, on the higher level teams, you have more bells and whistles, so you have more cameras, you have more tape machines, you have more angles. you may have a different look that you wouldn't have on the lower teams. But for the most part, you follow the same formula. Show the play, pick their best replay. Is it worthy of a second replay? If the play didn't mean anything, do you have a great graphic that helps tell the story? Do you have a story as an announcer from your meetings, from your prep, that you can now get into with your analyst?

And you have time to do it. There's time that's allotted in between plays to actually do. do these things. Basketball is so different based on the pace of the game. So I would say football, I view my job more in the traffic cop role. And in basketball, you can't control the traffic. The traffic has taken over. And you're lucky if you get a stop sign occasionally or a yellow light, but for the most part, it's go, go, go, catch your breath, let the analyst jump in. But for the most part, you are fully engaged with what's happening in front of you because of the end-to-end action. Football allows natural breaths and pauses and chances to regather your thoughts and then

rare it up when it's time for the big moment. So you speak more words during a basketball game. Maybe that's the better way to say. Oh, 100%. That's true. More description words, more adjectives, more action words, they're just more plays. When you look at field goal attempts at the end of a game in an NBA game and then look at how many passes or how many run plays, you combine it, scoring, you know, to go in and score a layup, you should make a call. Like that's still in my mind, and maybe I'm just old school.

I don't want to do a radio call on TV, but I want to do enough to alert the viewer that I'm aware of what's going on. I'm paying attention to it. I'm aware of score. I'm aware of time. I'm aware of situation. And I'm aware of action. I think there's that very fine line. Some will tell you, well, you could have a few plays go by and the audience isn't going to miss it. It's on TV. But I do think it's important that the audience knows that you're paying attention, that you're engaged in the action. So that doesn't mean you describe every movement and every pass, but it does mean you've got to pick out the most important part of the play in front of you,

highlight that, enhance the experience, complement the experience. And in football, I do think there's more of an economy of words. I would think basketball would be hard for analysts because they've got to squeeze themselves into very small windows. Yeah, that's an excellent point. I think the best ones know how to get in and get out. and know how to get to the heart of what they're trying to say. And look, I've seen it both ways.

There are a great analyst that will talk overaction and have adopted a philosophy of, I'll stop my point quickly. There's a layup by LeBron and then get back to it. And that's cool. I think the audience is okay with that. You just don't want it to happen time and time again. And I think what happens as a play-by-play announcer,

you get edgy when there's the chance or the potential of a major highlight. And now you're in that no man's land. Do you allow your analysts to finish their point? Do they pause? I work with a lot of great analysts that pause. They know that I'm itching to get in there and at least make the call and punctuate it. And I've worked with some analysts that do not care. They will just plow ahead, a highlight.

is not an important part of what they're doing, not to say they're dismissive, but they're more focused on what they want to do and say in that moment than they are about, how is this going to play later on the 11 o'clock news or on Sports Center or on the highlight package. Yeah, and this is a small thing, or let's say an elemental thing of play-by-play analyst etiquette.

You are talking when I'm supposed to be talking, or vice versa. And if we cross the streams here, that's when people get edgy. That's when things get weird. Yeah. And I think, Brian, it's one of those things where you don't have to have a conversation about it. It is a feel-out process. I don't sit down a new partner and go through 15 things that I need to happen in order to do my job well.

I've worked with analysts for the first time where I've met them that day. and my goal is to try to bond with them in some way, find some commonality, and really more than anything else, let them know that I'm on their side, that this is teamwork, and that I am trustworthy. I'm someone you can trust. I have your best interest in mind. I'm not going against you. I'm with you. We're together on this. And once there's an understanding, and it's not something that I have to verbalize. I think over the first few minutes of a broadcast, and then as you get deeper and deeper, and then if you do another game and another game, like anything, you begin to realize that you fall into certain roles and you get used to

each other's verbal intonations and when you can jump in and when you may have to lay out. I haven't worked with a lot of people that have been so selfish and bullish that it's all about them. If I get to that point with an analyst, it might be a word after a game in-game if they're looking for input, maybe, but I tend not to be the coach in the game other than being positive. You know, when I started working with Stan Van Gundy had very little television experience, and he wanted to be coached. He wanted input. This was his methodology as a human being. So at that point, of course, I'm going to have to share because he not only wants it, he requires it in many ways in order to move on to the next step.

So he did want to talk about the minutia of that. When do you talk? When do I talk? How do we handle that? And I appreciated it. And we had some really good discussions. And after every game that first year we did together on Tuesday nights, the next day or two days later, I would text him with three long points.

on what I thought of the game, of us together, of his performance, and he wanted it, both positive, and to be honest, he wanted more negative because he wanted to learn. And I see that as someone that takes what they're doing very seriously and has an analytical mind, and that's what Stan is. You were taking him to the Syracuse Broadcasting School. Pretty much. Yeah. Brian, I gave him a discount rate. This was not the money that I paid out for my son and daughter to go to Syracuse or what my father paid out for me to go. So Stan was on scholarship. Let's put it that one. Let's talk about your formative years. Speaking of Syracuse, grew up in Queens in the 70s and 80s. How old were you when you first thought I want to be a

sports announcer? I was eight. I was eight years old. I was fascinated with the New York Mets and their television and broadcast team of Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner, Lindsay Nelson. And I told my dad first that I wanted to be a sports broadcaster. My father was a stand-up comedian, an actor, a musician. My mother was a singer and an actress. And his answer to that was, well, that's what you'll do. So when you get that kind of reaction at that early in age, you believe it. Now, my father then added, by the way, you're going to have to get rid of your Lisp if you want to do this.

And I said, lith, what, lith? What are you talking about? So I had no idea that I had a lazy F. So I actually borrowed his recorder that he would use to work on the trumpet or work on some new routines. And I just did exercises for about three weeks of reading from a book and overcame it. That was it. It took about three weeks. My mother, same deal. I told her separately what I wanted to do, and her reaction was exactly the same. Well, then that's what you'll do. So it's just really empowering when you're young, you know nothing. And I was naive. I didn't at that point know anything other than I enjoyed the broadcast side of it. When we went to games, I would stare at the booth. People thought I was weird. It was weird. The game was there. I'm staring.

up there just to get a look or going to a Nick game or a Ranger game. Same deal. Mara Valbert, going to an NFL game, seeing Dick Enberg in the booth. That fascinated me in a way. So it was a real thing. I did nothing about it other than broadcasting basically from my shower, which had great acoustics in Forest Hills, New York. But I didn't have any outlet to do it until I got to Syracuse and I jumped in head first. At that young age, Do you think you were thinking, I want to be in sports, therefore, this career, or I want to be in show business, therefore, this career? No, the former. It was the former. It was sports related. My parents, when I was very young, I was probably five, almost six, would put me on stage at the end of their act. My mother was the singer. She would open for my father. They met at the Playboy Club, 1968 in Chicago.

and eventually she moved to New York and I was born and they were doing their act in the Catskill Mountains, the Borsh Belt, as it was called, Concord, Grossinger's, Neville, Fallsview, the Pine, Stevensville, home of whack, all of these hotels needed entertainment on the weekends. It was big, big business at the time. And for my parents, it was a hotbed to make a living. So I would accompany them for really the first six, seven years in my life every weekend. And probably, again, like 1974, 1975, they would put me on stage at the end of their act. And they would put me in a handsome suit, as they called it.

I mean, this sounds like child cruelty now that I look back on it. And it had a bow tie and the whole nine yards. And I would do about five minutes of impressions. Howard CoSell, Muhammad Ali, WC Fields that really brought the house down, Brian. And I would do it sometimes in front of a thousand people. It didn't even dawn on me that this was odd or that this would be challenging for somebody. Again, because my parents had injected me with so much confidence and I'd watch them over and over and over again. I knew they're two acts like the back of my hand.

So the idea of doing this on a microphone or going on camera never seemed the least bit intimidating. There was no stage fright at any point in your life. At that point, no. I think as the stakes get higher and you realize that you're moving up the ranks, things begin to plant inside your head of, oh, wait, this is for real. But, you know, I was very fortunate. I got some opportunities at a young age. being nervous or stage fright never really was part of the equation.

Why did you decide to go to Syracuse? Well, because Marv Albert went there and Marty Glickman went there and Bob Costas went there and Len Berman went there and Dick Stockton went there and Andy Musser went there. Do you see a trend? A lot of professional broadcasters went there. I'm picking up on something here. Yeah, I was being a little vague. And I just thought, well, then that's where you go.

I saw a Sports Illustrated article. It was called The Cradle of Sportscasters. It had Greg Papa as the cover story. He wasn't on the cover, but in my mind, he was the reason behind it. He was the vehicle in which the story was told. And he was a senior in Syracuse at the time. And he got a job in the NBA, I believe with the Indiana Pacers to start, half a schedule, eventually long-time broadcaster with the Golden State Warriors,

the Oakland Raiders, the San Francisco 49ers, you name it. And I know Greg, Greg's a excellent broadcaster, but it really stood out at the time of, wow, you can do this, you can go from college to the pros. So that just seemed like a no-brainer for me. Syracuse has always seemed a little bit like the USC film school to me, where you have not only a bunch of stars, but these sort of generation of stars. So you mentioned the guys that came before you.

And your group, at least close in age, and correct me if I'm wrong here, it's like Mike Tariko, the W.W. announcer now known as Michael Cole. Yeah, Sean Coldhard. Yeah.

There you go. I know you spoke to. And let me just tell you one thing about Sean, Michael. He was really talented. He was a guy that I looked up to. His play-by-play was outstanding. his presence and command were excellent. And there was no doubt in my mind that he would be successful. I just didn't know it would be in that realm. And I remember I got a job at FAN and in New York

behind the scene. Sean was at WCBS and was doing very well. And obviously his career took him in a different direction and he's crushed it. And I've had a chance to interact with him a couple of times here and there. But that's a great example of someone that probably should get mentioned and doesn't get mentioned. He's conquered that field. Yes. So Mike Tarrico, Dave Ryan was ahead of me. Doug Sherman was also ahead of me. Excellent broadcasters and really impressive as a underclassman to see the standard in which they set. And that's really what happens at WAAR Radio in Syracuse. there's a level that you want to reach based on the previous group that was there.

And that standard has never wavered. And I think that's what's maintained the high level of excellence. Of course, if you're going to Syracuse, you have an aptitude for this, or at least you think you do. And then you get into a very competitive environment, which is lifelike, because that's how it is. Once you get out of college, no one's just going to hand you a job. Nobody's going to put you on the air or give you a play-by-play shot. You've got to be really good at this and you have to stand out and you have to master your craft. And the only way to do that is by committing to it at Syracuse, I certainly was not committed in my freshman year.

I was committed to a different part of college at that point, which was the party portion of college. But I did enough. I stayed above water. And a sophomore year, I got very serious about it and really pushed to become the best broadcaster that I could be. And Mike Tariko, I met Mike at a high school football game. He had just gotten the job at the CBS affiliate in Syracuse, WTVH. And a friend of mine and I went to that high school football game to cover it for a different radio station, Z-89, and Mike was on the sideline.

And my friend David Fleischer, who has since passed away, one of my closest friends who ended up in this field and then eventually got out because, like most broadcasters, they realize, all right, you're not going to make enough money to support your family or to live the life that you want. So he got out of the field. But Mike's standing there. And David was definitely more outgoing than I was at that stage of life. And Mike's on the sideline.

just standing there by himself. And David says to me, is that the guy, Mike Tarrico that's on the news that I said, yeah, yeah. He goes, let's go over there. So, no, why are we going to go over there? He goes, he'd love to meet us. That was his viewpoint. So we walk over and he was right. We introduce ourselves. Mike said, oh, what's your name? Where are you from? I'm from Queens. You go, to get out of here. I'm from Queens. Where? Forest tells. I'm from Bayside. So a deep connection and right out of the gate based on where we're from. And we talked to him for 45 minutes. And at the end of it, he says, do you guys want to maybe stop by the TV station at some point and see how that go? Yeah, we'd love to do that. We do that the next week. He offers us internships.

So I'm a sophomore at that point. I interned for Mike for three years. I basically end up producing his sports cast by the end of it. The trust level is there. He knows that I know what I'm doing. I watched this guy. Little do I know at that time that I knew he was exceptionally talented and I knew he was going to do really well. But you don't walk over a guy thinking, well, that's the future host of the Olympics. And truly, Brian, everything that I learned from an on-air standpoint was watching him for three years. And his professionalism, how he treated people, all of it was exemplary. And then he moves on to ESPN and obviously we know the career that he's had, but that's dumb luck more than anything else. And he just happened to be at Syracuse. He happened

to be at that high school football game. We happened to hit it off. And it ended up being a huge, huge part of my development and understanding of what it's going to take to actually make it in this business. Just to paint a picture for people. At W.A.E.R., the student radio station you mentioned literally the pictures of previous Syracuse sportscasters are on the wall. Yes. So you are serving your pictures on the wall now too, I believe, but you are surrounded by these great sportscasters. Yeah. Did you ever do the thing where you sent one of them a tape when you were in college and said, hey, can Dick, Bob, can you take a second and listen to my play by play? I didn't. I didn't. And I think back on that now, the reason that I didn't, because

I was still in the lab in my mind. I definitely was serious about it and took it very seriously, but initially I was not at the level that others were at. I needed to work at it. I wasn't the kid that was calling play-by-play all the time and his every move of life. Occasionally, when we played pickup games, you know, I said, here comes Gans, right down the lane. He lays it in it. They got, dude, shut up. enough. I was participating in the pickup game and calling play by play. It's not a good look when you're trying to stay on. Winners stay on. So I wasn't that kid. I needed time to develop and find my own voice and my own style. So it didn't even dawn on me at that point to send out tapes and to

have someone critique it. I knew I wasn't a finished product. And when I graduated, I ended up going to WFA and Radio in New York, I had had an offer in Buffalo, I had an offer on air in West Virginia, and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go to grad school. I'm going to go to FAN. It's the top sports radio station in the country. I'm going to produce. It was for Howie Rose's show, learned a ridiculous amount from him, and from just being a fly on the wall and watching Mike and the Mad Dog and eventually Ed Coleman and Dave Sims and Steve Summer. and all these voices that I had heard, I got to know them. And I just thought to myself, if I could get there and they get a chance to know me,

then I'll have a better chance of getting on the air than if I go to Buffalo or if I go to West Virginia, if I go to some other market that Larry King would call out in his radio show, Altuna! Hello! That didn't really appeal to me. And the play-by-play thing happened not by accident. I knew I wanted to do. And by the end of senior year, I had gotten pretty good. I won the Bob Costas Award as a senior.

And that meant you got $1,000 from Bob Costas, a check. Like a golf check? Or a small check? No, no, not the big check that you got at bowling for dollars. No, no. The regular standard check was sent to my house. And, you know, I don't know. again, if this was naivete, I said to my father, I go, A, it's got his signature. It's Robert Costas.

I said, Dad, I don't think I'm going to cash it. I want to keep this. He goes, are you nuts? Make a copy. Take a picture. What, what the hell are you talking about? I did cash it. It was a thousand bucks. So I got it rolling a bit, and I was among the better broadcasters of that four-year period at Syracuse. But no, I didn't send out tapes to Marv or to Sean McDonough, who was someone that belongs on that list. He was younger than all the other guys that I mentioned. But his picture was up there. You're right. It can be daunting, but it can also be very inspiring.

Just so I understand the Costas check, was this from Bob's checking account? Yes. Wow. Yes, it was Bob and his first wife, Randy. Bob and Randy Costas, their name side by. side or one over the other and it came to my home and I was blown away. I had met Bob. I'm going to tell you this, Brian, just based on my background, you know, I definitely came in contact with celebrities as a kid. If you call Buddy Hackett a celebrity, he qualifies. He was a big star. So that level of celebrity I met

through the comedy circuit or the entertainment industry, my senior year of college, they finally offered a course, first time sports broadcasting at Syracuse. And I was taught by gentlemen who recently passed away, Joel Moranis, who was the voice of the Syracuse Orange and a really lovely guy, a great, great guy, and had worked with Bob. So he invited Bob to speak to the class.

And he came in to speak, and he walked in the door and it was the first time that I was actually starstruck in my life. And I'm not sure I've been starstruck since then. I think I had built up in my head. Bob at that point was really starting to hum. He was not quite the prime time host of the Olympics, but he was right there. It was 1989.

So I know 88, he had a big role at the Olympics, and then it continued with baseball and football pregames and long form. of course with the late night show, later with Bob Costas. And I went up to him afterwards and spoke with him. And I just thought to myself, I don't know if I've met someone that was more eloquent than this guy. And it was something to aspire to. And so when I won that, that's why I said, maybe I won't cash this thing.

But a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks. Doesn't matter who it's from. Yeah. Your dad was a comic. So he knew you don't leave uncast checks around. Honestly, he thought there was something wrong with me. Your early basketball play-by-play, really early basketball play-by-play. How much did it sound like Marv Alberts?

Completely sounded like a bad Mar-Valbert knockoff. Completely. Style, tone, speed, verbiage, all of it. All of it. And there was nothing I could do about it. It's really all I knew. Growing up in New York, Marv had such an imprint on all of the announcers or wannabe announcers that it just became ingrained in you, fair or not. And then you start making adjustments and you realize that you've got to do it in your voice, in your style. But it gave

me a blueprint to work off of. And I look back on it now. I'm not sure what I would have. done because that was a good starting point. And I'm sure for Marv, it's a little weird and annoying, but also flattering that you had this whole generation of New York future announcers that basically ripped them off. Now, I think maybe you get hints of it here and there, but early on, it was a bad, bad rip off. And writers do this too. You don't know how to write an article. So you read one and go, I'm going to write it like this guy or this gal wrote the article. Yeah. And at least as you say, it's a blueprint. And then over time, I'll make it sound like me.

I'll figure out how to write it my own voice. Right. And then that leads to maybe a lot of prose and a pedantic style that, man, I could have said that in fewer words or I didn't need that entire paragraph because you're trying to parrot what you see from Gary's, Smith in Sports Illustrated. It was a brilliant writer, but he was a brilliant guy. That's what made him a brilliant writer. For me, I grew up, and as I told you at eight years old, I had this desire to do this for a living. So now, what do you do about it? I mentioned I had no outlet for it, so I would start mimicking Marv Albert. You'd go downstairs for breakfast. I'll have two eggs over hard toast, mightly toasted with butter, bacon, crisp.

You know, your parents are looking at you that you might be troubled. There might be an issue here. There may have to be some form of psychiatry. It never got to that level, but they definitely were concerned early. I'll tell you where I hear Marv's essence in your voice now. I was watching you do Mavericks, Lakers the other night. And you said, oh, beautiful pass. And that's what Marv would say.

Oh, beautiful move. It's simple. It's simple. And it's funny, I don't know how many years ago, probably five, six years ago. I've been with the Nets 28 years. So this is year 22 with the Nets, walking from the back to the broadcast location with my bag, rolling it behind me, getting ready to put the headset on. And I got a fairly young kid.

He's got to be 12 years old behind me. He goes, hey, I turn around. He goes, you're a mob of Albert. What do you say? I went, yes. I don't want to ruin this kid's day. So I just think there's still an association, probably not as much now, but as recently as six, five years ago,

Yeah, it marves the voice of the NBA. So I get it. So now there's this huge list of eagleisms. Book it, bottom, buries it, major highlight. How did you invent those? Did you sit down and say, I'm going to say this during a broadcast, or does it just pop out in real time? Yeah, I did not invent any of them.

They all came out in some way. Either I've heard them somewhere, or it was birthed in the moment on something that brought that word. word choice to my head. The only one that I know for a fact that I took from somebody and I took it knowingly was rack attack, which it was a pre-game production meeting with Lawrence Frank, who's now the president of the Clippers, he was the head coach of the Nets. He was great with us and very transparent. So we would do an on-camera interview, quick, three minutes, four minutes, whatever it was. And then another five or six minutes, off camera, off the record, him giving us

an idea of what to look for. And they were playing the Miami Heat that night. And for whatever reason, he tossed it out early in his scouting report. He said, oh, we got to get inside. We got to get a bunch of rack attacks. We got to get Aaron Williams going to the rim, get him a rack attack. What is he talking about? So he walks out of the room and I turned to Frank DeGraise, our producer, longtime producer, who's great at the job. I said, Frank, have you? ever heard that term? He goes, no, I've never heard that term. So now the game gets going, we don't say anything about it. It's late in the game. Aaron Williams drives in and dunks it. And I say on the call, oh, what a rack attack from Aaron Williams. And Frank DeGraise hits the

talk back, my earpiece, and is cracking up. I love it. I love it. And then I thought, you know what? It's a memorable saying. So I didn't overuse it. Occasionally, it was. It was, would pop up and really was to make Frank laugh. I've never talked to Lawrence Frank about it, ever. And now I do use it a lot. It rhymed. It was good wordplay. It was descriptive. So, yeah, things come from weird places. And I'm more than willing. I'm not Casey Kasem. I don't take requests. But if someone's got something, I'm willing to listen. You don't take requests, but you're happy to steal something. That's what you're saying.

Yes. I wouldn't go as far as, because, again, I grew up with a stand-up comedian for a father, and I was very aware of... Oh, yeah, joke thievery, yeah. Yeah, which is a very common thing. And geniuses. Robin Williams was a genius, but he was a well-known joke thief, and then would have to pay off comics.

Like, at the end of it, a guy would come home with like, hey, Robin, that was in my act two weeks ago at the chuckle hut. He's like, oh, I'm so sorry. There you go. We're not at that level by any stretch. What do you remember about calling your first NBA game? A flop sweat. I'd say more than anything else.

We did a preseason run-through game in 1994. I flew to Detroit for Nets Pistons, first preseason game. And Grant Hill happened to be his first game in the NBA. As a rookie preseason, no one's going to remember. it, Grant will remember it. Off the opening tip, the ball gets tapped to him. He dunks within four seconds of his NBA career. That's how he opened it up. And I called it into a tape recorder. We did a run-through game. So that was fine. I felt good about that. The first real game was down in Houston. And we're doing net rockets. The Rockets had just won the NBA title.

This is on the radio? On the radio. I'm working with Mike O'Coron. one of the nicest human beings you'll ever meet. A former star at North Carolina actually hosted Michael Jordan on his recruiting visit down to Chapel Hill. So the relationship continued through the years and Mike played in the NBA for the Nets and for the Washington bullets. So Mike's the analyst and we sit down, we're ready to go. I feel good about things and they're going to hand out the rings that night. David Stern is in attendance and we're two minutes from air, and I turned to the engineer and I said, hey, just be ready to pot up PA, because we're going to have this ring ceremony. He goes, PA. I go, yeah, yeah, PA, public jury,

he goes, now we don't have PA. So you don't have a mic for the PA? He goes, no PA. 30 seconds. What? So we start this pregame show, and now the ceremony is going on as we're doing it. I can barely hear myself, let alone hear Mike, and we get through it barely. And the game starts. And I'm feeling pretty good about things. It's going fairly well, but it's fast and I'm trying to keep up. And we hit the first commercial break. And I see Mike is motioning. We had old headsets, like the ones that that you would wear for a camera operator, very bulky. And Mike is motioning to the guy next to him, like pointing to his ears. And I don't really know what's going on.

I'm just focused on what I have to do. And I later find out that when I had lifted my headset off, they were so old and I was sweating so much, that the outside portion of the headset was peeling off and it immediately stuck to my skin deep, deep inside my ears. So there's just black. crud in my ears and then down my neck. I have no idea. And Mike is trying to ask the guy next to him. Like, is there any stuff my ears? I go, no. So we wrap up the game. Mike, again, one of the

nicest human beings, doesn't say a word to me. And we get on the plane. We fly now to Dallas, which should be a nothing flight. There's a huge storm. So we have to go around this storm. and it ends up taking almost two hours to get from Houston to Dallas. We land, I get to my room, it's like three in the morning, I take my clothes off, I go into the bathroom. I have deep black shit all over my ears and my neck. I had no idea. And I asked Mike the next day, I go, dude, what?

He goes, yeah, I didn't have the heart to tell you. It was a rough night. It's like Albert Brooks in broadcast news levels. Seriously. Like, I didn't, I'm not, I don't sweat in general. I think it was a combination of the Houston Heat, my first NBA broadcast, the engineer was not prepared for this, old equipment, and then good old fashion flop sweat. It was a perfect storm.

Let's talk a little bit about mechanics of calling a game. You're calling bucks, nets tonight after we get off here. What's your prep like after doing this for 20 plus years? So on the Nets side, because I call Nets games, I'm good with my boards. I'm good with my biographical information. All I need to do is update numbers and stats. Then I've got to go back and take a closer look at most recent games, trends, talk with my producer, Frank DeGraise, make sure I'm up to date on storylines.

I've been doing the NCAA tournament for two weeks. I had one net game in between. So I just got to make sure that I'm aware of everything that's going on. Bucks out of things. I've had them a few times this year. So again, my board is made up and is in good shape. All of that biographical information and scouting report material is all done. Update of numbers.

Same deal. Now go back. Five games, 10 games, 15 games. Make sure you're aware and on top of all of the narrative surrounding this team. The mechanics of doing the game, not much changes. You know, I've definitely gotten to a point in my career where I know what to do, I know how to do it, I know how to raise my voice, I know how to lay out, I know how to manage the broadcast. I'm working with Sarah Kustok and Richard Jefferson tonight, three-man booth, so that's less talking for me. And that's not a bad thing. Keep the conversation

flowing, tag when necessary, if there's something that provides a little bit of levity, jump on it, create a moment for the three of us to laugh, for the audience to feel like they're part of it, not inside jokes, everybody's got to feel like they're part of it. The part that I think a lot of people find interesting, the prep work, the boards of what do you do? Every announcer does it differently. They do what works for them. I still do everything by hand. So basketball, you're laying out all 15 players that can play with biographical information, background, school, hometown, hometown, age, height, weight, salary, how many years they've been in the league, when were they drafted? Who else have they played for on and on and on? NFL, same deal. So think about an NFL

game, you're talking about a hundred and six players that you've got to be aware of for the game. If you're doing two games a week, like I'll often do for a radio game and a TV game, it's a lot of information. That's a lot of prep. And I wouldn't feel comfortable unless I did it. Recently, a few years ago, pre-pandemic, I was flying.

And of course, if you're working on these things on a plane, people are naturally curious. They look over. So you get a certain guy next to you. And I can tell usually if they know either who I am or what I do. And then others that have no idea and just start nodding their head over and angling. So I'll get that, you know, that 10 questions. Like, what do you coach?

No, no. What do you scout? Nope. GM, GM type. Nope. Yeah, I'll just play it out with them. I'll see how far we can go. Ten more guesses, yeah.

Ten more. I'll give you seven more, sir. So on a flight prior to the pandemic, when people used to actually engage with one another, there's a woman probably about 60 years old sitting next to me and I break out my football boards and I'm doing my work. And I can see her head starting to angle over, but she's not saying anything. A good 10 minutes go by, 15 minutes go by, flight attendant comes over. You want some to drink. Yeah, I'll take a club soda. So now there's a break in me doing my boards. And she says, can I ask you something? I said, yeah, yeah, of course. She said, what do you do? I said, well,

what do you think I do? Because she's been staring at this stuff for 20 minutes, multicolor, numbers, position groups. She says, are you a wedding planner? I said, I am not, but I really want to know why you think that. She said, well, it looks like you're setting up tables and air. I said, yes, Rob Grunkowski is going to be attending here at this part of the way. I just found that very fascinating that someone would look at what I'm doing and have no idea what it is. Yeah, because if people have never seen an announcer's board, it's a bunch of boxes, especially for an NFL game. So I guess it could look like a giant wedding venue with Rob Gruncowski at one table.

And, you know, there you go. At the time, yeah, Tom Brady or... Sure. Yeah, and... Devin McCordy at another one. Yeah, I answered. I said, I said, no, no, I'm not a wedding planner. I'm a caterer.

That's my profession. I help the wedding planner. The assistant to the wedding planner. I heard you say this on the Dan Patrick show last year, that you had gone a decade without misidentifying a player in an NBA game. Is that true? Oh, yeah. Not one single player?

Yeah. Yeah, I got the job very young. So I think the first challenge that I thought I had to overcome was credibility more than anything else. That someone would take me seriously at the age of 25 calling the NBA. So I made a deal with myself early on that I just would not make a mistake. and I held myself to that for a long time. And that can be a little bit nerve-wracking because why would you want to walk on that tightrope when nobody else is keeping score of how many times you fall off? But I thought it was important at the time to make sure that I built credibility and believability and that the audience knew that they were going to get the right information.

And that just became my mentality. I had the same mentality. I started doing updates at WFAN at a very young age. I was 22 and started getting some talk shows. But the update thing in particular, I just said to myself, I am not going to perfumfer ever. Now, you're a human being. At some point, you perfumfer.

But I'm telling you, I want a long time without a stumble or a perfumfer because I just made it my business that no one was going to be able to use that against me as a young guy. So now things are a little different. I'm an older person and you understand mistakes happen. I also learned at some point you can diffuse mistakes with humor. And if you're honest with the audience, if you're honest with your partner, if you're honest with yourself, most people don't care. They're okay with it. And if, if anything, they want to know you're not a robot, you're not a machine, that you can screw up, just like anybody else. You just have to be careful that you don't screw up in the biggest moments.

Do you remember when the streak ended, the decade-long streak? I don't know if I have a specific date. I just know that there was an understanding in my own brain that it was okay. I think I had just allowed myself to recognize that it's all going to be okay. They're not going to pull you. They're not going to take you off the air. But it was probably somewhere in my late 30s when it ended. Early on, I was just trying to get on the air and get off the air and not have anybody come in and blow the whistle. Like, boop, pooh, pooh, hey, you're done.

Enough. Enough. You've been fooling all of us. Get out of here. So then when you build up some actual confidence in the job, I was probably 27, 28, when I started feeling good about what I was doing as an announcer. And that 10-year stretch in the NBA, I was locked in. It just mistakes were not allowed.

And they didn't happen. Yeah. And like you said, it all comes from a, if I'm perfect. Yes. They can use other things against me, but they can't use this against me. A hundred. Whoever they is, a fictitious they, by the way, someone that was not actually monitoring every net broadcast.

I can tell you from our viewership. numbers, the they was very small at that point. The ratings did not back up my idea that there were a lot of people watching, but I convinced myself that they were. And I think maybe, I say this now, looking back on it, I was more concerned with network executives than I think I was with the actual audience and trying to impress and trying to be someone that would be considered for that position somewhere down the road. And I ended up breaking through with CBS in 1998. I'd actually been offered the previous year from Fox to do some games with the NFL. I did NFL Europe for Fox in 1997. I was doing the Jets at the time in 97. I couldn't get off those Jets games,

so I couldn't do. I think it was three games they offered. Bill Brown was an executive at Fox and it called me. George Krieger was there prior and both were highly interested. And I couldn't take the games and I thought, oh boy, there was my shot. And then CBS came around in 1998 for a college basketball game. It was during Nagano, the Olympics, all of their announcers, literally all of their announcers were in Japan. And they had three college basketball games that they had to fill the spots. And I ended up getting Vanderbilt at Arkansas, a nondescript game in February that ended up becoming the start of a 24-year relationship with the network. It's pretty wild to think about it.

I want to ask you about crescendos, which you mentioned earlier during a basketball game. We all know that the announcer's voice is going to go to 10 when there's a buzzer beater. Sure. But the art to me is figuring out how big your voice should be when Luca Donchich hits back-to-back threes in the first quarter. And when a team goes on a 7-0 run in the second quarter. How do you think about that? How big your voice should be at those other moments?

Yeah, there's no secret sauce, Brian. I think if you talk to different announcers, they'll give you different viewpoints on this. My process has been, if something is going to lift me out of my chair, then it's probably going to do the same for others, sitting either at the arena or at their house or in their car, wherever it might be. So there's something visceral that happens that creates that reaction in your mind and in your body that this was next level.

This was something different. This was not casual. This was not something you see every day. Off balance plays, acrobatic plays, big finishes with someone going hard to the rim, slick passes through. the legs around a player, something that's unique. And the way I always looked at it, if they were going to play a highlight reel of the game itself, not highlights of an anchor voicing over, just raw highlights from the announcer, would you be able to pick up the big moments just from the announcer's voice? And that was very telling to me. And those that

that I highly respected, doesn't mean they all hit 10, but their voice changed just enough to let you know there was a marker, there was an indicator that this was special. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill stuff. So you've got to be careful. You can't go to the well over and over and over again. If you have nowhere else to go, the buzzer-beater that you just alluded to, you're going to go to 11? What are we going to do here?

We're going to do a Rob Reiner film and go higher than 10. It can't be done. So you've got to be smart about it and you've got to pick and choose your spots. It almost feels like you're misleading the audience when you go to the wrong place. You know, you may get a short-turn pop out of that first quarter play. But if the guy does that again with two minutes left, that's way more important. And my voice should be here one time and maybe up here the next time. Yeah, it's a great point.

I think in addition to that word misleading, you're not mirroring, which is what the goal is supposed to be. You're supposed to mirror what the audience is feeling. And if you're misrepresenting the play or if you're not on it, and either too high or too low, there are instances where the announcer does not come through on a big play and does not meet the moment, And then when you watch that play over and over again, you say, what were they thinking? And you don't get a second take. That's the issue.

So, you know, what I've noticed with a lot of announcers, and this is a really tough game to play on a buzzer-beater, we know they're going to go look at it. We understand that. We know that they're going to go to the monitor. If you incorporate that as part of your call, that's there forever. So I've tried to at least create a little space between a game winner and then the next part of reporting, which is, yes, they're going to take a look at this. But if the first thing you say is they're going to take a look at this, I know no flags became a big call on football.

And I just never went there. I don't know why. It always bothered me on the highlight that no flags wasn't glowed. Like, yeah, no shit. The fact that there's a flag means that we're stopping play. I understand that part of it.

So I don't know. It's an interesting concept. I know you care about this stuff and you're a student of it and the art of it interests you. I don't know if most fans want to know how the sausage is made. Some do.

I enjoyed inside the actor's studio. I really liked it. I love the back and forth. And then there are a bunch of people that just want to go watch the movie. And they don't want to know the emotions attached to Bradley Cooper when he was getting to that place.

So I always, I get a little bit squeamish on process because I think there's a faction of the audience that really wants it. And then there's another part that says, oh, I don't care how you get. there. Well, I think a lot of it's subliminal, right? It's, it, you know it. And I always feel like it's, I'm in the passenger seat of a car when I'm with a play-by-play announcer. And if I'm in the

passenger seat and somebody is driving 45 miles per hour through a school zone, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hey. You feel it. Yeah. You feel. You're right. Or going 45 miles per hour on the California highway, on the freeway here in L.A. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're just off in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. So even beyond the process stuff, it's just weird and it feels wrong. No, you nailed it. And there's a weird thing that I think every announcer has to get past. So when you're in college and you're doing this and no one's listening to your stuff and it's

all you and you've got to self-evaluate and you've got to listen back to your tapes and that first batch is hard. You're listening back. and man, is that how I sound? That's not how it felt coming out of my mouth, but okay. And then you try to adjust from there. Your first goal, at least mine was, when I wanted to be a professional announcer from college to the professional ranks,

I just didn't want anyone to question what they were hearing. That's the first step is you're in your car listening to a newscaster, a sportscaster, a play-by-play announcer. If your first reaction is, Oh, this doesn't feel right. That person doesn't belong there. That's the first. That's the most rudimentary of senses that you feel.

And all of us feel it. TV, a bad actor, working with a good actor. You know, within a say, like, oh, no, that's not at the same level as that. And now as you progress from radio to TV, TV, more viewers, more scrutiny, local TV, regional TV, two national TV. Man, this worked in Nashville. Why isn't it working nationally? Man, I crushed this in Chicago, but they don't dig me in Florida.

That's what starts to happen. And ultimately, for me, it was about getting to a consistent level where I could rely on my instincts, and it didn't matter the game, that I knew what to do. do. I knew how to adjust. You know, the NCAA tournament, look, the stakes are really high. This is the highest level for most of the participants that they're ever going to participate in. The biggest stage they're ever going to participate in. The biggest audience they're ever going to play in front of, whether it's in the stands or on television or radio. And I just try to view it through that lens. It means something. It matters. And I probably start.

at a higher level for that game or a faster speed of, if we're going to go MPHs, than I would for a Mavericks-Lakers game. But you can feel it around you. You can feel the sense of urgency. And it's your job to deliver that to the audience in many ways. You're the conduit. And if you're not doing it, who's doing it? The point is, to remind people that this does matter. It matters to people on many different levels. A couple more before I let you go. This has always been an irony of play-by-play announcing to me.

The better an announcer gets at it, the more efficient, the more letter perfect. It can also make them seem like an announcing robot, sort of inhuman. So once you get the technical stuff right, how do you think about connecting with the audience? Yeah, that's a great question. For me, being relatable and being a human being conversational is of paramount importance. I never wanted to get to a place where I'm going through the motions or I could do this in my sleep. It's another basketball game. I try to remind myself that a Tuesday Nets Kings games matters to somebody just as much as, you know, you know, a lead eight game between North Carolina and St. Peter's. It matters. Somebody's watching. Somebody's listening that either hasn't heard you or hasn't heard of you. So that cliche

always rings in my mind. I just don't assume that people know my work. There are a bunch of people tuning in. They don't, they go, is that a movie from 1986? What is that? What's an Iron Eagle? I think I saw Iron Eagle too. Is this the original? What's happening? Lewis Gusset, right? Oh, tremendous. Tremendous. Jason Gedrick also. Let's not dismiss his role in it. So if you remind yourself of that and then bring the view that, hey, look, we're supposed

to have fun here. There is supposed to be some lighthearted moments. And if that is generated from me and my partner, great. Sideline reporter, super. Action on the floor, something that's. different, the ball goes somewhere that it's not supposed to go. I want to cover that. It rolls over a drink and it crashes onto a fan. That should be covered. That shouldn't be cut away. Let's show a replay of something different. That should be covered. And I've convinced the majority of producers

and directors that I work with that that's fun. That's outside the norm. And I think those little checks and balances remind you that, hey, we're still calling a game here. So I try not to treat it like it's the end of the world, and I try not to treat it like this is brain surgery. Who you're working with plays a large role in that. The play-by-play side of it, there should still be a sense of wonder because that's what we're doing here. We're calling a basketball game or a football game. So that's how I check myself more than anything else. And I think it's also your demeanor and your comportment and your temperament, you know, how you take the airwaves. It matters to me. I am serious about the broadcast. I'm not that serious about how I take myself.

During North Carolina, UCLA, the other day you unfurled an incredible number of love puns because Caleb Love was going crazy. Yeah. Is there a, is there a tote board where you You go, okay, I've hit the limit. This is it. I'm done for this broadcast. Yeah, you know what's so funny about that, Brian? I had no intention. It didn't even dawn on me that that would happen.

And obviously, his name stands out, but I didn't put two and two together. End of the first half, he has a shot that could have put points on the board for North Carolina. And it was before the buzzer, but not quite. And I said, on the air, it's too late for love. And Jim chuckled. Jim did not know that was a deaf leopard song. But he chuckled. He gave me the obligatory partner chuckle, which I appreciated.

And we go to halftime, and it just uncorked this idea that if this guy starts going off, I might have some other stuff here. I wrote nothing down. I just at that point went with it. And I had no idea he was going to go off. He went off. And now I'm just trying to top myself. And now I'm getting texts from people as it's happening.

And the Casey Kaysom idea. And I'm trying to sift through them as the game is going on. I'm like, oh, that one's actually pretty good. So I just went with it. And I did at some point realize, like, hey, we got to cap this. Because now, A, I would never want to make myself. the story, and B, like, this is a big game, New Zealand, North Carolina. But I do want to have fun, and I do think the audience wants to have fun.

So there was a moment instinctually of No More Love puns. I had a few more, but no more. We'll leave some for next time, right? Next time. The guy could play in the NBA. Kevin Love. I could have a Cavalier game. We're good.

All right. Last one. You've done the NBA with the Nets on yes, NBA playoffs with Turner. regional finals in the NCAAs, playoff games, regular season games on CBS with the NFL. What do you still want to do? I don't know if there's any one specific thing that I haven't done that I need to do or want to do. I just want to keep doing big events and fun events and work with people that I enjoy. To me, that's been the best part of this whole thing is relationships and forming bonds. I've worked with 140.

five different partners over the course of the various sports I've worked, platforms that I've worked. And while I'm not best friends with all of them, I can say that friendships were born from those relationships. And to me, that's really what I've grown to appreciate more than anything else, the people that you meet, the places that you get to go. Look, if I can do it at a higher level, great. But if you're staying up at night worrying about that kind of thing, you're going to lead a very unproductive, unhappy life.

And I've prioritized happiness. Somewhere along the line, I realize that was the goal for all of us. And so when I walk into a booth or I walk to the courtside broadcast area, I realize that people are going to react off of the tone that I set. If I come in with a good attitude, positive, fun, and playful, puts everybody at ease. Everybody now wants to be there. I've worked with people that don't do that. And it sets a really negative tone.

And it affects everybody. It affects everybody on the broadcast. So, you know, just don't be an asshole. Like, that's a pretty simple philosophy in life. But as far as what's going to come, I just want to keep doing good, consistent work and enjoy myself while doing it. Hopefully the audience enjoys it too. Ian Eagle, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks, Brian.

Great to talk to you, man. All right. It's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guest is the Strain Pun headline. Yeah. Monday's very easy headline about the England-Iran World Cup matchup was, It's Iranian men. Hallelujah. Today's headline comes from me, I found it.

It's from Jonathan Chaites' New York Magazine newsletter, David. The piece is about how the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin alliance can now operate out in the open. I'm going to spot you Donald Trump's notorious line. When you're a star, they let you do it. What was New York Magazine's strained pun headline? Wait, one more time, New York? magazine. The Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin alliance can

operate in the open. When you're a star, they let you do it. That's the pallet you're working with here. Russia. Sickle and star, they let you do. Russian leader. Tsar, when you're a czar,

they let you do it. When you're a czar, they let you do it. I can't even speak today. That's awesome. Love it. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production, Magic. by Erica Zervantes. Back Monday to talk Masters and have more Luke Warb takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.