- Struggles With Play-By-Play, Verse 1 -
9 March 2007
So I’m listening to UCLA/Cal basketball on the radio yesterday afternoon as I cruise around the freeways and boulevards of the Westside. For a long time, I have struggled to understand how some commentators (it seems closer to “most” commentators for me, but I’m feeling generous today) have no idea how to call a game. Lord knows I could write for pages and pages about all the problems I have witnessed with the clowns that work as broadcasters, but for the moment I’m just going to focus on the issues I had in listening to this particular play-by-play guy for 20 minutes:
1. Look dude, I’m listening to this game on the radio, but I have watched games on the TV before. I know what the default half court play-by-play view looks like (unless ESPN is doing one of their “revolutionary” b.s. camera angles where they show the view from an ant right under the basket or from a camera seemingly located in the nosebleed section in the corner of the area) and I am accustomed to looking at games from that angle. As a result, you should be calling the game on the radio so that I can picture it in my head as if it were on TV. Don’t tell me that Afflalo shot the ball from the left wing. Tell me that UCLA is going from left to right, and that Afflalo shot the ball from the far wing. Left wing, I have to make a 90 degree adjustment to my mental picture, and that takes work. I’m not listening to the game on the radio so that I can do work. Make my life easy. Tell me things in a way that is easy for me to understand. You may feel like this is a little bit of a nitpick, but I didn’t feel like this guy deserved a break.
2. Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. Six foot eight, 230 pound sophomore Bruin forward. Reigning Pac-10 freshman of the year. From the “village” of Yaounde, Cameroon, which happens to be the original capital of French Cameroon when France occupied the land during World War I. It really doesn’t come as a shock to most people that his name is pronounced “Luke ri-SHARD” and not “Luke RITCH-erd”. We knew this LAST YEAR. Few things are more annoying or embarrassing than a partisan announcer not being able to correctly pronounce the names of star players on his own team, especially when it has been common knowledge for a while now. Oh, and for the record, UCLA’s TV play-by-play guy can’t pronounce it either.
3. This dude felt the need to repeatedly tell me that various players were using a “yo-yo” dribble or dribbling the ball “like a yo-yo”, etc. Again, dude, I am somewhat familiar with the sport, enough to know that the action of dribbling a ball is roughly similar to that of throwing down a yo-yo and drawing it back up. This is one activity that I’m pretty sure everyone over 5 can picture on their own without the aid of your juvenile metaphors.
4. Every time the Bruins sank one point from the free throw line, this dude shouted like he was dropping a deuce in his underdrawers. Seriously, I am aware that many commentators are partisan and make a little bit of an extra effort to wear their heart on their sleeve and emphasize the efforts of the home team and all that jazz, but it’s a free throw we’re talking about here. It’s not a game-winning 27 foot fall-away jumper at the buzzer. Points from the charity stripe are supposed to be relatively automatic, and they are certainly no reason to go on soiling oneself. I was rooting for UCLA, and at the same time I was partially glad that they missed half of their 28 attempts.
5. One more thing about free throws… I don’t need an exact play-by-play of what the shooter is doing at all times. I don’t need to hear that Lorenzo Mata spun the ball back in his hands, then paused, then dribbled twice, oh, nope, three times, then bent his knees and shot. Doing this every once in a while is fine, but this happened twice in roughly 5 minutes of actual game time, making it a bad habit in my book. If I’m a UCLA fan, there’s a good chance I’ve seen Mata shoot free throws, I can roughly picture how it goes, and in many cases I may actually remember how many dribbles and spins and pauses he takes before shooting one better than you, but that’s not the point. All I need to know is who is at the line, how many shots is he getting, and did he make each one. That’s it.
6. Okay, I lied… one more thing about free-throws, or actually fouls in general. As a play-by-play guy, and particularly as a radio guy where the listening fan cannot even figure out the score without you telling him, you should be able to keep track of the basic important statistics of the game and relay them clearly and confidently. Cal committed a bunch of fouls to begin the second half and UCLA was in the double bonus about halfway through the period, and yet this guy had to re-check every time a foul was committed and acted surprised that UCLA was still in the double bonus. Dude, if they were in double bonus 5 minutes ago, they are still in it now, and they will be for the remainder of the period. Basketball rules 101. Something you’d think every play-by-play guy would know. Shouldn’t they?