ABC opened its seventh season of NBA coverage yesterday. To put that in perspective, NBC’s seventh season of NBA coverage was 1997-98, when Michael Jordan won his sixth NBA title and the network had already perfected its broadcasts. By contrast, ABC has only just begun to hit its stride. After years of fiddling with announcing teams, graphics and theme music, the network finally appears to be finding its voice.
The good.
The announcers: Breen, Jackson and Van Gundy were solid as usual. While Dan Shulman would probably be a better fit on the #2 team than Mike Tirico, the Tirico/Hubie Brown team also did a good job. One question, however: how is Doris Burke supposed to be the lead sideline reporter if she’s pulling double-duty as a game analyst?
Magic Johnson: Make no mistake, Magic is not particularly good at analysis, or at least articulating his analysis. He was awkward on NBC in the early 90s, and it took EJ, Kenny and Charles to keep him mostly tolerable on Inside the NBA. With no strong castmembers to carry him, his flaws will be even more pronounced this season. That being said, his mere presence gives a generally lifeless NBA Countdown pregame show a lot more credibility than, say, the presence of Jon Barry.
The bad.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop: ABC couldn’t have done better than this? Without turning this into a movie review, Paul Blart: Mall Cop looks like it contains as much cutting edge humor as the average Urkel-centric episode of Family Matters (Look! He fell down! Hilarous.). The courtside interview/commercial between Lisa Salters and Kevin James was time that could have been better spent showing Kevin Garnett walking along the beach.
Straight No Chaser: Not necessarily bad. Just unnecessary. After one of their performances, ABC cut back to Jeff Van Gundy, who asked if he was being ‘punked’. The bigger issue here is that ABC still seems to be in love with the idea of using musical acts as the intro for their NBA broadcasts. So what completely-inappopriate-for-the-demographic musical group will be singing the NBA theme this year? The Jonas Brothers?
Z-list celebrities, again: This only happened once, but yet again ABC seems committed to using actors from their prime time shows in bumps throughout NBA telecasts. Again, this begs the question: has anyone ever seen Christina Applegate pop up during college football broadcasts, telling viewers, “You’re watching college football on ABC, home of the Rose Bowl”?
Overall.
ABC should have a good season this year. While their NBA broadcasts cannot even begin to compare to those on CBS or NBC, the network has improved drastically from the dark days of Al Michaels doing six games a season and games being broadcast every two weeks.
Things to avoid: musicians like The Pussycat Dolls and Tim McGraw doing the intros for games, celebrity sightings in the stands (remember Mike Tirico fawning over Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens during last year’s playoffs?) and anything to do with celebrities in general. In the words of ESPN/ABC analyst Bill Walton, never let the show get in the way of the game.
