The Press Box - Kevin Harlan on the NBA Playoffs, His First Job, Grading His Work, and the Superglue Protest

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Bryan is joined by sports announcer Kevin Harlan to discuss his journey working in the sports media industry. They touch on Kevin’s first job out of college for the Kansas City Kings, discuss the opportunities that calling an NBA game provides compared to calling other sports, talk about the importance of watching your own film, and weigh in on the first round of the 2022 NBA playoffs. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Kevin Harlan Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Chris Martin, and me and my buddy Kevin O'Connor, aka Kevin O Everything, host an NBA podcast called The Mismatch. They call it The Mismatch because I'm awesome and Kevin is a gigantic nerd. No, no, that's not why at all, Chris. They call it the Mishmatch because I have a brain and you're a loudmouth bozo. Good grief. Anyway, listen to our amazing NBA podcast, The Mismatch. Or don't. We really don't care.

We're probably going to win a million awards either way. Chris, we do care. So don't say that. Please subscribe and listen to the mismatch only on Spotify. Did you really call me a bozo? Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis and producer Erica Servantis here.

The NBA playoffs have been incredibly exciting so far. And when my guest today has called games, you can feel the excitement oozing right out of your television or handheld device. He is Kevin Harlan. of Turner Sports. And before we bring him on, I want to tell you a couple of things. I find interesting about Kevin Harlan. Number one is how unique his sound is,

especially for a guy who has gotten all the way to the top rungs of the business. A few years ago, I remember ESPN's Joe Tessitor telling me that you could divide announcers into two categories. There are announcers whose voices are very controlled. Jotest called them the classically trained violinist category of an announcer. Then there's a second group, and these announcers are more like

jazz riffers. Also very technically sound, but a jazz riffer has an ability to use their voice to connect with people watching the game at a more primal level. This is Kevin Harlan. He does this with language. The other day, Harlan had a player inside a nest of defenders during a playoff game. Harlan's calls also had this unguarded excitement to them. I noticed this during game one of the Suns Pelicans playoff series. Harlan would call a big play, and then he would say, wow. Not many network play-by-play announcers use the word wow. And though Harlan is also known for calling NFL games,

the NBA has been part of his career for nearly 40 years. Harlan got his first NBA play-by-play job the day he graduated from college. Later, he spent nine years his voice of the Minnesota Timberwolves, despite not living in Minnesota for most of that. time. Now Harlan is one of the big voices at Turner Sports, where he was court-side the other day for the super glue protester and where he uses phrases like, no regard for human life. You're on the press box. He is free to fire. Here's Kevin Harlan. All right, Kevin, we are talking the day after Chris Paul put on a show during the Suns Pelicans game you were calling. Now, I can hear your

play-by-play on TV, but what are you feeling when you watch a performance like Chris Paul? We've done so many of his games, Brian, that you, I guess, anticipate, you know, one of these great players. And that's why the superstars always seem to become so prominent and the story's so big in these playoff games. The game is bigger. The stage is bigger. And he has always answered that bell, especially for this team. And it was about a seven-point game, I believe, six-point game. New Orleans had come back.

and it was not teetering, but you could feel the grip loosening. And that's when Paul's at his deadliest. And he hit a couple, and then he started getting momentum. And he has a guy, and the players react to it. And they just followed. And he led, as he always does, whether it's here or in Oklahoma City or Houston or with the Clippers or with the New Orleans team years ago with Monty Williams, he has always been the definitive answer for most of those teams.

their big games and in the playoffs in particular. So we've seen it before. Reggie Miller put it very well last night. I thought when he said he reads the room well. And Paul reads the room exceptionally well. After calling a few thousand basketball games in your life, are you genuinely excited when you see a performance like that? I am.

I'm excited on many levels, though, to be quite honest. Now, this could have been a game in November, and I am always mesmerized. Brian, by how these guys play. The athleticism they show the skill they have in passing and shooting and moving. It never ceases to amaze me how they're always seemingly polishing off, extending, inventing a new move or a trick that gets them open that lets them do what they do so well. and that probably is about as entertaining because it's always new. There's always something new, a new line in a play, a new act, a new performance,

and that's what these guys are doing. They are performers, and they always keep it fresh. And I guess they feel with the old John Madden saying, and so if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. And so they continually, like all of us, continually try to improve what they do. It's very true for broadcasters too. So I never let that part of me ever escape, you know, and I don't try to hold it back. I always, I want to make sure it's, it's always a part of my call because I am truly in awe of what they do. And like I said, it could be a

November game or here we are in the first round of the playoffs and it still has that, that wonderful effect. You're just saying to the audience, I am this excited. and I want to convey this to you. Exactly, yes. Although I don't think in those terms, I hope they just naturally feel the enthusiasm that I have for the game. A lot of people, and I said, listen, you could not be as enthusiastic. You couldn't try to be that way.

It would be exhausting. So I don't even think about it. Honestly, I don't even think about my level of excitement or kind of what I say. I just kind of let it rip. It serves me well most of the time. Other times I've got to be a little bit more cognizant of the situation. But I am truly, you know, I've been around it my whole life with my dad being in pro sports. And I was an okay athlete, never a great athlete by any stretch of the imagination.

So when I see something that I know has taken time to perfect in the hours and effort that these guys put it into their game. I get excited. I'm very much like a fan in that regard. I notice you used the word wow a couple of times last night. You'd see a play and you'd go, wow. I love, you know, I go back and I watch and go, why would I have said that? Like, why, where'd that word come from? And I don't, I don't know. I had a producer one time tell me that the best broadcasts for the broadcaster are usually when the broadcasters have lost themselves in the game.

They're so into the substitutions, the lineup on the floor, game situation, whatever it might be. And I've always kind of, I've bought into that. I think when I am totally immersed and have lost myself in the game,

it usually means that I've picked up on a nuance of a change the coach has made, a different defensive alignment, a statistic that has suddenly become, you know, more visible because of the way the game's going. And I guess I've tried to live by the, and I, there are times, and you can't do it every game, I do so many of them. It's hard sometimes to lose yourself in a game. But when you push yourself, like the effort of player might give on the floor, if you push yourself, if you push yourself, I can easily get into that mode. And so I, that's my number one aim when a game starts is to, is to, you know, lose myself

in the game. And so I become, I guess, more of a fan, but certainly more focused on the different little maneuverings going on within the game. It's almost like the old athlete line. I stopped thinking and I started playing. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

You know, the ball, the pace of the game slowed down. the ball was thrown and I could see the seams of the baseball, a quarterback standing in the pocket and everything in front of them, going what to most of us looks like a million miles an hour, to him is in slow motion. And it's very much that way for a broadcaster. That and capturing the right speed and pace and tone of your voice. I find, and again, I'm there are so many.

There's so many talented broadcasters out there. They probably don't even think of this stuff. Maybe the older I get, the more I'm into it and the science that I think it is, if I can lock into my speed, tone, pace early in a game, it will dictate how I think that broadcast is going to go for me personal, my own personal performance. But if I have a hard time, for whatever reason, getting into the tone, the speed, the pace that I think I need to be in, I battle that internally

until I finally get it. Sometimes I may not get it at all. Sometimes I get it from the moment I open my mouth and say, good evening. Sometimes it takes a quarter or two to lock in. I'll write reminders on my sheets, my boards, my spotting boards, about things that I know, points of emphasis, that I take from my last survey of my last broadcast, my last review of what I've done, and we'll write down notes and will take some of the key words in that review, that self-critique, and put them on my board someplace so that if I do ever have a time that I'm

trying to get out of the mud, so to speak, I'll refer to those words and in my mind, So, okay, what was I thinking? Let's rearrange how you're going at this now. And usually it serves as a pretty good reminder. After calling NBA games for 40 years, how often do you do self-critiques? After every game, especially now, I get into it really thickly. When football and basketball are going at the same time, it becomes a little bit more of an effort, more of a chore. And when I'm home, I try to be present.

and at home with my wife and our kids and our grandkids. So I don't want to get my mind straying when I'm with them about other things I've got to do. So when I work on planes and sitting in airports and things like that, I can usually kind of fill that. Watching tape is a torturous procedure. I hate going back and watching what I've done and how I've done it and wish I would have done it differently. thousand things I'd change per broadcast. On the whole, the further removed I am from the game, I guess the more okay I am with it, the closer I am to that broadcast. I know what I was thinking

in the moment and can connect those dots in my review and think, okay, that's why I said it and that was the wrong thing or that was a good layout or that, whatever it might be. But I, I, I, I think that the most important thing that I do is not necessarily the notes, which are important, the prep, which is vital. But I think personally, for me, it's making sure I've got a good grip on my performance. I could not have a single note in front of me. And no one will care about what I didn't mention, that a guy's dad was a statue maker or a guy's mom was a, was a conference player of the year when she played college ball.

But what they will care about is a bad performance by me. And so literally I could go into last night's game and not have a single note in front of me, hope my mind is quick enough that I can insert when I need to a note or a quip about a player or a situation. But the bottom line is my performance. And so that becomes priority one when I go from game to game to game and in between, how am I doing? You know, it takes, it takes a lot of self-p critique to stay on it. It's not unlike a baseball player or a quarterback or a jump shooter who may have a two-week stretch

or a jump shooter. I got it down. Then he gets cold and it's kind of a block. And he doesn't have, for whatever reason, the same lift. as he shoots are the same follow-through on his motion. And he's got to go back and watch tape. And I think the people that stay on top of their craft are continually going back and re-evaluating what they do and going back to the core principles with which they believe in. So where are we finding you right now?

What's your shooting percentage like so far? You know what? I'm the worst person to ask on that. You know, in some broadcasts, you think, Brian, that you've messed up on or didn't have the right tempo or cadence or excitement level or whatever. And you go back and you're kind of pleasantly surprised. In other games, you think that, boy, I think I covered about every, I checked every box in that one. You'll go back and go, no, I didn't. I didn't sound as good as I thought I sounded.

So it's a continual never-ending for me, never-ending. self appraisal, which means that when the season ends, I really try to unlock and completely remove myself from it. Because I get in the weeds with my own work, and it becomes frustrating for me sometimes. What's something you hear yourself say on tape

and think, geez, Kevin, why did I say that? You know, I begin with football and basketball with the set core of things I feel that I've got to check. Football per play, maybe nine, 10 different things that I think on a play that somehow, radio or TV,

I've got to mention. In basketball, because it's such a flow and back and forth and kind of a different kind of play by play, there are certain things I feel I've got to say and got to do,

not at the least of which is laying out and pockets of space which abides the football principles I lean on too. So I can't really pinpoint things that would mean nothing to you or the audience or that anyone really care about. But things to me that I think that I've got to, I've got to grab. Speed and pace is one of them. The tonality of my voice, which I'm never really satisfied with. Like I'll go and listen to say, well, the voice I've admired so many voices over the years.

It began when I was about seven or eight with John Fissenda and has woven through so many great Jim Simpson and Summerall and Ray Scott and all these great voices. The voice that I think now is the single best voice in sports is Dan Schulman at ESPN. Never met him, never talked to him. We've never crossed paths. We work, the engineer that does our Super Bowl broadcast will do some of his radio work for the ESPN World Series broadcast. And he knows, I've said this before to him often, how much I admire Dan. But when I talk to young kids, I say, you know, listen to 15 seconds of you and then listen to 15 seconds of Dan Shulman and toggle back and forth. And you'll get a pretty good roadmap of where you are deficient and what you should be aiming for.

I'm not saying copy him, mimic them, try to be like him. I'm saying you've got to have a roadmap and not try to reinvent the wheel here. And his roadmap is about as pure a voice and delivery as there is in our business. And I don't compare myself to him, but I will listen to broadcasters like him. And then know what my voice sounds like in my head and know that we're all kind of stealing things and trying to get hints and, guide posts along the way and and there are many of them out there many broadcasters like that he's just one that comes to the top of my head but the one that i think route probably right now has the best delivery so when i when i when you ask what's on your list what are you shooting um i'm

always shooting below 50 percent i hate to say in my own mind and i guess if i'm hard in myself like that that probably means uh i'm maybe listened to in a better frame by viewers and and other people Let me ask you about your background. When did you first say, I want to be a sports announcer? Well, I really, I like sports. And my dad was in sports. He was with the baseball cardinals as the media relations director. He ran the front office for the Packers and eventually became the president of the Green Bay Packers for over two decades.

So I've always been exposed to the world of sports. But I probably was about seven or eight when the light, when I kind of had this weight. And that was watching the highlights of the Green Bay Packer, Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl 1 on NFL films narrated by John Pesenda. And when I was seven or eight when I was watching that, it wasn't the play, but I appreciated the play. And it was a fan overall. So it just kind of felt normal to me. But what I hadn't counted on was the way I was kind of jarred by his narration. and that is a thing that I think kind of got me onto it.

At that same time, we were in St. Louis. My dad, like I said, was with the baseball cardinals. My day to go down to Bush Stadium with him to work was Sunday. We'd go to church. We'd drive down to Bush Stadium. We'd have breakfast in the press box. And I recall, while at the time made not much of an impression on me, I recall when Bob Prince would walk in the longtime voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates,

when Ben Scully would walk in the longtime voice of the Dodgers, when Jack Buck or Harry Carey, I remember them walking in and then kind of coinciding with knowing who they were and listening to Pasenda and being kind of, wait, what's this? That's when it kind of came together. So seven, eight, nine years old is when it was. Then when we moved to Green Bay when I was 10, my dad accepted the job with the Packers,

I would work in the press box during the regular season, delivering stats to the reporters, and eventually worked my way when I was 11 and 12, the spot for the network announcers. Don Cricky was CBS. Lindsay Nelson was CBS. You know, all these famous broadcasters. And then when I was in high school, our high school at a radio station. So that interest and doing games off my TV in my room with the sound turned. down until I got to high school and actually did games over the radio. That was a great learning

ground for me then and the rest is kind of history. I just, I've been immersed in it. I love it. I don't know what else I would do. I probably have other things I would be interested in, but nothing that drives me, even at this age and after being in the business for well over 40 years what I'm doing now. And my love of the business and trying to be better at it. What did your dad say when you told him you wanted to be an announcer? Well, I think, I think you, well, there was a parallel, there was a parallel runway here, and I used that on purpose. I wanted to be in broadcasting, but I also wanted to be an airline pilot.

And these two goals when I was 11, 12, 13 years old were running down a parallel runway. And I will, the thing that probably turned the tide, quite honestly, when I was in 7th or 8th grade, and my dad took a look at my math scores and then took a look at me and then took a look at my math grade and then took a look at me and say, you know, if it were up to me, I think I pursued journalism and broadcasting.

And that's what kind of got me on that road. You know, at that time, there were no computers, airline pilots had to be, you know, great in geometry and trigonometry and math and problem solving. And that just wasn't what I was good at. And not that he knew I'd be good, at 11 or 12 in broadcasting, but he thought, you know, he was a journalism major. Maybe he felt he was the same way in math, and he thought maybe this would be a nice

path for me to take. So, and I say that kind of tongue and cheek about the math, but it was, there was a conversation exactly like that. And probably that put my eyesight on, on broadcasting more than being an airline pilot. I feel that's a pretty typical childhood. You go astronaut, pilot. And then it's like, okay, now what can I actually do? Yeah, let me really dumb it down and become a broadcast, right? And say whatever comes out of my mouth. But that was kind of my early childhood path, preteen, early teen years. You went to the University of Kansas. And I think days after you graduated, you became the radio voice of the Kansas City Kings, who are now the Sacramento Kings. How did you get that job? When I was in

college. I chose the University of Kansas on a very interesting way. My dad was with the Packers in Chicago. Gary Bender was broadcasting the game for CBS and knew my dad. And they got to talk and my dad said, yeah, you know, talking about me wanting to get into broadcasting, that I was doing it for the student station, that I was heard by commercial stations. And they had offered me jobs while a 16 and 17 and 15 year old kid in Green Bay. And Gary said, you know, I went to Kansas, and there is a guy there who does their games who I know was always looking for students to take under his wing.

And the guy's name was Tom Hedrick. Tom Hedrick broadcast Super Bowl 1 for CBS Radio. So he was at that time the voice of the Kansas Jayhawks. So I flew down to KU, spent the weekend with him, ate at his family table with he and his wife and his daughter. I sat next to him during a broadcast at Allen Fieldhouse and was sold on Tom, on the University of Kansas, which was a great accredited journalism school. And I went there.

And from the time I walked on campus, I got to work on the KU Sports Network doing pregame half time sideline and post game on 35 stations across the state of Kansas. Tom did the play by play. A former quarterback did the color and I was the third member and did all these other shows on the network broadcast across the state of Kansas, which then got me an internship at a TV station in Topeka, which then got me an internship with a radio station in Kansas City, K-CMO radio, news talk. And when I was a sophomore, they were expanding their chiefs broadcast pregame show to three hours. And they said, we want, with no cost attached, we want to be this, to be the best broadcast in the NFL. And we want you, a 19 year old

Kevin Harle, to produce it. And so I, you know, I had not done much production. But by doing that, I learned the business, Brian, even more. And that then got me a job as a senior in college with my own Sunday night show on KCMO Radio in Kansas City while I was in college. When the Kansas City Kings were looking for a broadcaster, about the time I was graduating, they wanted a tape. I sent them a tape. And the day I graduated, I got a call on my recorder off our phone in our frat house at KU offering me the job. And I was 21 years old. And that was my graduation present. And so became the voice. of the Kansas City Kings, Neil Funk, who was doing the games and just left to go do the Philadelphia

76ers. They were looking for someone young and cheap, and I was both. And I got the job that was, I had worked for the station, the station carried the King's broadcasts, and they hired me to be the broadcaster. So when I graduated, I got a Palm Pilot. You got to do NBA play-by-play. Yes, that was a, there were only two others that had gone at that time. into a NBA or pro basketball broadcasting play-by-play job. Up until that time, one was Costas, we did the St. Louis Spirits, and the other was Marv, Mark Albert. And so I was in company of some pretty impressive people

and never took that job lightly and was incredibly nervous. But my first broadcast ever was in Milwaukee in a preseason game. and my folks came down and had to carry the equipment and set up the equipment myself. But I was doing the NBA. And then I did the TV broadcast too. We did a simulcast. He did it with Ed McCauley, Easy Ed McCauley, the great Boston Celtic player. And so, yep, that was my first job out of college.

And then the Kings left and I did the, got the Kansas City Chiefs Radio job. I didn't want to leave Kansas City. Got the Kansas City Chiefs radio job. And I was hired by Lamar Hunt. Lamar Hunt and I was at a big football shaped table in an office outside of his apartment in Arrowhead Stadium. And he said at one end of the table and I said at the other and a guy named Jack Stedman, who was the president, was off to Lamar's right. And Bob Springer, who was the PR director for the chiefs at the time.

He was there. So it was just the four of us in the room. And Lamar Hunt had heard my tape and hired me. So I didn't go to Sacramento. I could have. wanted to stay and did with the chiefs, and I was there for nine years with the chiefs as their radio play-by-play voice with Lendos. I would think being an NBA play-by-play guy at 21-22, would on the one hand, people would

think you were a wonderkind, and on the other hand, it would put a huge target on your back. Like, who does this whippersnapper doing here? How did people take to you at that early age? You know, I don't know. You never know. You know, there's social media now to inform people how other people. feel about them. There wasn't back in 1982. I'm sure they looked at me as all people would, if someone's so young, getting such a coveted job. And I knew the other people that applied

for that job and would have done it probably for my same salary. Now, at that time, I had been doing small college football and basketball while in college. While I was finishing up my junior and senior year, I would on Friday afternoons, drive to some small Kansas town. And do broadcasting for WIBW and Topeka, which had a big booming signal up and down the, the middle of the country and, and did games all weekend long. And then would drive to where the Kansas Jayhawks were

and did their game on Saturday, then would drive into Kansas City on Sunday and produce this chief show. And that was my weekend through college for two and a half years. So I missed out in a lot of, you know, social things in college. Not that I'm sorry that I missed them. I had enough fun in college to suffice for anybody, but it wasn't your typical college kid

because that last class ended at noon or 1 o'clock on Friday, I was in my car and drive into a game and often did a couple with the other things I had to do with the Kansas football team and the chiefs. So, you know, I never thought of it like I'm paying my dues. I was just enjoying it so much. I really didn't have time to think about what other people thought of me. I guess I was so immersed and just making sure that I was ready for every broadcast.

Cotton Fitzsimmons was the coach that I worked under my first year, and he was great to me. In fact, I just saw his wife. Cotton passed away many years ago. I just saw his wife last night. She stayed in Phoenix. And every time I see her, I think about how good Cotton Fitzsimmons was to me, a longtime NBA coach, and helped me along. And Mike Woodson was on that team. current coach at Indiana. So there's some great memories.

And certainly, had I not done that at that age, I wouldn't have gotten a chief's job and wouldn't have moved on in my career the way I have. At that young age, how much did you sound like Kevin Harlan? Well, I probably didn't at all. I always tell kids, and I'm in that category that what you sound like at 22, you sound different at 32 and at 42 and at 62. your voice is constantly changing. And I feel comfortable saying that because I've heard other broadcasters that were young and

have heard tapes to them and they sound nothing like they do now. I've heard Costas when he was 22. I heard Jim Nance when he was 25. They sounded nothing like they do today back then. And I'm certain I didn't. I've heard some chief's things because NFL films will run some chief stuff. And I got the chief's job when I was 24. And at 24, you know, it probably didn't matter if I was 24 or 14.

My voice had not become the voice that I was going to have. And the voice that I have now is not what I hear in my head. I always had thought my voice would be like a Fasenda, like a Summerall and like Jim Simpson and like Cricky and all these great voices. And it sounds nothing like them, which is very disappointing. I want, that's what I want to sound like. And I sound nothing like them. But I guess you're, you're born with the voice you have. But no, and I hear my calls when I was, especially with the chiefs,

because I hear those on a more regular basis with a big sack by Derek Thomas or a touchdown throw by Montana. I hear my call and go, boy, my voice sure sounds different. But that's life. You know, you become a better violinist at 42 than he were at 22. So it just, you become a better writer when you're, when you're 52, then you were at 32. So, you know, life and evolved, you know, performance and skill level always increase and sharpened. What do you think your voice sounds like now?

My voice, that is a daily battle I have with myself. To get, I always, I always, you know, visualize the voice and the performance that you want. And I think about it from the moment I wake up on game day of how I want to sound, how I'm better sounding, in my own mind. I don't, again, I don't really rely on anybody else. I don't go to social media. I have stayed away from that. Burn one, Chris gave me great advice about 20 years ago when social media was becoming kind of a thing, you know, 17, 18, 19, 20 years ago and said, you said, you know, I used to think that I was the greatest broadcaster. and then I would read some of these SEC social media boards,

and they would just tear me apart and it tore me apart to read that, that someone could think that little of my work. And I swore off it. And he told me that when I first got to CBS, and I have listened to that advice. I do not go on that, so I don't know. So I am my own evaluator. I am my own critic.

And that's kind of a lonely world, be it. I may listen to other broadcasters and compare just on the on the spur of the moment like if I'm in a restaurant or if I'm getting ready in my room and I hear an earlier broadcast or whatever and say, oh, that was a good idea or I don't know that I would go there or whatever it might be. So it's kind of your kind of isolated in that regard. People in the broadcast business that hire you and I've got five different employers full time, four different employers, full time, that I won't count the video game that I do, but I've got these other employers and we get very little feedback.

I think they feel like as long as you're getting assignments, in our mind you're doing okay. And I think they don't want to screw with us too much in terms of, you know, getting inside our heads. So we're left to get in our own heads and figure, out what we're supposed to do. I'll go to my wife sometimes who has heard me for, you know, we've been married 35 years. So she's heard me, you know, from the very beginning. And, and she'll always say, oh, he did a great job. I said, no, Annie, no, serious, like, what about

that thing? No, no, no. I can, you know, she doesn't have a mean bone in her body. So she's not a good person to bounce things off. So, so I listen and literally, Brian, every broadcast, I find something I don't like to a point where I write it down and purposely try to go after that, that weakness, the next broadcast. And I'm so deep into it that, you know, it's a word or a phrase or a sentence in a quarter, which may be off that will screw up the entire quarter for me. Because I'll feel like I could have done that better. And when I get into radio and start going over my radio broadcast, there it's all voice. It's all delivery. It's all performance.

It's all being the reporter that I need to be and all these things. So in addition to making sure that for the radio audience, I've got all these boxes checked is where the quarterback is, the score and time. And all these, you know, kind of secondary the quarterback's looking at, all this stuff. Then I go to the voice side of it and I start listening to that. And that drives me bananas. So I love the challenge, but I'm constantly, I feel like going uphill. I never feel like I've reached where I want to get. And I guess that's good because it'll keep me driving and trying to be better, which, you know,

there's nothing perfect, but it's always that challenge which motivates you. So you mentioned the Kings leave Kansas City in 1985. You stay there. You're the chiefs guy. But then in 1989, you go get the Minnesota team. Timberwolves play-by-play job, despite not living actually in Minnesota. Why do you do that? Well, I had that decision to make to go and do more TV, and I was very happy.

I was doing the University of Missouri football and basketball. I was working at doing the chiefs broadcast. I thought, you know what, I'm going to do this for the next 50 years and be the happiest person in this business. And then this offer came around from the Timberwolves, and I called two. people. I mentioned them earlier. I called Costas and I called Mark. And both said, you have got to take the job because TV is where this business is going. Now, this is 1989. Cable has just kind of started with ESPN, but we never knew it would grow into what it

is now with streaming and everything it is and all the different regional networks. And what are they're doing. But then it was still pretty primitive. So I took the job, but I kept the chief's job. And so we moved to Minneapolis for a year. We had a one-year-old and one on the way. My wife is from Oklahoma and Texas. We got through the first year. And on one May morning, we woke up and there was snow on the ground still. And she said, Kevin, I don't know that I can stay up here anymore. And I said, your happiness is all I'm worried about. I've got my other jobs back there. If they don't like it and they won't let me commute, I'll be fine and we'll figure it out.

Because I still had the chief's job. And so I went to the Timberwolds and said, I love the job. I love the NBA. My family is not as happy here as I'd like. And if they're not happy, that's a red flag. And they said, all right, you can commute. So for the next eight years, I was with them nine. For the next eight years, I'd take a one o'clock Northwest Airlines flight to Minneapolis.

I'd landed two 15. I got two tickets to every game, part of my deal. I gave them to a service that they would drive me from the airport, a cab company, to the arena. The team got a hotel deal for me. Sometimes I was able to go back to the airport that night and catch a late night flight back. to Kansas City, did that eight years, literally flew back and forth every single day of the NBA season for eight straight years. But I did my work on the flight. My wife was happy where we were. We had since had three more kids, so we have a family of four. We love where we live in Kansas City.

We love our church. We love our friends. We love neighborhood. We love everything about it. And so it was the right move to make. And I got to stay in the NBA. so I got the best of both worlds. It's kind of incredible. You were commuting to home games. Yes, yes, 41 of them. And on the road, sometimes, you know, they would have three days off. I'd go to the road game, do it, and Stan Anjorn, fly back to Kansas City and go it that way.

So anyway, it worked out well. And I was very happy that things turned out that way. I'm indebted to the Timberwolves. They were so good to me and the family. and just absolutely love my nine years with them. I love that you're bartering the tickets that you get as comps for the cab ride from the airport. And what they would do with them is they would give them to their employees

as a thank you for all their hard work. So it worked out really well and that I was able to give it to them. I know they weren't reselling them because the cab guys would come see me at halftime. and I felt like, okay, I'm giving the tickets to them. I know they're giving them to the cat. No one's getting rich off the deal, but they are providing me a nice service back and forth, and I needed to figure that part of it out.

And I did, and they did, and it worked out really well. So not surprising for the T-WOLs because they were an expansion team. But here's some win totals from your early years calling games there. 15, 19, 20, 21, 22. What does it like to call that kind of basketball night in and night out? Well, it forces you to really get your focus up in preparation. And you were selling the NBA mainly to the Upper Midwest. Our broadcast reach, I think we had stations in four states in the Upper Midwest,

a couple in Wisconsin, all Minnesota and both the Dakotas. And so we were trying to sell the NBA to these new listeners. And we had like 50 stations on the radio network. and we would sell the greatness of Michael Jordan, the character that Charles Barkley was, the great Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Magic Johnson. So we were selling the NBA, even though our team was not very good.

And the other thing that did was it kind of forever loosened me up on the air, where I wasn't afraid to laugh and have fun and enjoy, you know, the business we were in. And I've learned that was a pretty important lesson because I think people that watch and listen always enjoy the broadcast more

when they know you're having fun, when they know you're enthused, when they know that you're laughing and enjoying your partner and the people you work with and the game itself. So it taught me some pretty good lessons when I was there. Everything that I've done in the business has taught me something.

And that has made it, you know, every stop and every broadcast, a worthwhile endeavor that is part of my journey to get as good as I can get. So the stakes are relatively low, at least in terms of wins and losses. So I can have a little more fun. I can cut loose a little bit more. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And we did.

And I was with a guy and God bless his already, he passed away about two years ago, Tom Hanniman. He was a broadcaster in the Twin Cities with WCCO TV for many years. and we talked him into joining leaving there and joining our broadcast, which he did. To this day, a great friend, a tragic loss. But one of the funniest most creative, inventive guys I've ever been around. And he really was the impetus to having that more relaxed, fun atmosphere on the air. And the organization thought so much at Tom that I left after. After nine years, they kept them on for another 20 years beyond that.

And they, like I said, he passed a couple years ago, a heart condition. But they named the press room after Tom, the Tom Hanneman press room. And I was just up there for a playoff game a couple nights ago and stopped in and saw it. And a smile came to my face thinking about him as a friend and as a colleague on the ear and what he's meant to me in my life. Here's something I didn't know. you got felt out about being the Bulls play-by-play announcer in the summer of 1990. Now, that would have been a really interesting time to start calling Chicago Bulls.

Well, I was offered the job, and I thought long and hard about it. That was kind of a game-changing moment in terms of that was like, that was a pretty big job. We knew, I think everybody did what was on the horizon with Jordan and what it would mean to have a position like that to be the voice of those years. But they wanted me to move to Chicago and then do some other things and I couldn't do any football. And that to me was a deal breaker. I was still in the NBA. I still wanted to do football. And they, you know, that wasn't going to work.

as it turns out, you know, life is funny in so many ways and that your decisions all happen for a reason. Because shortly after that, I did get a college football job with ESPN. And so I was doing ESPN on Saturdays, the Chiefs on Sundays, and then the timber wolves throughout the winter and spring. So it turned out to be a good deal. I don't know that the ESPN job doing college football would have happened. And I don't know that I would have been able to connect the dots, but it was perfect. I could do the college game nationally with ESPN on Saturday.

I could then fly that afternoon that evening to do the Chiefs game on Sunday. I'm still living in Kansas City. I could commute and do my timber wool stuff. It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. And then by not taking the Bulls job, I kept doing football, which got me the ESPN job, which eventually got me to Fox

when they got the NFL in 94. And you get to Turner, 96, 97, does doing NFL for Fox help you get that gig? It does, yes. I got the way I got the Fox job was through Steve Sable, the late Steve Sable at NFL films.

When Fox got the rights, they knew they had Summerall in Stockton. They came over from CBS. CBS. CBS had no football. So Summerall in Stockton with Madden and Matt Millen, the top two teams came over. But David Hill and Ed Goren said, we got to fill out these other four slots. And Hill and Gorn came up. Let's get the next generation of broadcaster. Let's get the next wave. Let's get the young, let's get young voices. So they went on this national search. And you can imagine the people that applied for that job. so they fox went to NFL films and asked Steve Sable give us the top three NFL radio broadcasters and by the grace of God my name was one of the three that he in his opinion were of that thinking

and he gave him my name and I was the youngest of the group that he gave him I was 20 um I was 31 32 and and was doing ESPN. And so that really fit nicely. So I was doing some national work. I was doing the NFL. I was young. And so they hired these four voices. Now,

I don't think I would have gotten that job had Steve Sable vouched for me. But I wrote him every time I renewed my contract with him and said, I'm only here because of you and you're a good word. And we had never met. We met actually the AFC championship game, Joe Montana and the Chiefs at Buffalo. and I was walking after doing Marty Schottnheimer's pregame show and met Steve Sable with Carl Peterson at midfield

on a windy Buffalo January afternoon and he told me what he had done and it was pretty shocking to say the least. But so getting Fox, they hired me, Tom Brennamen, Kenny Albert, and Joe Buck. Those are the four young broadcasters they decided on. All of us were within a, about seven or eight years in age with one another.

So they had filled out the roster with us and Summerall in Stockton. And that's what they went to war with. And then the basketball, that was an interesting thing because they got to Turner. I had been put on the radar by Dick Ebersoll at NBC. I had filled in. Marv could not do a game because of weather. And he couldn't do a Bulls Detroit game in the early 90s with Mike Fratello. and Ebersaw called me on a Saturday night, about 6 o'clock.

I'm on the basement floor with our girls playing Barbies. And Ebersaw calls our house in Kansas City and says, Marv Albert is stuck in a snowstorm in Washington. He can't make the game. I need you to get to Detroit as soon as you can. We want you to work with Firtello and Ahmad Rashad in the Bulls Detroit game tomorrow. And I said, who is this? Like, you know, I like, okay, who's messing with me?

This is Dick Ebersoll at NBC, and he went through the whole thing again, and I could hear by the seriousness of his voice and his irritation in my reply that this was probably him. So he said, you're going to get a call in five minutes from our travel department. And if we can't get you an airline flight, we're going to get a plane there. And that will take you to Detroit. Got on a flight, commercial flight, flew to Detroit, did the game the next day at the Palace of Auburn Hills with Mike. and Ahmad and did the game. Both were incredibly kind. But that game got me on Turner's radar. And so in the playoffs of 1996, I got a gig, a full-time playoff gig with Turner in 96, and I've been with him ever since. What does calling an NBA game offer you the opportunity to do that other sports don't?

Well, that's a great question, Brian. Probably be a little bit more casual and free-flowing and a little bit more off-the-cuff. the acrobatics of the game, the circus-like atmosphere that you see on the floor with these players and the jumping and the shooting and the diving and the passing and everything else. It's like a circus.

And like everywhere you look, there's something great going on. And it lends itself to more of a casual off-the-cuff, free-flowing type of call. And you can really get into it. And there are some, you know, bum, blah, blah, bab, bab, moment moments where it's just like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

boom, boom. And that is so exhilarating to follow, you know, change of possession. Here's a rebound. There's a block shot. They go the other way. You know, like all this great, you know, acting right in front of you on this incredible stage with the orchestra being the crowd that is, you know, in the arena. So the combination of it all is just so exhilarating.

Football is like a march. Football is serious. You are at war. Football has got a regimented way of broadcasting the game. You've got to identify the sub-packages that have come in because the football fan knows exactly what's going on. You've got to identify players immediately. And then you've got to lay out after the first down has been reached or the ball's been dropped or the pass completed. So the analysts can come in and tell the viewer what happened.

So it's a March. You talk, he talks. There's a little abyss, little interwoven conversation. But it's basically you, him, you, him, you, him. And you're punching it like that. Basketball, sometimes the analyst, will talk about a made basket as you're having this conversation back and forth. And they are flying. So that's probably the biggest difference.

You think your sound matches one better than the other? I don't know. You know, I do two games a weekend in the NFL. And at the end of the year, I'll have done more NFL games than any other broadcaster because I do the Sunday and Monday night broadcasts. One is TV. One is radio. And I think people are surprised to think I'm only basketball that I do football. And football people are surprised that I do basketball when all they hear me do is football.

Sometimes a football fan is not a basketball fan and vice versa. So I think it kind of catches people by surprise that I'm doing both and on a national level. And as we know, with the red zone and the way people can get games, every TV NFL broadcast is basically a national game. So it's two national NFL games a weekend and then only national games for Turner. So I think I'm probably a little bit different with both. the one thing I've gotten common with both is that the rhythm and the pacing and that that rhythm is kind of present in both play by plays. And I probably make NFL plays with a little bit of basketball mixed in with the bang, bang nature that we can sometimes see and the quick twitch of it. And I think there's probably the football side of me that I put in the basketball on dramatic plays.

When I lay out or set up a big three by Chris Paul or a majestic dunk that's coming in, it probably has more of a football call to it than basketball. So I don't know if I've probably done it subconsciously. And quite frankly, I don't think I've really thought of it until I'm explaining it to you right now. But I think there's a little bit of each in the other. And so I don't know. I'm probably the worst person to ask if I'm better in one sport or the other or more comfortable in one sport of the other. I feel like when I'm doing football, I'm only thinking football and the same with basketball.

Like right now, I am up to my ass in basketball, tape watching, preparation, my reviews, my self-appraisal. And so football is the furthest thing from my mind. and there's all this talk about the draft. And I couldn't be further away thinking about that because I'm right in the middle of this important NBA playoff time. At any point in your career, did a producer, executive, station manager tried to change your sound?

No, I'm thinking back on it. And I have on occasion asked people out of the blue with nothing that has spurred the call I approach it with them saying, are you getting everything you want out of my broadcast, leaving it pretty open where they could talk about not my call, but they could talk about preparation,

or they could talk about my cohesion with the analyst or whatever. And no, I've never really gotten it. And if ever I have tried to pull back enthusiasm, the only thing that comes to mind right now, Whenever I have tried to pull back maybe on enthusiasm when people are kind of taken and startled by maybe the energy of a broadcast, they will say, do not change. They'll say that is what you are. That is why we hired you. And that is what makes you different from other people. I don't look at it like that, quite frankly. I look at it like I don't want to turn off a listener or a viewer. But they look at it in a different way than I do. I think all broadcasters probably look at what they do differently than how the viewer or the listener looks at them. I always tell my daughter's in broadcasting, and I remember from the earliest age that she wanted to get into, I said, you're going to put 10 people in a room, they're going to watch or listen to you, four will like you, four won't like you, and two will not care.

And that's the way it is such a subjective business that really the only thing that is of a tangible hook that you can grab onto is if you are still employed, if you are still doing games, if your career is evolving and you're maybe picking up a new assignment or a better assignment or a higher rung on the ladder. And I guess that's the only way we really know that we're doing it. We get offers from other companies. I guess they feel pretty good about what I'm doing. But I don't rest on those kind of thoughts and think of that. That to me is poison. That to me is thinking too highly of yourself. In one word, a career can be ruined.

In one sentence, you can undo all the good you've ever done. And we have more examples in this business than we can possibly count. And they're painful. And they are warning signs for all broadcasters to really watch it. And it is put now on all of us. And I don't want to speak for everyone, but I probably do. On live events, unscripted play by play, we have never had to think more of the words coming out of our mouths.

and the way we are framing a situation than now, because inevitably, someone is going to be offended. Someone is going to take it the wrong way. And one sentence, one word, one phrase will get everything you've worked all these years to do wiped away and you will be forgotten in a hurry. Not that we're all working to be remembered, but this is our profession. and we're all proud of our profession. But to know that one word can completely blow it up is a pretty scary thing.

And I don't think of that, but I am cognizant of it. And it is the elephant in the room when we all prepare and I'll put on that headset and sit down to do a game. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. Is that something that's somewhere in your mind when you're calling a game, not second to second, but somewhere over the course of a couple of hours? It is, if anything comes up in the way we're going to describe how we're going to react to something that may happen. Here's a great example. The other night we're in Minnesota.

We're doing a play-in game, Timberwolves and the Clippers, unbeknownst to us, a animal rights activist has gone out onto the baseline and glued their arm onto the floor to make a statement about animal rights protection. I thought an arena worker had slipped while wiping up the floor of moisture and maybe had even, you know, hurt themselves or had fainted in the process. We play stop, we quickly go to our sideline person, Ali LaForest, who is 10 yards away. And in the capsule of about one minute, we have found out that it wasn't an arena worker working. It was a commentary being put out there with a shirt with printing on it and an activist gluing themselves to the floor, as weird as that sounds, strange as I've never seen that before, and making a statement about animal rights.

And now we could have gone a lot of different ways. And in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, you became unglued. Or, you know, you're thinking about all the funny things you could say about it. at the same time, you don't know what she is really trying to say. There are a lot of people that love animals that feel exactly the same way she does. If we made light of it at that moment when we found out what she was doing in her protest, you know, that could have been bad. And we chose to just move on with the game.

but then the thing kind of took out of life with its own. She was called glue lady because people were more enamored and drawn to the fact she was gluing her pan, her wrist, her arm to the floor, and they couldn't get her unglued. So it's that kind of stuff that comes across your doorstep. You've got to split second think, how do I react? And we chose when in doubt lay out, We basically took that approach.

And in retrospect, I think we're probably happy we did. Do you ever think these incidents are following me around the country? Because you haven't seen glue before, but you have seen a couple of different versions of this. Yeah, you know, with people running on the field, and they both have happened during radio broadcast, by the way, when there are no visuals. If it happened on TV, and it has, I was in London doing an NFL game this past year, and someone pre-kickoff, ran out partially close.

clothed onto the field, stole the ball off the tea, and was running around. We did not show it. I said someone has come on the field, the pitch, and we had cameras directed and we got to something else, hardly mentioned. But on radio, I think there's a little bit more license there because you are describing everything you can see. On TV, if the person running onto the field is shown, they get their wish. They're on TV, national TV.

But on radio, you can't see a face. You really don't know what the person is doing. And you'll never know who it is. But you can describe it with your words. And in the two instances, I've done it also with an animal on the field. I've been as descriptive as I possibly can about what's going on, what people are seeing. It was kind of comical. In both cases, the person ran for a good amount of time on the field before

security went out there. I was a little worried about it when I said it. It was kind of spur of the moment. Obviously, you don't plan for it. It was very organic in the midst of the game, a bad game, by the way. Back, both games were kind of clunkers. So I was working with Kurt Warner. And as it turned out, both were received okay.

The black cat on the field, you know, play had stopped doing the game on radio again. A black cat had gotten out there, then ran into the end zone. and then people were trying to chase it and they couldn't get it and it ran up this you know so so we've done that but you know um there comes a point i think when you do those things unless it is just so unbelievably comical and absurd but more time it's just somebody running out there and they're caught it's no big deal um but i i've done it i've done it with a with an animal and two drunks i i think i've i've checked those boxes i'm i'll move on. I think people have taken them. I think, and I hope in the right light, I was having fun, going back to an early part of our conversation. And I think that, I think it's been okay.

But enough is enough. I've done it. They know I can do it. I can do it if I had to. But I'm good now. And we'll make that part of the long, winding story of my very, very fortunate and lucky career. It's got to be funny. And you references a second ago when you talk about how people perceive announcers that you can get your pacing just right, get the words just right, exactly how you want to sound with all those self-diagnostics. And then what will go viral is the black cat. Yeah, I know it. That's what they'll remember, Kevin.

I know it. They won't miss a buzzer beating shot in a playoff game or a football play that has got people. just completely in awe, they'll remember that stuff, which, you know, I did it. So I'm I'm not, I won't deny it certainly, and it will not, will not back away from it. But I, you know, once and twice, okay, you make it part of your schick, now I think it becomes a little bit watered down. And I think I'll let those things stand on their own. probably won't stand the test of time, which I don't care about. But they're out there.

They know it. And just probably adds into this, like all of us that have been to business a long time, the many facets of what we've done over all the years. Kevin Harlan, thanks for coming on the press box. Brian, thank you so much. I'm honored to be on with you. I enjoyed her visit. Thank you.

It's time for the second weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about a sport where dogs try to sniff out rats in a barn was scent of a vermin. So good. Today's headline, David, might cause both of us to pull a muscle. It is from valued listener, Marissa says what.

It's from Sports Illustrated. The article is about Duke University basketball. Coach Kay, who is occasionally called Mike Shoshchewski is leaving Duke after 42 seasons. Okay. So naturally the blue devils accent on the blue will need to collect themselves. We'll need to have a reboot of sorts. What was Sports Illustrated's strained pun headline?

Brave blue world or blue and improved question mark? These are all good. Blue, um, uh, gosh, uh, a new, a reboot. Um, or blue, uh, uh, what if I, you got to give me something out. What if I pointed you to a Vegas stage show similar to Cirque de Soleil or at least in the same thing, uh, same cultural niche there that might have been a big plot point in arrested development back in the day. Oh, Blue Man Group. I was scrolling through my brain for like the specific names of these Circta to Solacella acts thinking that you didn't know that they were all Circta Solay Not Penn and Teller, not no it's a blue man it's a blue blue blue man blue regroup

Blue man regroup oh blue man regroup all right Blue man regroup do you need to go to the orthopedist have something checked out after that strain pun Oh, yeah, I feel okay. He is David Chewmaker. I'm Brian Curtis Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Thanks to get to Kevin Harlan. David and I are back Monday where we are going to lightly make fun of NFL draft talk. I'll tell you what, David, my favorite this year is picking a prospect,

and then the draft expert says, this is the hill I'm going to die on, as if that prospect being a bust will just end your career. as an NFL draft expert. Yeah. These are the stakes. Whereas what actually happens is you just pick all new players the next year. And you die on 20 more hills and nobody remembers, right? Nobody knows.

That's the fun of the NFL draft. It's also kind of a misuse of the phrase, right? Because the hill that you're going to die on doesn't inherently mean your hottest take or the thing that you're most on an eye. It's not an island. Like the hill that you should be willing to die on Is that the surest sure thing is going to be a sure thing Right? Okay

Not your most like outside the box idea Wait, but so now you're kind of crossing ringer streams here There's like Kenny Pickett Island like I'm on Kenny Pickett Island Or Kenny Pickett is the hill I'm gonna die on These are different things Yeah I think those are different things We can talk about it on Monday All right to be discussed plus more lukewarm takes about the media

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