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

Richard Jefferson on Simmons had a lot of great Cavs drama gossip

gotta check that

Ethan Strauss joining the Athletic might be enough to push me over the edge to sign up.

Hey nerds listen to the basketball movie podcast my sister has started doing w her friends

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/film-court/id1393865270?mt=2

Subd. I’ll check it out

Thanks; please thinkfluence all your friends so she becomes extremely successful.

breens greatest calls

Mike Breen Greatest Calls: A Thread pic.twitter.com/BeehE5aItT

— Ike (@ManILoveOhio) July 16, 2018

cant wait for this show

“I still regret giving my 14-year-old my name.” - @KingJames

This and more real, unfiltered conversation with @OBJ_3, @mavcarter, and more in UNINTERRUPTED’s unscripted series THE SHOP.

First episode dropping 8/28, exclusively on @HBO. pic.twitter.com/zIoxEgBnJn

— UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted) July 26, 2018

Shams leaving Yahoo for the Athletic.

SVG joining ESPN

Our Andrew Marchand reporting Stan Van Gundy expected to join ESPN as studio analyst. Would love instead to see Mike Breen paired with the Brockport boys - Jeff and Stan https://t.co/tZQeTl3K3S

— Marc Berman (@NYPost_Berman) September 28, 2018

they gotta let those guys do a game together at some point.

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

part of what makes windy good is that very powerful people feel comfortable sharing things with him, but he is also overly respectful of those people to the point that it was a running joke on the podcast when he would start kissing owner ass. i think in the grand spectrum of such people in the media & espn specifically (shams, schefter etc) windy is definitely a force for good as opposed to a force for evil, but you he almost makes you take your medicine insofar as you get clear insight into the hivemind of upper echelon pro basketball but you are going to hear some rich people flattered to a point of embarrassment every once in a while

the abu dhabi stuff in particular he frames thru the lens of like “it’s my job to know what’s happening with the NBA on a global business level” but he also kinda openly talks about how lavish his trips there are, and i’m not sure it would look great for him if the curtain on all of that was pulled back

lowe has over the last couple years entered the windy tier of talking heads where he has some intel but won’t spill any of it on his pod, very annoying tbh esp as he pivots away from more x’s and o’s stuff

i kinda dont like lowe any more. havent really been into him since his return to simmons something seems off

he prob realized podcasting aint shit during his break

i'm not sure much has changed about him per se but the downgrade from the assorted cast of characters at espn to those at the ringer is massive, the only person he has on who i will regularly listen to is goldsberry and maybe kyle mann but it's far from a must play, more like if i run out of better podcasts and still have chores to do i'll keep a lowe post episode like that hanging around. but the show just isn't an essential listen when 75% of the time the guests are mo dakhil and random ringer b and c listers

they took it off youtube so i forgot about it

yea thats a bir part xp. i def listen to the goldsberry ones and i think thats about it really.

I skip all Beck episodes, terrible. Goldsberry ok. I'll suffer through Dakhil if I'm desperate. Still like Bill and Lowe.

Hoop Collective is pretty much the only one I'll check in on in the offseason and even then I've found myself less jazzed about it without Bontemps in the dynamic.

offseason pods are 99% nonessential really.

Rob Mahoney does a good Kevin Arnovitz impression

can't believe I ever repped for Michael Pina (I think I said a positive word about him on here once). he sucks

mahoney isn't bad...

the thing about the hoop collective that i'll give ESPN a lot of credit for is that they are almost always platforming people who are primarily reporters, and so you get some analysis and camaraderie but the foundation of what is being offered is information gleaned thru reporting, sourcing, being in the locker room w/ players all season, talking to agents, front office ppl etc. the ringer universe is basically just dudes sitting around giving opinions, it's clearly a good business for them but for my tastes as a listener well... i have that here, frankly. give me something i don't already have access to & i just don't really get that from where lowe's pod has turned since he went over there

I like mahoney, and I like Pina as a columnist but he’s just ok as a podcast person. don’t like goldsberry at all, he seems like he has joe house level ball knowledge

nate duncan’s podcast is essential listening for me even in the offseason because he really does know ball, isn’t afraid to say what he thinks, and his cap knowledge is valuable

jord otm re reporters vs guys, its kinda funny that simmons was unique for presenting the guys pov when he first showed up and now its wall to wall guys

and actually when simmons is at his best now it’s bcuz he hears things from rich guys in LA that he reveals on his podcast & so he’s sorta become a really good source on like macro economic issues that are influencing the nba

yeah hes not really a reporter hes still a guy but now hes a connected rich guy

he’s also just got the juice which is big

NBACentral @TheDunkCentral

Blake Griffin is launching his own weekly late-night sports show, “The Stepback with Blake Griffin,” on Prime Video and YouTube, per
@THR. The show will feature Griffin giving his takes on some of the biggest and most controversial topics in sports, including gambling, NIL, taxpayer-funded stadiums, marijuana use, analytics and sports journalism.

The series premieres October 20, with new episodes every Tuesday.

ah yes more ex hooper opinions to flood the market more