Your Night In Dickie V: NBA Edition
Thursday, January 08, 2009
I figured since most of you wouldn't be staying up until almost midnight, checking out Dickie V's trip to the NBA, that I would pull some of the more entertaining clips for you. Here is your Heat-Nugs/Dickie V game in just 5 minutes and 30 seconds!
While I thought the swap was cheesy on the surface, both teams did a pretty solid job. The simple fact that the crews had to prepare more than they normally would showed, and Dick Vitale actually had something to talk about other than Duke and UNC (I kid....well, not really). I still don't see what the point of a College announcer heading to the Pros would be, but the NBA guys could gain some knowledge by doing both contests. Just look at the job Dan Shulman is doing calling both. Plus, neither Mark Jackson or Jeff Van Gundy had ever been to Cameron Indoor! How is that even possible, as much as they've been around the Sport?
All in all, it was a fun thing to do for a night, but I wouldn't make a habit of it. For Dickie V to call an a game in the league he first broke into broadcasting, before he retires, isn't a bad thing at all. And that retirement could be coming sooner than we all think.
9 Comments:
By the way,
Dan Shulman is the most underrated play by play man on the NBA. He loves the NBA game and should end up getting promoted in the next few years to atleast the number 2 spot.
Now all we need is for Fox to end its experiment with baseball announcers (Buck, T-hom, Vasgersian) doing NFL & College Football.
I like how the ESPN announcers prepared to do something new, while I believe Fox doesn't prepare and it shows during their BCS games. All the announcers only seem to go down to Miami, New Orleans, Dallas, and Arizona for a couple of days and leave. Not once preparing the proper way before the game.
panderson, who gives a shoot about the BCS? It's a bunch of crap so I actually applaud the FOX broadcasters for not putting much effort into it. As for Dickie V, he had some pretty sexy escorts to the broadcast table prior to tipoff. I actually thought he and Shulman were excellent. J.R. Smith was dynamite down the stretch!
Solid job? I'm not Vitale hater, although I find his schtick tired, but in the 4th quarter of a close game, he was talking so much about college basketball and his own personal anecdotes that minutes of play, shots, and changes of possession would occur without any room for Shulman to actually do play by play.
I could only watch the game in spurts and I counted at least half a dozen times where Shulman had to apologize for interrupting Dick so he could announce the GD game.
I thought it was Vitale at his worst. It's not about you, Dick.
I hope ESPN gives Dickie V a chance to call March Madness before he retires.
I watched most of the Denver-Miami game (even tho I was more interested to the Portland-Detroit Pistons game on NBA League Pass since I'm a Blazers fan)and I think Vitale wasn't bad at all. And, like someone else already pointed out, Shulman is a really good when it comes to announcing the NBA game.
Dan Shulman's just good, period. He doesn't make a lot of headlines because he just goes out there and does his job every day. Plus, he somehow, someway, doesn't seem annoyed with working with Dickie V, which automatically bumps him up to superhuman status.
I thought the swap was silly. If you read Sports Media Watch's blog he pointed out that ESPN tried to get Dick Vitale to become the lead NBA Analyst during the 2004 EASTERN CONFERENCE Finals but he decline. So Obviously the powers at be wanted to see if Dick Vitale would beefin up their NBA Lineup. However if he is not going to go to doing NBA games I see no point in the swap happening again!