Few play-by-play announcers seem to be enjoying themselves more than Kevin Harlan.
The Awful Announcing play-by-play broadcaster of the year is coming off another great season calling NFL games (including the radio call of Super Bowl LIX). He had too many highlights calling Championship Week and the NCAA Tournament to count (saving a few lives in the process). And it’s fair to say that his recent NBA work with TNT Sports has been “GOOOOOOOOOOD!!!”
Of all the things Harlan is good at, and there are many, he is perhaps never better than during an ad read. He has an uncanny ability to take what is usually filler for the audience and turn it into a must-listen experience.
That was the case once more Tuesday night during the Boston Celtics-New York Knicks showdown when Harlan started reading ad copy for CarMax and things got weird.
Kevin Harlan is 1-of-1 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/xiJdLz7jRY
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 9, 2025
“Tonight from Madison Square Garden, the NBA on TNT is brought to you by the new crispy tenders at CarMax,” said Harlan, suddenly realizing that made no sense. “What? The way car buying should be. Can that be? What is that? Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. Are they serving tenders with cars? Are there tenders in the car? We just had the marriage of two different sponsors, and it was ugly.
“That just goes to show you. I literally will read anything they put in front of me without even looking, like, holy cow.
Later on, it was time for another CarMax ad read. This time, Harlan knew what he had to do.
“Tonight from New York, the NBA on TNT is brought to you by CarMax, the way car buying… and tenders should be,” he said. “I just threw that into the tender. That was some poetic license on there. I thought I had to pay off the tender. Maybe they do. And if they don’t, they should.”
If anyone in the CarMax marketing department is paying attention, by Wednesday morning, they’ll have a chicken tender cart on every lot.