The sun is setting on TNT’s coverage of live NBA games. At most, fans will be graced with seven more telecasts. At minimum? Just four.
And as TNT prepares to say goodbye to the NBA, fans are preparing to say goodbye to the network’s lead NBA play-by-play announcer: Kevin Harlan. To one sports media critic, that storyline has flown under-the-radar as fans fixated on the future of Inside the NBA.
Bryan Curtis, host of The Press Box podcast for The Ringer, believes that fans are going to miss Harlan more than they realize when the NBA’s new rights deals kick in next season.
“I don’t think that guy doing that job would have happened at any other network,” Curtis began. “Case in point, [fellow TNT NBA announcer] Ian Eagle is going to be the number one guy at Amazon. …Harlan got that job when he was 61-years-old. It’s a guy who had been announcing NBA games since he was 21. He got his first job, and this is one of my favorite facts about him, when he was a senior at the University of Kansas. And the Kansas City Kings called him to tell him he was their new play-by-play announcer, and left a message on the machine at his frat house. That’s a real story about Kevin Harlan.
“The thing about him is, there aren’t too many announcers whose sound is that big and that different that get number one jobs,” Curtis continued. “I think of, like, Joe Tess[itore] on Monday Night Football. Gus Johnson, still number one guy at Fox Sports. But it’s a pretty short list.
“You and I know being a number one announcer, it’s about taste,” Curtis later prompted his co-host David Shoemaker. “It’s about having an executive being willing to point at you. But at some point, you have to be able to do the job plausibly. And Kevin Harlan, please step in here if you disagree, did the job very well for four years.”
General sentiment around Harlan seems to be pretty high, at least among Awful Announcing readers. The veteran play-by-play man consistently ranks as one of the top NFL and March Madness broadcasters each year in our fan surveys.
His work as TNT’s lead NBA voice, to Curtis’ point, seems weirdly underappreciated. There’s no denying Harlan has a voice suited for big games. He just doesn’t seem to get the national praise he deserves.
But for one last NBA playoff series, he’ll get to showcase his unique style as part of a lead broadcast team. For Harlan’s sake, hopefully the Pacers and Knicks take this one to a Game 7.