The Book of Basketball (20 page)

Oscar Robertson (’75).
Stood out for a couple of reasons. First, he never looked at the camera.
Ever.
It was like the camera was the sun and he didn’t want to get blinded. Second, he had absolutely nothing to say, so he made up for it by making a variety of unprofessional sounds as the game was happening: You know, like “Ohhhhhhhhhhh!” and “Yes!” Oscar always sounded like he was getting a lap dance in the CBS Champagne Room. The network couldn’t get rid of him fast enough after the season, sparing us from seeing an inevitable “The Big O No!” headline if the Oscar era lasted too long.
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Rick Barry (’75–’81).
Moonlighted as a Playoffs color guy if the Warriors were done playing, coming off like the annoying guy at your Super Bowl party who played a year of college football and thinks that gives him the right to criticize and nitpick everything that’s happening. When he retired and joined CBS full-time for the ’80–’81 season, Barry’s TV career fell apart following an incredible moment during Game 5 of the Finals, when CBS showed a picture of a few members of the ’56 Olympic basketball team (including a young Russell with a big grin on his face), leading to this exchange:

GARY BENDER: Rick, who do you think that guy is over there?

BARRY
(attempting his first joke ever):
I don’t know, it looks like some fool over there with that, um, that big watermelon grin there on the left.
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(CBS cuts from the picture to a dumbfounded Russell with the words “watermelon grin” still hanging in the air. He glances back and forth between Gary Bender and Barry with a “Did he just say what I think he just said?” look on his face. Three excruciating seconds pass.)

BENDER
(still smiling, although he may have been shitting himself):
Who is that guy?
(Pause)
That’s you, Bill. Don’t you recognize that picture?

RUSSELL
(not smiling):
Nope.

Did it end there? Nooooooooo! Only fifteen seconds later, with Russell still steaming, Barry tried to loosen things up by handing the pictures to Russell on camera. As Barry kept asking over and over again, “You sure you don’t want these?” a seething Russell turned his entire body away from Barry toward Bender, who tried to defuse things by telling Rick, “You might want to leave this one alone.” And Barry
still
kept going until Russell finally said coldly, “No, I don’t want ’em.” Unequivocally the most awkward sports-TV moment that didn’t include Joe Namath and Suzy Kolber. You couldn’t even believe it as it was happening. Needless to say, Barry’s contract was not renewed. And that’s an understatement. (Of course, if this incident happened in today’s overly PC era, Barry would quickly disappear from planet Earth like Michael Richards did.) Barry eventually found a second life on TBS, providing play-by-play for the ’85 Eastern Finals with—you’re not gonna believe this—Bill Russell! Who’s the genius who came up with that idea? That was like Mike Tyson getting freed from jail and immediately hosting the 1996 Miss Black Teen USA pageant.

John Havlicek (’78).
A late addition to the Musburger-Barry team for the ’78 Finals,
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Hondo said absolutely nothing and flatlined for seven games. Was this really a surprise? I loved Hondo, every Boston fan loved Hondo, but he’s not exactly someone you’d want giving the best man’s speech at a wedding.
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I remember watching one of those Finals games on NBA TV at like three in the morning, seeing Hondo introduced in the beginning, getting excited, then thinking he had gotten sick or something because we didn’t hear him speak for the next forty-five minutes. Nope. He was just sitting there. You can’t even give him a grade other than “incomplete” or “possibly in a coma.”

Bill Russell (’80–’83).
Well received during his first run in the early seventies, Russell was unprepared/uninterested/un-(fill in any other adjective that suggests life) the second time around and couldn’t carry the load himself after Barry was fired. Actually, he sounded like my dad every time he falls asleep during a Red Sox game, wakes up in the late innings and mumbles, “Wait, what happened to Beckett? Did we take him out?” That was Russell for three solid years. Although you can’t blame him because he worked with Barry for one of them. Maybe he was heavily medicated.

Moses Malone (’86).
Okay, we’re cheating here—CBS used Moses as a pregame/halftime/postgame studio guy for Game 4 of the ’86 Finals, an awesome game overshadowed by CBS’ decision that it would be a good idea for Moses to speak extemporaneously on live TV. Teamed with Musburger and Julius Erving (no slouch himself in the Horrible TV Guy department), Doc came off like a cross between Eddie Murphy and abolitionist Frederick Douglass compared to Moses. It’s hard to figure out what CBS was thinking here. I mean, it’s not like Moses was getting more articulate as the years passed—we were only three years removed from his
“Fo fo fo” prediction for the ’83 Playoffs and his nickname within the league was “Mumbles” Malone. The more I’m thinking about it, I wonder if someone at CBS lost a bet—as in “okay, if you win, I’ll pay for our golf trip to Scotland, but if I win, you
have
to use Moses Malone as a TV guy for a Finals game.” That had to be what happened, right? Whatever the reason, this was the only NBA telecast ever that needed closed captioning.
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Magic Johnson (’92–’97).
NBC signed Magic right after he retired and it seemed like a layup. Nobody was more personable or likable than Magic, right? Then the telecasts started. Magic giggled during plays without provocation, kept interrupting Marv Albert and Mike Fratello, and tied every play or storyline into something that had happened while he was playing for the Lakers. You also couldn’t really understand him because, for whatever reason, it always sounded like he was eating a ham sandwich. Of course, I loved having Magic around because he was like a never-ending
SNL
skit. The Knicks would take the lead on a Ewing shot, then the Bulls and Jordan would answer with a basket, and suddenly Magic would start screaming, “Patrick was down on his end sayin’, ‘I’m gonna win this game’ and Michael came back down and said, ‘Uh-uh, big fella, you ain’t winnin’ on my court!’”
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There was something undeniably entertaining about listening to Magic provide color for games, the same way it’s entertaining when you see a pedestrian trip on the sidewalk or a buddy puke all over himself at a bachelor party. When NBC mercifully moved Magic to the studio, it wasn’t the same; he was just annoying and had nothing to say. What’s strange is that Magic went away for a while, returned on TNT and developed into a decent sidekick for Kenny and Charles. I have no rational explanation for this. None.

Julius Erving (’97).
Hands down, the worst studio analyst of all time. And that’s a
strong
statement. Only two years before, Joe Montana appeared on NBC’s NFL show and may have been dead for all we knew. I remember
waiting for Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy to jump in right before every commercial and wheel Montana’s corpse out of the TV frame. Still, it wasn’t surprising that Montana stank—we didn’t like him for his personality, just for banging hot blondes and winning Super Bowls. It’s not like our expectations were high. But Doc was one of the few NBA stars to successfully strike that delicate balance between “articulate spokesman and ambassador” and “slick dude who lives for dunking on heads.” It was incomprehensible that Doc would suck on TV. Seeing him stammer awkwardly on the air, say nonsensical things like “Great players make great plays” and perform the deer-in-the-headlights routine was a little disarming. Every time the camera homed in on him, you could actually feel the tension in the studio. It was tangible. Before one Houston-Utah playoff game, Doc made history by predicting, “I think the key for Houston will be when Hakeem gets the ball, how fast he decides to either shoot, dribble, or pass.” That’s an actual quote. I remember my old roommate Geoff and I spending the next fifteen minutes trying to determine what other options Hakeem could possibly have had on a basketball court, ultimately deciding on these: (a) turn the ball over, (b) call time out, (c) pass out, (d) shit on himself, or (e) drop dead. It was an unforgettable moment, as evidenced by the fact that I can remember where we were watching the game when it happened. Poor Dr. J. Some people just aren’t meant to be on television.
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Isiah Thomas (’98-’00).
NBC made a big deal about this hiring because, you know, Isiah was a great player, which means he’ll be a great TV guy, right? (Whoops, I forgot—there’s no correlation whatsoever.) Well, he didn’t have much to say—which didn’t matter much because partner Bob Costas was rusty from a twenty-two-year play-by-play layoff and treated every game like it was a radio telecast
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—and you could barely hear Isiah because his meek, high-pitched voice was drowned out by any semiex-cited
crowd. When Detroit canned Doug Collins midway through the season, NBC signed him for a three-man booth (Costas, Collins and Isiah), a problem because Collins was roughly ten thousand times more competent than Isiah (even if he suffered from Rick Barry–itis). Now Isiah couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and even if he did, we couldn’t hear him. By the time the Finals rolled around, you could practically hear the voice of NBC’s producer imploring Collins to keep including Isiah in the broadcast. YouTube
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the ’98 Finals some time and watch how many times Collins starts a sentence with something like, “And Isiah, you know better than anyone that you can’t pick up your dribble” or “I don’t think the Jazz can hold Chicago off with Jordan playing like this …” Pause while NBC’s producer screams in Collins’ ear. “… Right, Isiah?” Holy shit, was it awkward. All things considered, that may have been the worst three-man booth ever. NBC moved Isiah to the studio for the next two years, where he had nothing to say and spent most of the time grinning crazily like Gene Hackman’s right-hand man in
No Way Out
just before he shoots himself. But everything paid off during the postgame celebration for the 2000 Finals: Peter Vecsey capped a classic two-month, I-don’t-give-a-shit-if-you-fire-me run where he took more cheap shots than Claude Lemieux by totally blindsiding poor Isiah, randomly telling him on live TV as they were recapping everything, “And I just found out that you’re the next Pacers coach!” Poor Isiah didn’t know what to do; he hadn’t even looked as flustered after Bird stole the ball from him in the ’87 Playoffs. The best part was Vecsey standing there with a defiant smirk while Isiah stuttered and stammered in front of a national TV audience. Phenomenal stuff. It made the entire lousy Isiah-on-TV era worth it.
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(Unfortunately, it wised up the network executives for good. Not only did we never see Vecsey on network TV again, we’ve never seen another NBA Legend Turned Horrible TV Personality—although there’s always a chance ABC will be dumb enough to hire Shaq when he finally retires. I have my fingers crossed.)

1975–76: THE DUNK CONTEST

Two unforgettable moments stood out during a chaotic season that featured Kareem’s trade to Los Angeles, two commissioner hirings, two NBA high schooler signings, three ABA teams folding, a bitter legal fight between Philly and New York over George McGinnis, and the threat of a merger hanging over everything: the world-renowned triple-OT game (Phoenix-Boston), and a now-legendary ABA Slam Dunk Contest that put David Thompson on the map, turned Doc into a demigod and laid the groundwork for the creation of NBA All-Star Weekend. If you could pick one image that defined each league from 1970 to 1976, you’d pick Cowens skidding across the floor in the ’74 Finals and Doc dunking from the foul line in the Dunk Contest. One league played with passion and did all the little things, while the other league embraced the schoolyard elements of the game, but in either clip you’ll see fans jumping out of their seats. Still, basketball purists discounted the ABA because nobody played defense and everyone went for their own stats, so the fact that the league’s signature moment happened in a Dunk Contest wasn’t helping matters.

Doc’s foul-line dunk had to be the most exhilarating basketball moment that didn’t happen in an actual game. For one thing, nobody had seen one of these contests before, so they didn’t know what to expect; once the dunks started coming, the fans were like thirteen-year-old boys looking at porn for the first time, almost overwhelmed by the sight of everything. You had the decade’s most memorable player facing off against a precocious upstart, with Thompson going right before Doc, firing up the crowd with a superb double pump, and finishing with an incomprehensible-at-the-time 360, playing the role of the talented young band that’s too good to be a warm-up band. (Think Springsteen opening for the Stones in ’75.) You had Doc dramatically measuring his steps from one basket to another as the crowd shuffled in anticipation and wondered what the heck he was doing, finally realizing, “Wait a second, is he going to dunk from the foul line?” Then you had the dunk itself: Erving loping toward the basket and exploding from the foul line, his oversized hand making the basketball look like a golf ball, carrying and carrying and finally
tomahawking
the ball through the basket as everyone lost their collective shit. Doc’s dunk stands alone for originality
pent-up drama, sheer significance and lasting impact, even if he screwed up by not saving that dunk for last. Right guy, right place, right time, right moment. Basketball was starting to go up—literally—and it wasn’t a bad thing.
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