The third quarter of the Los Angeles Clippers broadcast on FanDuel Sports Network SoCal was overtaken by an argument between announcers Brian Sieman and Jim Jackson.
As the Clippers lost a halftime lead to the Dallas Mavericks, Sieman referred back to an earlier trivia question on the broadcast, accusing Jackson of “ambushing” him and arguing that the “whole premise of the question was way off.” Jackson’s trivia question, as the duo eventually revealed, was about which trio of family members had played for the same NBA team.
A cut of the lengthy disagreement over the trivia question quickly went viral online thanks to parody accounts like “BrickCenter.”
While both announcers can be heard chuckling and teasing one another throughout the clip, social media users questioned whether there might be some underlying tension between Sieman and Jackson.
“Clippers announcers almost get into fight with each other,” one account wrote. “WHOLE FRANCHISE IN SHAMBLES”
On Reddit, the viral post was captioned, “The Clippers announcers stopped commentating in the third quarter and started arguing with each other for a while.”
However, Jackson soon replied on X to make it clear that the banter between he and Sieman was all in good fun.
“I guess you can say that if you really haven’t listened to the two of us and our game banter, but because the camera wasn’t on us the listening audience couldn’t see that we were both smiling and laughing while having this convo,” he wrote.
Jackson and Sieman have called local Clippers games for the entire decade, with Jackson well-known for his national work on TNT Sports and now Prime Video. Longtime broadcast partners rely heavily on chemistry, and it typically takes more than a trivia question to get announcers to breach their professional relationship and argue on-air.
The Clippers, of course, are in a deep hole this season, off to a 5-15 start and plagued by allegations that the team circumvented the salary cap to provide illicit benefits to superstar forward Kawhi Leonard.
The FanDuel broadcast team has already watched through dozens of poor performances this season in which they would need to “vamp” through garbage time. However, that wasn’t the case on Sunday. Talking through a whole quarter about obscure fun facts about the NBA is frustrating for a viewer even if it’s all in good fun.
If there’s any lesson from the whole kerfuffle, it is that Jackson may need to simplify his quizzes going forward.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.