Mark Jones confused, mislabeled Golden Gate and Bay Bridges during NBA All-Star Celebrity Game

If you’re broadcasting a sporting event from the Bay Area, you can expect B-roll footage of some of the area’s famous bridges as part of the telecast. So, it would be helpful to know which one is which and to know their names. During Friday night’s NBA All-Star Celebrity Game, ESPN’s Mark Jones did neither.

Coming out of halftime, ESPN showed a shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Though Jones thought he was looking at another one.

“San Francisco, folks, just irradiant at night,” he said. “A look at the Bay Area Bridge, AKA The Willie Brown Bridge, named after the city’s first African-American mayor.

Later in the broadcast, a shot of what is officially known as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was shown. Jones referred to it as the “Bay Area Bridge.”

Let’s clarify some things.

One, as we already noted, the first bridge that Jones identified as “The Bay Area Bridge” is the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s the most famous bridge in the Bay Area and one of the most famous in the world. If you’re a tourist and want to see the famous bridge, it’s almost certainly that one. It connects San Francisco and Marin County.

The less famous — but far more traveled — bridge is the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Or, as it’s almost universally known, the Bay Bridge. As the official name suggests, it connects San Francisco and Oakland. No bridge in the Bay Area is the “Bay Area Bridge.”

To be fair to Jones, he’s not the first person to make this mistake. Before Game 3 of the 2019 NBA Finals, which was played at the Oakland Arena (then known as Oracle Arena), the Toronto Raptors posted a picture on X (then Twitter) of the team standing on the Golden Gate Bridge with the caption “Crossed the bridge. Ready for battle.” More recently, Los Angeles Angels Angels pitcher Ben Joyce shared a picture of the Bay Bridge, which he identified as the Golden Gate Bridge. Joyce earned some on-air ribbing from the team’s announcers and also made fun of himself for the gaffe.

Additionally, we have to give Jones some credit. The Western portion of the Bay Bridge is officially known as the Willie L. Brown, Jr., Bridge. That is named in honor of San Francisco’s former mayor.

To avoid making similar deleterious mistakes in the future, he might want to brush up on the subject.