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The 2016 NBA Finals were an iconic series with massive interest from the U.S. audience. Game 7 drew 31 million viewers, making it the most-watched game since 1998. No NBA game over the last nine years has come close to touching it. Breen said he has thought about that game often this week because of all that was at stake. “There was so much going on because the road team won, because there was an upset, because there was history coming back from a 3-1 deficit,” Breen said. “It was so important for both teams. For Golden State, it was to cap off what was the greatest regular season in NBA history. For Cleveland, it was to pull off this upset and come back from 3-1 down and hand the city this championship that they’ve been waiting (on for) decades and decades. It meant so much to the teams and to the fan bases and the city. Just like this series. In this series, for both fan bases, the emotions are just off the chart. You can tell that by the sound in each arena.”
Andrew Marchand: ESPN/ABC may have to produce Game 2 of the NBA Finals remotely because of a tornado warning in OKC. Mike Breen & company will still be commenting from court side but the production trucks outside the arena may not be available. ESPN would control the pictures and productions from either Bristol or LA.
ESPN executives will debate what is next, according to sources, with one discussion likely centering around if they feel Burke is better on a two-person team as opposed to the three-person team. ESPN’s other NBA game analysts this season were Tim Legler, Jay Bilas and Cory Alexander. This new team puts Breen in the middle of trying to find the magic that he had with Van Gundy and Jackson. Breen is one of the best NBA play-by-players ever and has called the most Finals on TV, but there has been a hole in his game for two seasons.
Burke is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, rightfully so. She was handed nothing, coming from obscurity, first working New York Liberty games on MSG Network before her rise through the ESPN ranks. She was sharp and informative. But in the three-person booth the last two years, she hasn’t seemed to mesh as well with Breen. He doesn’t outright ignore what she says, but they rarely build on each other’s comments. ESPN has failed to create a deep game analyst bench, even resorting to college basketball expert Bilas on playoff games this season. Some top decision-makers like Legler a lot, and he could become a Finals option, according to sources briefed on the network decision-makers’ thinking.
Mike Breen was calling Game 5 of the 1994 Finals for WFAN, which was the radio home of the Knicks from 1988-2004. “The O.J. game is still one of the memories I will never forget, because I called it on radio and it was one of the most bizarre nights I’ve ever had calling basketball,” Breen told Deitsch. “The game starts and we had a TV monitor in our booth as well. And now NBC goes to the split screen and everybody is talking about it. At halftime, people weren’t talking about the basketball game – a critical NBA Finals game – they were talking about O.J. And I’m calling the biggest game of my life.”
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Trying to keep his focus on Game 5 of the NBA Finals, Breen asked their statistician, the late Harry Robinson, to shut turn off the monitor. “I can’t concentrate,” Breen recalled telling Robinson. “The O.J. thing was so drawing, I said, ‘You gotta turn it off.’ So he goes to turn off the monitor and all the people around us, all friends, everybody we knew, screaming at us, ‘No, no! You can’t turn it off!’ Because they wanted to watch O.J. on the TV while they were at the Garden watching the game. And because we knew them so well, we kept it on. I’m just thinking, ‘this is just too bizarre, I can’t believe I’m in the middle of this.’”
Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff has developed quite a reputation as a complainer. Throughout the first-round series against the Knicks, Bickerstaff whined to referees about calls and it even shocked legendary commentator Mike Breen while he called Game 6 for MSG, “I’ve been doing this over 30 years,” Breen said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a coach argue this much, nonstop from the opening tip ’til now. If you talk to the players, Clyde (Frazier), they’ll tell you this is part of why they love this guy. They say, ‘He’s a dog, like the players. He’s fighting for it like the players.’ “But there comes a point where (referee) Tony Brothers is gonna say, ‘Another technical and you’re gone.’ It’s nonstop. It’s continuous.”
Mikal Bridges had to edit himself a bit after getting a little too fired up while speaking to MSG broadcaster Mike Breen after the Knicks’ dramatic 116-113 win over the Pistons to punch New York’s ticket to the second round of the NBA playoffs. Bridges was still basking in the victory when he threw on the headset as Breen started to ask him about what the conversation was like when the Knicks were trailing with under three minutes to go. “We built for this s–t. That’s all it is,” Bridges started to say.
Outside of the sports world, Brunson’s dagger got the reaction of many celebrities, including actor Jerry O’Connell, who posted a video on X. “We want Boston…we want Boston,” O’Connell yelled out. Actor and director Ben Stiller also expressed his support through a series of posts on X, with one addressing NBA broadcaster Mike Breen’s rare “double bang” call after the shot. Comedian Jon Stewart was clearly excited following the 28-year-old’s performance, posting “BRUNSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Walt Frazier’s playoff run will be over by the end of the week, after Game 6 or 7. That is because under contracts the NBA signed with ESPN, NBC and Prime Video that kick in for 2025-26, local cable outlets no longer will carry first-round games. So while Frazier’s longtime MSG partner, play-by-play man Mike Breen, will carry on as a national announcer, Frazier will be out of the mix. He said just as when he was a player, leading the Knicks to NBA championships in 1970 and ’73, he always has gotten an extra charge out of playoff games. “It’s going to be devastating,” Frazier said.
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Walt Frazier: WIn the playoffs, my palms get sweaty. Memories come back. I get the chill bumps, because I always say, in the regular season you make your name and in the playoffs you gain your fame. That’s when you think about the confrontations with Earl [Monroe] and Oscar [Robertson] and [Jerry] West, all the different guys rising to that occasion. Nothing else in my life has given me that challenge, nothing else has gotten me to that point. The playoffs is the thing. Now I won't be able to experience that.”
Like Breen, he believes fans deserve to get a taste in the playoffs of the local voices they heard all season. “The league's a multi-billion-dollar league now,” Frazier said. “It continues to prosper in one way, but also you're losing a legacy in another way.” Last week, Breen told Newsday, “I think it was a bad decision from the league. You can’t blame the rightsholders, because they’re paying all this money. But the league should have said, you know what, we’re going to hold onto that first round.”
Van Gundy, 65, joins Ian Eagle on Prime Video’s game telecasts. While Prime has designated Eagle as its No. 1 play-by-play announcer, it plans on waiting to name its top game analysts. It has shown interest in Richard Jefferson, who was just promoted to ESPN’s No. 1 crew with Mike Breen and Doris Burke. Jefferson’s contract expires after he calls the NBA Finals for ABC in June.
Mike Breen: “One of the great blessings and joys of my life have been working with him all these years because I idolized him as a kid and then when we became partners I thought that was just amazing. But then to have this lifelong friendship with him and basically grow up in the business with him has been just extraordinary. “I’ve told this story, there is a poster in the house I grew up in, my mother still lives there, it’s still up, I put it up when I was around 10. Back then if you would’ve told me I would have this relationship with him all these years, I would’ve told you you’re absolutely nuts. He’s one of the most beloved sports figures in New York sports, he’s made two Hall of Fames — one as a player, one as a broadcaster. I think one of the beauties of him, one of the great aspects of Clyde is that he understands who he is in New York sports lore. And he knows there’s a responsibility with that. And the way he interacts with fans, young and old, is just so heartwarming because he knows the reason he’s so beloved is because of the fans. And he so appreciates that love. He just gets it.
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