Tag: the NFL

Blog brother rips NBA for hometown crews working playoff games

The always biting website Awful Announcing has repeatedly taken NBA-TV to task this week for its broadcasting of the first round of the playoffs.  

As a money-saving consideration — understandable considering the likelihood of a work stoppage — the NBA is penching a few pennies by picking up a local broadcasting feed rather than send its own crew to cover a game.

So viewers across the country have heard the Spurs announcing team of Bill Land and Sean Elliott one night and the Grizzlies’ crew of Pete Pranica and Brevin Knight for Game 5.

Or as Awful Announcing’s Matt Yoder :

“Instead of subjecting us to the homerish San Antonio pair of Bill Land and Sean Elliott… we got the homerish Memphis pair of Pete Pranica and Brevin Knight for Game 5.  All I know is I never want to hear the phrase “Z-Bound” again,” Yoder wrote.

The criticism is on the mark for the NBA. The two announcing crews can’t be blamed because they are broadcasting for their own home audiences first and the NBA as an afterthought. They shouldn’t change their approach just because “Big Brother” is too cheap to hire its own worker bees.

It does show the NBA as being a little rinky-dink from the rest of the big leagues in how they do their telecasts. The NFL and Major League Baseball don’t do that for their playoff crews.

And the NBA shouldn’t either. It’s beneath them not to have their own crews at games as important  as these playoff games with as much interest in them. The Spurs-Grizzlies Game 5 broadcast attracted the largest viewership in NBA-TV history.   

But Yoder can relax and maybe even be happy tonight. 

The ESPN crew of Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson will be doing the game. I saw them during their walkthrough this morning at the FedExForum. 

Here are some other takes from my blog brothers going into tonight’s huge game:

  • B Diddy from Air Alamo.com quotes from Dylan Thomas tofor tonight’s game.
  • Even after losing Game 5 in San Antonio, Zach Randolph tells the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s Ron Tillery that heabout his team’s chances of winning the series.
  • ESPN.com’s playoff predictor has improved  odds of a to 48 percent.
  • Scott Sereday of 48 Minutes of Hell.com wonders why the Spurs have in the series.
  • Big 50 of Pounding the Rock.com writes that the Spurs weren’t interested in any  andtonight in Memphis.
  • Paul Garcia of Project Spurs.com details several , including keeping Memphis’ big  players out of the paint and playing Tiago Splitter.
  • Andrew McNeill of 48 Minutes of Hell.com as emblematic of the Spurs’ struggles in the series and provides a to ESPN.com’s True Hoop network.
  • Jeff Garcia provides us with rack of dry ribs. Sorry, I couldn’t resist after my delicious lunch today.
  • Griffin Gotta of the Memphis-related StraightouttaVancouver.com tells Memphis fans to. 
  • Robert Kleeman of the Bleacher Report.com advises the Spurs  to remember what when they play Memphis Friday night.
  • Five pundits on ESPN.com pick the Thunder to close out the Spurs and also reflect on whether a loss tonight will be the for the Spurs.  
  • The New York Times’ Harvey Araton has some nice things to say about the Spurs, although he mentions that the team’s dynasty “.” 
  • My old friend Berry Tramel of The (Oklahoma City) Oklahoman considers who the Oklahoma City Thunder .  
  • Chip Crain of the Memphis-related blog 3 Shades of Blue.com writes that Tim Duncan has in the entire series.
  • Reid Cherner of USA Today wonders if Neal after his season-saving shot Wednesday night.
  • Bart Harridge of Spurs Planet.com notes his happiness in seeing Neal in Game 5.
  • Hirschof of Pounding the Rock.com relives some of his observations after Neal’s .
  • The Pro Sports Exchange provides its daily reports on the  and the .
  • Dingo of Spurs Dynasty.com checks out a fewof the first five games of the series.
  • Alleyoop of Spurs Locker.com provides his.

Spurs’ ‘wonderful season’ leads to summer uncertainty

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

The old champion sat in the corner locker at the FedEx Forum late Friday night, vanquished and spent. He performed his perfunctory media obligations, answering in a low tone a few questions about one of the most disappointing playoff ousters of his Hall of Fame career.

And then, Tim Duncan stood up, walked toward the door and into the most uncertain offseason of his life.

On his way to the bus, the Spurs forward recognized a familiar face and paused with one more thought.

“Looks like we got an offensive tackle,” Duncan said, referring to the NFL draft and his beloved Chicago Bears. “We needed two.”

With the season finished more quickly than anyone could have surmised, and the possibility of a lockout postponing the start of his 14th season, Duncan will have plenty of time to ponder both the future and football.

By becoming the second No. 8 seed in the best-of-7 era to topple a No. 1, the Memphis Grizzlies spoiled what was supposed to be Duncan’s last, best run to a fifth NBA championship.

“With the seeding and the situation, I think we’re a better team than we showed,” said Duncan, who turned 35 this month. “I thought we could have put together a much better series.”

In a brutally effective six-game march, capped with a 99-91 victory in Game 6, Memphis brought an unceremonious end to a season in which the Spurs defied expectations, for better and worse.

Nobody imagined a 61-win regular season, the second-best of the Duncan era, during which the Spurs led the NBA for 70 games. Nobody imagined they would flame out as a top seed in the first round, because it had so rarely happened before.

“It was a disappointing end to a wonderful season,” coach Gregg Popovich said Saturday, after the team conducted its year-end meetings.

For the second time in three postseasons, the Spurs failed to advance to the second round. At four years now without an NBA title, it marks the longest drought of Duncan’s career.

Give the Grizzlies credit. Their hard-nosed defense, led by Tony Allen and Shane Battier and a group of castoffs, flummoxed what had been the most offensively potent team of the Popovich era.

By the end of the series, it didn’t even seem like an upset.

“We lost to a team that played better than us for more of the minutes,” said guard Manu Ginobili, who turns 34 in June. “We went through a great season and got in a position to win 61 games, but we couldn’t maintain that high level.”

In autopsying the season Saturday, Popovich blamed April injuries to Duncan and Ginobili for throwing off the Spurs’ groove heading into the playoffs. The Spurs were 57-13 before Duncan went down, 4-8 after.

“We didn’t really go into the playoffs with that rhythm and that mojo you want,” Popovich said. “We think things could have had a different look if we’d had that rhythm going in, but it never did get there.

“Confidence is a big deal in the playoffs. We thought we could overcome it, but Memphis had to cooperate — and they did not.”

It is difficult to imagine the Spurs having an easier time next season.

With a landlocked payroll, there isn’t much general manager R.C. Buford can do to remake the roster. The NBA draft, in which the Spurs possess the 29th pick for what is considered to be a historically shallow prospect pool, is unlikely to be of much help.

Antonio McDyess, the 36-year-old center who spent much of the series battered by Memphis’ bruising Zach Randolph, plans to retire.

“We’re not going to fight him,” Popovich said.

Duncan is entering the final year of his contract but has the option of forgoing the roughly $21.2 million he is owed to sign a longer-term deal at a lower starting price, as Richard Jefferson did last summer. That could give the Spurs a bit of financial wiggle room to chase free agents.

“There will be some changes, but we never get drastic in that sense,” Popovich said. “Somebody asked me yesterday, ‘We lost, do we blow it up’?? That’s the most preposterous attitude you can have.”

Whatever the offseason holds, winning 60 games again next season will be a tall order, and — in a Western Conference in which the eighth seed can beat the first — simply making the playoffs will be a chore.

The apocalypse scenario for Spurs fans remains a lockout that erases the entire final year of Duncan’s deal, after which he could walk away for good.

Duncan was in no mood to consider that possibility after Game 6.

“I just lost a game,” Duncan said. “I’m not even worried about any of that stuff.”

Between now and the tenuous start of the 2011-12 campaign, there will be time to think about roster overhauls, and time to debate the future and, maybe, to ponder the end of an era.

Too much time, if you ask the Spurs.