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

not so much the quiet storm as the obstreperous squall

i mean i know i shouldn't have any expectations for ESPN anymore but fuck they haven't filed a FIBA story in two days, nothing to be found on the main page today, had to search to find those

🆕 Athletic NBA Show

🏀How the NBA schedule is made

Evan Wasch Executive Vice President, Basketball Strategy & Analytics walks Mike Vorkunov through the schedule making process

🎙@MikeVorkunov

Listen
Apple: https://t.co/K7r4qlpjaT
Spotify: https://t.co/m51IYXr0S1 pic.twitter.com/jntZlrKOCF

— The Athletic NBA Show (@AthleticNBAShow) August 19, 2023

Every arena the NBA plays in wants to fill as many days as possible with events like boat shows, gun meets, music group tours, and monster truck competitions and there are all kinds of contractual obligations that have to be met about how those dates get filled, so you just know scheduling 30 teams for 82 games must be like putting together an enormous jigsaw with 500,000 pieces.

you cannot do a monster truck rally in a basketball arena

or a boat show

The Blazers played for decades in an arena that regularly held such events.

But even if my examples were not precise, the principle of arenas not wanting to stay empty is perfectly valid, which was my point.

Guys, I don’t think I’m going to make it through my remaining 8 hours of preview pods before the games start tonight.

its tough to go into the season while only hearing over and unders from 15 out of a possible 25 completely interchangeable guys

lol

Lmao

I do think we’ve well crossed the saturation point w this stuff

We have but I can’t quit it.

Addicted to boozers floating head / beard

My picks for NBA opening night with boosted odds @betwayusa

Suns +1.5
Lakers +5.5 pic.twitter.com/wm9oTZWUAo

— Carlos Boozer (@MisterCBooz) October 24, 2023

lol he looks like a video game

https://x.com/Cooldj0314/status/1716714269629112676?s=20

lol

nice

haa

Did he use a marker to draw a beard on himself this time?

i want to use this thread to vouch for hoop tiktokers jokicjoestar and pablo escoball

Ok I gave up and just marked them all as listened to. Except the Hollinger & Duncan that dropped while I was doing it. Can’t miss the rookie scale extensions talk.

I listen to hours and hours of NBA pods every week. I think the thing that annoys me most is how obsessed they are with distinguishing themselves from others with evaluations. I'm higher on this guy than most, I'm lower on this guy than most, I am far from the consensus. But really, they all say that same thing with minor variations.

― Jeff, Friday, June 23, 2023 1:20 PM (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is all i notice now lol

I’m incredibly high on Timberwolves rookie Leonard Miller. pic.twitter.com/As81t4SYId

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) October 24, 2023

you gotta differentiate yourself in the marketplace of basketball ideas, which is particularly easy if youre kevin oconnor since you can just say something very dumb

usually yes but in this case let's hear him out

love to buy a stupid gaudy microphone so i can participate in the take economy

great discussion on inside the NBA tonight about the ways in which the guys were able to improve their games over their first few years in the league. shaq and chuck talking about big man play in particular within the context of wemby felt insightful

also 10 mins prior to that chuck, upon learning that the suns play in phoenix again on thursday, incredulously argued that he’d never heard of such a thing before, even as ernie repeatedly told him that the league has been doing same city home and homes for the last few years

and now for me the NBA is officially back

the spurs** not the suns, sorry

i'm glad this thread revived today because i've been wanting somewhere to say that i enjoy the vast majority of the player / former player pods, but i would like to never hear Gilbert Arenas speak again

enjoying the monica mcnutt mark jones pairing for the pelicans okc game tonight, shes funny and is into the game no dumb stuff, first national broadcast

yeah i was happy to hear her! and mark jones is always solid.

they had good chemistry

B/R Sources: While Danny Green was disappointed by how the final days of his tenure in Philadelphia unfolded, there remains an affinity between the three-time NBA champion and 76ers organization. Neither side has ruled out a return should a roster spot become available.

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) November 3, 2023

B/R Sources: While Danny Green was disappointed by how the final days of his tenure in Philadelphia unfolded, there remains an affinity between the three-time NBA champion and 76ers organization. Neither side has ruled out a return should a roster spot become available.

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) November 3, 2023

why has the nba tonight crew been calling richard jefferson the director of ambience, i mean he does look like a director of ambience but i missed the genesis of the joke

i saw channing frye on NBA TV last night after the wemby game and thought he was really good

yeah i thought so too, he seemed normal

windhorst was absolutely on fire on the most recent hoop collective pod about disappointing teams, sounding like the most disappointed parent ever over the bucks' defensive numbers so far and then doing a great bit about how the bulls are in a rebuild but don't know it yet.

I really love that pod even though they’re all such dorks

they're the best

what is this weird Manningcast thing called Hoopervision with Quentin Richardson, Dorrell Wright and Metta World Peace?

feel like the thing that really separates the hoop collective from the pack is how seriously they take the topic, the nba is meaningful to them on an emotional level, it might be somewhat schtick but they do it good its convincing, and its not just like some sports radio yelling or hot takes bs its still analytical, windy being so disappointed in the bucks defense is the perfect example, but they all do it macmahon will get seriously exasperated at kyries antics, where every other smart guy pod is all hey luka is very good isnt that neat, and the more insidery stuff they get into behind the scenes drama the wider view of how it all works together etc is served well by the seriousness too, and that stuff is just good to mix in with the actual basketball talk too one can only take so much discussion of shot charts and so forth

windy is even super serious about orchestrating the pod he wants to make it good and pro he cuts people off all the time like well get to that later, also i like how they kind of hate each other

yeah they all do really care, and although i don’t think he would ever call it schtick, something windhorst has figured out is that sounding overly serious/invested in the bucks defense or a royce o’neill trade or whatever is how you make the audience care about those things too.

its dramatic which who doesnt like a lil drama

they have great frenemy chemistry, you get the sense they do like each other a lot and enjoy needling each other. it’s the best when they make fun of windy because he’ll allow himself to get mad about it he’s a pretty easy target

i like to think you can tell it's all in good fun and they're genuine friends bcuz they had a whole discussion at the end of a recent episode about how pelton replaced mcmahon on the post-harden trade pod & how windy called mcmahaon and cleared it w/ him but mcmahon was still talking about how they're already kicking him out of the crew. also windy says at one point "this won't make the pod" and i think it was like an extra 10-12 mins that ended up making it

the combination of them being smart about basketball in general plus being well sourced throughout the league plus actively covering beats and talking directly to players all season plus having a good chemistry together and being funny guys (mcmahaon is really quick witted on the fly) makes it the best basketball media product for me

the other thing i like about them is they really don't let teams off the hook. i was listening to the hollinger and duncan episode about the harden trade and they were slobbering all over morey for getting more for harden than he gave up to acquire him and how the sixers have all these options and this expiring and that expiring. meanwhile neither of them stopped and were like -- oh yeah and let's mention that both seasons ended in massive failure that embarrassed the city of philadelphia and wasted two of embiid's best years. the espn guys are more able to see the big emotional picture the way fans tend to while also being some of the best at covering the league down to the granular level

windhorst and bontemps in particular have alluded to spending time together off the clock, like i think they mentioned going to a dodgers game this past season in LA--they seem like they're tight enough to know exactly how to drive each other nuts in a way that's usually fun and entertaining.

john and nate unfortunately still have a blind spot re: morey like a lot of guys who came up with an analytics bent, despite the fact that he hasn't been good at his job for a while now.

ok this appears to be sweet, it looks like if I start the game on League Pass through a VPN then I can disconnect from the VPN after it starts