Commentators

After watching the NBA playoffs and baseball the past few weeks I've began to pay close attention to the commentators providing us with our play by play and sometimes insightful looks into the game. Some people who I have thought have done a great job are Hubie Brown covering the NBA playoffs and the always solid tandem of Joe Morgan and Jon Miller. Hubie Brown constantly provides great analysis and reasoning behind every aspect of the game he covers. He's lauded as one of the best teachers of the game in basketball as a coach and the way he carries himself over the air really helps people to realize why he is known as such. Then there is Joe and Jon. They have the daunting task of trying to make baseball, a tedious sport to many, interesting to the public. I really admire the job these two do in the broadcasting booth. Joe Morgan is similar to Hubie Brown in that he is always providing analysis on swings, fielding shifts, etc. and trying to educate his listeners on the intricacies and the amount of strategy present in baseball. On the otherside of the booth, Jon Miller is more of the play by play announcer and handles himself in the most professional manner possible. He is always attempting to pronounce players names right, including accents on the foreign players names, and does a superb job of masking whether or not he holds any favoritism towards a particular ball club.

Anyways, watching Wednesday Night Baseball and the NBA playoffs made me start to wonder who is my favorite and least favorite announcer in sports? Well, I've thought about it and here they are.

Favorite:
For my all time favorite commentator the honor goes to Bill Walton.


(Two of the greatest things together in one)

Walton is abhored by many NBA fans, but I put him on the top of my list due to his insight (or lack there of) and his comedic nature in broadcasts. Walton has become infamous for his numerous phrases he has pattened over the years. Phrases such as "Throw it down big man!" or his always comical "that was the best/worst play in the history of western civilization!." Just to give you an idea of the amazingness that is Bill Walton here are some more Walton quotes.

-"What a pathetic performance by this sad human being. This is a disgrace to the game of basketball and to the NBA. He played like a disgrace tonight. And he deserved it." (Walton throwing it down on Larry Johnson)

-Tony Parker makes a pass, which gets deflected out of bounds by an opposing defender. Spurs ball, no big deal... Walton roars: "Tony Parker just made the worst pass... in the history of Western Civilization!"

-"Greg Ostertag is one of the top centers on this planet!"

-"Steve Nash is the most unathletic player in the league."

-Whenever the refs aren't up to Bill's standards: “Why even have a rulebook?”

-Whenever Walton sees something that displeases him "That was a foul..."
partner "On who, Bill?"
Walton: "On the game of basketball!"(in a very disgusted voice)

These are just a few of many memorable quotes Bill Walton has been gracious enough to bestow on us during his years as the premiere NBA analyst in the nation and why he is the my number one sports commentator around.

Least Favorite:
I tried not to have an announcer from the same sport, I really did. I tried to convince myself people like Dick "I masturbate to the Duke Blue Devils" Vitale, Chris "I'm not that funny" Berman, and Lee "let me tell you something sweetheart" Corso were more annoying than this man, but I sadly could not do so. This man is Stephen A. Smith.


Smug bitch

Quite Frankly, this may be the most annoying man in the history of Western Civilization. The worst mistake ESPN has made in its years of existence was firing David Aldridge and hiring Stephen A. Smith as its new "expert" NBA analysist. They went from the well respected, spoken, and reasonable Aldridge to the moronic, babbling, screaming, joke of a man that is Stephen A. Smith.

The Stephen A. Smith mistake did not end there, unfortunately. Soon after he replaced Aldridge ESPN came up with the bright idea of giving Stephen his own show called "Quite Frankly." It sucks. People lauded ESPN for giving Stephen this show, he had become the first black man to have his own show on ESPN in its 25 years of operation. Big Mistake. The show originally got a prime spot aounr 9 o'clock, but due to Stephen A. Smith's inability to speak the show was quickly moved to the midnight time slot, soon after that it was cancelled. The worst part of it was that Smith tried to subtley advertise for his show by using the words 'quite frankly" in every segment he did on ESPN while it was still on the air. It drove me insane.

I thought ESPN was done with the Screaming A. experiment, but apparently not. In the past year he has been a fill-in on PTI (my favorite show) and has made it unbearableto watch, started hosting the NBA Coast to Coast, and has recently served as an anchor on Sportscenter. I can't get the man to go away. On top of his annoyingngess he also knows pretty much nothing about basketball. He does nothing but complain about race while he talks about the game and has no actual knowledge of how the game is supposed to be played. This example I found on wikipedia sums up Smith's knowledge the best: "The pick makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, when you think how they traded away Vince Carter, virtually for nothing, again we sit here today, wondering, what on earth is Rob Babcock doing!" Charlie finished 2nd in rookie of the year voting that season. Comments like this have brought the NBA Draft, one of my favorite events of the year, down in the watchability scale. They really need to put the draft back on TNT with Charles and the gang.

So, quite frankly Stephen A. Smith is an annoying, arrogant, loud failure who has to intimidate people into agreeing with him by yelling. And to top it all off, he's a Yankees fan.