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

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

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

https://i.imgur.com/nAHId7b.png

I would have been cool if it was Balatro

https://i.postimg.cc/gk89tVZ6/Screenshot-20250622-181516.png

🤔🤔🤔

Food for thought from Shams

so crazy it might be true

so much food for thought you're just like "shhh--" *points to plate* "hams"

Deandre Austin has gotten a lot better in the last 24 hours

if anyone would be tickled by hearing zach lowe finally drop a couple f bombs, he’s launched a semi-regular mets segment on his pod and it turns out the mets are the thing that really revs him up.

They have that affect on people.

Sad his presence on Wolves games will be lessened but he was too good to stay local forever, think people are really going to love him as he gets more exposed nationally. Really excellent person by all accounts as well.(Old story)

Report: Wolves announcer Michael Grady lands new gig with Amazon https://share.google/tSj4hhCLFYiO5VvvW

Jonathan Givony
@DraftExpress

My time at ESPN has come to an end. Thanks to everyone, past and present, who helped me grow professionally the past 8 years.

Although ESPN offered an extension, we were unable to find alignment on my value to the company.

I will continue to analyze the NBA Draft, college, high school, and international basketball, as I have the past 20+ years, at the company I founded, DraftExpress, alongside a fantastic team.

See you at the U18 European Championship in Belgrade this weekend!

-Jonathan Givony

massive L for espn, sheesh

god that’s so lame. guess stephen A will need to step up

espn does these multi billion doll deals all the time but cant shell out to keep a few nerds around

god that’s so lame. guess stephen A will need to step up

― brony james (k3vin k.), Thursday, July 24, 2025 3:47 PM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

would honestly start watching a stephen a show where he's going to third division serbian games or high school hoops summits and doing scouting reports, itd be bad but hilarious