http://sportsmediawatch.blogspot.com/2008/12/nbaabc-christmas-
review.html

Friday, December 26, 2008
NBA/ABC Christmas review.
ABC opened its seventh season of NBA coverage yesterday. To put that
in perspective, NBC's seventh season of NBA coverage was 1997-98,
when Michael Jordan won his sixth NBA title and the network had
already perfected its broadcasts. By contrast, ABC has only just
begun to hit its stride. After years of fiddling with announcing
teams, graphics and theme music, the network finally appears to be
finding its voice.

The good.
The announcers: Breen, Jackson and Van Gundy were solid as usual.
While Dan Shulman would probably be a better fit on the #2 team than
Mike Tirico, the Tirico/Hubie Brown team also did a good job. One
question, however: how is Doris Burke supposed to be the lead
sideline reporter if she's pulling double-duty as a game analyst?

Magic Johnson: Make no mistake, Magic is not particularly good at
analysis, or at least articulating his analysis. He was awkward on
NBC in the early 90s, and it took EJ, Kenny and Charles to keep him
mostly tolerable on Inside the NBA. With no strong castmembers to
carry him, his flaws will be even more pronounced this season. That
being said, his mere presence gives a generally lifeless NBA
Countdown pregame show a lot more credibility than, say, the
presence of Jon Barry.

The bad.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop: ABC couldn't have done better than this?
Without turning this into a movie review, Paul Blart: Mall Cop looks
like it contains as much cutting edge humor as the average Urkel-
centric episode of Family Matters (Look! He fell down! Hilarous.).
The courtside interview/commercial between Lisa Salters and Kevin
James was time that could have been better spent showing Kevin
Garnett walking along the beach.

Straight No Chaser: Not necessarily bad. Just unnecessary. After one
of their performances, ABC cut back to Jeff Van Gundy, who asked if
he was being 'punked'. The bigger issue here is that ABC still seems
to be in love with the idea of using musical acts as the intro for
their NBA broadcasts. So what completely-inappopriate-for-the-
demographic musical group will be singing the NBA theme this year?
The Jonas Brothers?

Z-list celebrities, again: This only happened once, but yet again
ABC seems committed to using actors from their prime time shows in
bumps throughout NBA telecasts. Again, this begs the question: has
anyone ever seen Christina Applegate pop up during college football
broadcasts, telling viewers, "You're watching college football on
ABC, home of the Rose Bowl"?

Overall.
ABC should have a good season this year. While their NBA broadcasts
cannot even begin to compare to those on CBS or NBC, the network has
improved drastically from the dark days of Al Michaels doing six
games a season and games being broadcast every two weeks.

Things to avoid: musicians like The Pussycat Dolls and Tim McGraw
doing the intros for games, celebrity sightings in the stands
(remember Mike Tirico fawning over Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens
during last year's playoffs?) and anything to do with celebrities in
general. In the words of ESPN/ABC analyst Bill Walton, never let the
show get in the way of the game.