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

You would think Thanasis couldn't be worse at podcasting than basketball, but you would be wrong.

i had to block the name "gilbert arenas" on twitter, felt like he was being forced on me every 5th post and hes reached that perk level of nba talking head dumb ass

yeah I need to, muting Kanye and Yeezy helped a lot

nba media discourse is cooked. 2/3 of the way through his first season and theyre already trying to push him to a bigger market lol

ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne: “Victor is here and he wants to win... I don’t know how patient he’s going to be (with the #Spurs)… I don’t think he wants to sit here at the bottom of the lottery standings.” #PorVida #Wemby #Wembanyama #NBA pic.twitter.com/CXKXjFJAaL

— Dusty Garza (@Dgarza888) March 5, 2024

lmao at suggesting the Spurs should have made huge move to get Dame, be serious

lol come on

oh my god. ramona. no. NO!!!!

does anyone honestly believe wemby won’t be patient with the spurs? lol. even putting aside just the baseline absurdity of the topic being applied to a rookie, that dude is spur up and down. come on now.

lmao at suggesting the Spurs should have made huge move to get Dame, be serious

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 12:06 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

if he's serious about winning he should come to the team that has Dame already

I don’t think he wants to sit here at the bottom of the lottery standings.

keen piercing insight here. but that's the only one of the bunch. the rest is a crock.

an NBA media thing i’ve been clocking a lot lately are ESPN guys specifically lowe & windhorst making remarks on their podcasts about how when they go on TV they’re forced to talk about the lakers and warriors, so instead on today’s episode we are going to talk about xyz. as someone who doesn’t watch ESPN talking head shows this suits me well i just find this de facto hostage position these guys take to be a bit absurd. like, im sorry that you are ambitious and ambition at ESPN means being turned into a puppet who talks about 3 topics but… not really my problem!! exercise some agency, boys

yeah or like just... make the podcast longer or record another one to talk about what you want to talk about?

I don't think these guys are the ultimate arbiters of the content they produce

yup. the producers have a plan going in to a broadcast and the 'talent' is expected to follow it. worth noting that espn is disney and disney doesn't hesitate to fire people who don't toe the line.

I don't think these guys are the ultimate arbiters of the content they produce

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 12:21 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

feels like more of a recent push tho.

it's hard to pick but i think my least favorite talking head discussion is "who's on your Mount Rushmore of [insert here]"

lol yeah i don’t need “the concept of television”explained to me, but thanks guys. i understand the role of the producer. that is not my point

an NBA media thing i’ve been clocking a lot lately are ESPN guys specifically lowe & windhorst making remarks on their podcasts about how when they go on TV they’re forced to talk about the lakers and warriors, so instead on today’s episode we are going to talk about xyz. as someone who doesn’t watch ESPN talking head shows this suits me well i just find this de facto hostage position these guys take to be a bit absurd. like, im sorry that you are ambitious and ambition at ESPN means being turned into a puppet who talks about 3 topics but… not really my problem!! exercise some agency, boys

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 2:00 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

another version of this--lowe frequently alludes to the stupid shit kendrick perkins decides to say on tv because he has to engage with it in good faith over there, even though most 9 year olds would have more intelligent things to say than perk

he needs to step it up should adopt a nerd stephen a persona and tell perk what he really thinks

feels like more of a recent push tho.

Oh hey, here's the post I was actually responding to. It must have been buried by being directly prior to my post.

FWIW I noticed this tic a lot the previous year, but I agree that it's ramping up.

he needs to step it up should adopt a nerd stephen a persona and tell perk what he really thinks

― lag∞n, Tuesday, March 5, 2024 3:04 PM (forty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is basically JJ’s steez now

ha that is true, he needs to dial up the showmanship tho

here i’ll type out something more that maybe will elicit a response beyond “so do you know that other people work on the television show too? and that it’s aired on ESPN, which is owned by disney???”

so i think one of the main differences nowadays is that the original class of sports shouters — skip & stephen a etc or on the less extreme end guys like wilbon & kornheiser — didn’t routinely express frustration about the practice of going on TV to talk about sports. i’m sure stephen a or skip has sat on air and yelled “why are we talking about this instead of that!” but it’s not in the context of guys like windhorst and lowe who are telling one audience — their favored audience — “this is REALLY what i wanna talk about, but my bosses make me go over there multiple times per week to talk to this other audience about this other stuff that bores me.” if the wilbons of the world were that conflicted about the gig, the checks kept them quiet. but now ESPN has stratified content streams that, for lack of better terms, serve you either dumb stuff or smart stuff. and there’s a big enough consumer class for the smart stuff that the famous journalists within that niche at ESPN are now being asked by their bosses to participate in the dumb content too, and of course those people are going to say yes for reasons of money, fame, easier work etc — same as those older guys. it just falls on deaf ears for me for them to participate in this dynamic, and be enriched by it, but then also complain about how much they have to talk with kendrick perkins about the lakers. i think lowe & windhorst could have long, healthy, lucrative careers at ESPN or not at ESPN without accelerating into afternoon talking head land, but that would require, at the very least, turning money down and the shedding of some level of ambition. but if you’re taking the check to do lucrative but lousy work and it’s affecting how much you can enjoy the rest of your job that’s something you should be working out w/ your therapist & not your basketball podcast listening audience, imo

good description of the situation. but personally speaking it doesn't impede my enjoyment of the pods, and there is some unintentional comedy associated with someone as hapless and dorky as zach lowe, at least, trying not to denigrate the opinions of guys like perk. now if espn starts pushing him to have guys like that on the pod as his guests, that would be a different story. honestly i already feel that way a bit about bobby marks, though i have no idea if zach just likes having him on so much. i also put windy in a different category, i don't find him to be a particularly incisive basketball mind. he could probably cash in his rep and audience and do like the marc stein thing and start a substack and do fine, but the "dumb" side of the biz is more his natural habitat. otoh, hearing him moderate mcmahon and bontemps, and those 3 very different people try to coexist on the hoop collective, is probably the most entertaining thing going in this whole scene right now, non-hoops analysis division

i should clarify - i know that bobby marks is doing something very different from perk, and i *guess* he has some expertise and insider knowledge to go on. but it is rare that i feel like he has anything to add to what zach would be telling me on his own. he almost never voices a dissenting opinion

windy knows the league but he doesnt really know ball

jordan otm re complaining about going on tv being a ridiculous thing, no ones making you go on tv

btw why is scal lowes goto celtics guy i dont even hate scal like many do but we get enough of him talking get some writer on there like for every other team

hes looking a lil queasy today

https://i.imgur.com/iDt2r0I.png

windy knows the league but he doesnt really know ball

― lag∞n, Tuesday, March 5, 2024 3:31 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he's a newspaper beat writer at heart, which is one reason i like him

the amount of times now that zach lowe makes a point and then stops to note what kendrick perkins’ rock brained response to said point was or would be is harming my ability to enjoy his podcast by like 1-2%

it’s cool bobby marks is around to be, like, the public’s GM when it comes to cap situations and what not. but as a podcast guest it’s def like turning on a baseball game and seeing the fifth starter out there

scal is really good on this episode actually lol

he's a newspaper beat writer at heart, which is one reason i like him

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 4:42 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i like him too for the record and i like his focus on league stuff

the amount of times now that zach lowe makes a point and then stops to note what kendrick perkins’ rock brained response to said point was or would be is harming my ability to enjoy his podcast by like 1-2%

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 2:43 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol otm

its a funny tic he just has to get it out he still cant say perks opinions are dumb but he knows people will understand

lakers talk is out of hand lmao

After Shannon Sharpe predicted the Lakers would sweep the Thunder, JJ Redick wants to know why he's so obsessed with how long the series would go.

JJ: "Does it matter how many games it goes?"

Stephen A. Smith: "It does."

JJ: "Why?"

SAS: "It's not good to get swept."

JJ: "OK,… pic.twitter.com/kK9iXE5E7h

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 5, 2024

jordan very otm and it is a good life lesson in general!!

constant lakers coverage is tedious but it is funny how it gaslights their fans into thinking theyre better than they are and they get really mad when they lose

i do think there is a distinction between lowe suffering brain damage from trying to sincerely engage with perk or even a lightweight like chiney ogwunike, and windhorst sideyeing lakers fixation. the latter is just being a good midwesterner.

since the mavs started losing this is what nba media is doing now, good luck fellas

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

amazing that perk is such a prominent broadcaster, considering it's been apparent since his playing days that he's one of the dumbest people who ever came through the league

tbf being a dumb guy is an extremely common and popular mode for sports talkers

I listened to sports talk radio for the vast majority of the last 20 years of driving, but recently cut almost all of it out and its been such a relief not being bombarded by such stupidity all the time. I can't believe I did this to myself all these years.

the "WE DONE WITH THE 90s" thing on social media is pretty interesting, kids are going back and actually watching the games

the tv guys who played then should try it

watching 90s games is brutal tbh

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3G6J2ArWaY/?igsh=MTVkbjZpa2d6N200ZQ==

always loved that clip and that simmons has no idea whats going on

he wants to be part of the fun tho