A thread to talk about NBA Podcasts / Personalities / Announcers / Shows / Broadcasters / Commentators

For sure

my fav hoops pod rn is brian windhorst's espn pod w/ the other espn basketball ppl. it's basically the old truehoop podcast but w/ all good/smart writers and no "personalities" like amin or the more talk radio-ish guys that used to be on the truehoop pods. windhorst is kind of a garbage writer but as a moderator of conversation he's good bcuz he is very very knowledgeable about the league.

i listen to it cause brian is good but i actually hate the combinations of guests who rarely seem to have any chemistry. other than bontemps whose grumpiness i enjoy they can be a drag.

it's a little worse now bcuz jackie macmullan is out... sometimes it's a weird crew. kirk goldsberry in partic is not very good.

yeah he's awful.

windy is cool enough. he knows a lot for sure, seems really plugged in. i havent listened to his pod recently ill get back into it. dude lacks any sense of humor tho.

windy has a sense of humor but like any good midwesterner it's extremely dry.

espn shuffling nba countdown again:

SOURCES: BEADLE, PIERCE, BILLUPS OUT AT ESPN’S “COUNTDOWN”

only Jalen is staying on

i like chauncey, paul is awful obvs

jalen, u cant fire jalen

chauncey is fine just boring. beadle seemed fine? idk the whole show needs to be re-thought. try something totally different.

that show is really and truly wretched... jalen actually is prob the only good one

honestly i really enjoyed scott van pelt's coverage of game 5 on his special edition of sportscenter they should just give postgame to him

beadle seemed really disengaged most of the time. none of them had any chemistry.

agree. i love the final sportscenter with ScottVP. great format

yeah its good

players only is done.

Via sources: TNT will no longer air the Players Only NBA broadcast. Turner Sports will likely do some Players Only content but as far as games for the 2019-20 season, the Players Only broadcast on TNT is no more.

— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) July 24, 2019

a not-bad idea that was horribly executed.

i did enjoy some players only broadcasts but when it was bad it was insufferable... they also did it too often. would've liked to see them tweak a bit but oh well

yah you both are otm. kinda wish they tried to hone it to a good spot and adapt it rather than dump it completely but the naysayers were pretty harsh on it from the start.

i think they'd just need to be more selective about the scheduling... it was a cool vibe for those middle of the season thursday night west coast TNT games that are like blazers vs rockets or whatever. but sometimes they'd get a good game where you actually wanna hear real announcers and it would be like, why'd anyone think this was a good idea

by good game i mean big game

yeah there was one where there was some crazy shotmaking going on between two good teams and i think on a big go ahead bucket greg anthony was like "well that was a really nice look there ... well executed" or some monotone platitude and all i wanted was a breen BAAAAANG or w/e

yup all otm

Matt Barnes is the future imo

barnes is good breaking down the game and what not from the little postgame and The Jump clips ive seen but not sure about entertaining for a 2.5 hour broadcast. its really a hard skill, even the best at it get bad after a while (van gundy).

an idea for players only would be to rotate different guys in and out like a quarter at a time or something

Players only being gone is good but questionable stuff is going on. They got rid of The Starters, Kamla gone. Seems like cost cutting for no reason.

yeah wonder what their plan is, if anything

Ros and Fratello out at nba/tnt

Fitz as Hannity I’m guessing because on his (recently canceled) radio show he would defend literally everything the warriors org did and would just really go over the top praising Myers/Jacobs/Kerr etc

oh duh i totally read matts post wrong thought he was talking about jim barnett. fitz is a goof yeah.

Main issue with Fitz on KNBR is that they lost the Warriors rights to 95.7, so it was less of a natural fit having him on the network. Radnich "retiring" plus Greg Papa moving over just made it a good time for housecleaning. They absorbed Fitz's co-host Rob Brooks into Tom Tolbert's show, which has been pretty bad so far.

Rod* Brooks

yeah I was irrationally bummed by the knbr shakeup

Russillo leaving ESPN for the Ringer

So...the news is out. I’m headed to @ringer
Want to thank @espn for the last 14 years.
I grew up on @SportsCenter and then to be on the actual set, my name on a show...have to remind myself at times how cool that is
Excited to try and limit Celts talk to 30mins w/ @BillSimmons

— Russillo (@ryenarussillo) August 6, 2019

he didn't already work for the ringer?

he did dual duty but now it seems he’s going to be exclusive to the ringer

I like russillo a lot, he’s a pretty independent thinker, does his homework, and is funny. he’s always right on the edge of being arrogant and being in on the joke. he’s either a thoughtful meathead or the reverse, can’t really tell for sure

love him yeah. he's the best bill guest for sure, they are pretty in sync when they do their pod

him or lowe yeah

yeah Lowe is only like once or twice a year tho

i didn't know him before but i've grown to really like him over the course of his appearances on bill's pod....his sense of humor is very dry and weird and mostly based on really subtle and quick meta jokes about being a media talking head. he's also good on actual sports. i don't always agree with his nba takes but he definitely comes to them from an authentic place.

he did this bit on bill's pod a couple months ago about his worst year ever and it was just him factually describing shitty things happening to him as a broke and directionless dude in his 20s. it was so good it was almost poetic.

yeah the 2002 rant was so good. I was in hermosa/Manhattan beach last week and was hoping id run into him roller blading or something lol.

omg i just found it again, the part where he proposes to his elementary school teacher gf at the school in front of children and she says no is classic material

sometimes he and bill get a liiiittle too bro-y for me... but as far as basketball goes he def knows his shit

one thing i do hate about them is they have this tic where they refer to anything as "the [x] thing" ... "and then the brogdon thing happened" "are we gonna talk about the griffin thing" and sometimes they'll just refer to a "thing" esp from the past where you're like wait that's a thing? i really hate it

haha they def overdo the "thing" thing

hope they dont oversaturate and only do like once every few weeks or something (probably wont happen)

bill misses a lot of his jokes I think

KG's Area 21 cancelled.

That talk show he did with Gayle King went nowhere. I'm not sure if non-NBA people get the appeal.

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Thursday, May 23, 2024 5:57 PM (two minutes ago)

non-nba and non-sports people are different categories. i don't think anyone will be asking him to do political roundtables anymore. but he almost left turner on his own to go announce LIV golf, both espn and NBC are pretty heavily invested in golf. espn will clearly just throw any big personality on TV to talk about every sport these days, stephen a has been doing stuff on first take like talking about football games that never actually happened, saying that a wide receiver who retired two years ago needed to step up etc and the fans of that stuff don't seem to care

It would kill me to see him yelling at Stephen A every day, yuck. That seems beneath him. Golf or WNBA or college basketball would be cool.

I think making his own thing is probably the best path... or getting the gang back together somehow. I certainly don't see him moving to LA or Connecticut to work on site at ESPN.

i don’t mean to say he’ll literally end up on first take, i don’t think that would happen. i’m just saying that the ESPN apparatus is very welcoming to big personalities who command attention from the audience whether they know what they’re talking about or not

ESPN would have him out there for the biggest SEC football games of the year, because he’s an auburn guy, regardless of whether he has a single informed or intelligent thing to say about i.e. georgia vs alabama

yeah SEC football is a good fit

what i first thought of too

clip they played of shaq and kenny beefing 20 years ago was so good

bad news for the mavs, wolves in 6

The Mavericks look like they're gonna win the NBA Finals. Elite defense and elite role players, led by two elite closers in Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. And by the way, Jason Kidd is coaching his ass off these playoffs.

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) May 25, 2024

all podcast guys are are like "i talked about this yesterday on [podcast or tv show] and" who cares man just say the thing

lowe is the worst about this cause the person he talked to is always perk and we dont want to hear what perk has to say thats why we dont watch the show