Fire Matt Harpring.

[Xsy]

The Utah Jazz have already been painful enough to watch. Yet he feels the need to make the same joke that he's made in literally every single game this season after every single advertisement that they make him read. Ads are bad enough, I don't care about how 'well' you delivered your ad. Or fry sauce. Or M&M's. I just want to watch basketball.

And even when he does talk about Basketball, he can hardly keep up with what's goin' on.

Terrible, terrible commentator. If I hear him mention his ads one more time, I will literally kill myself.

[QuantumMacgyver]

Mute

[StocktonShorts]

I have to agree, but it's not just Harpring. The combination of him and Bolerjack is pretty terrible.

[Sloanfeld]

I miss Boone. All the changes have truly made this the season from hell.

[Getjazz]

Wow! Just mute it. This makes you sound like the crazy person.

[retiredcoach]

I don't enjoy them much either.

Harpring tries too hard to be cute. He says similar things about all the players so it's just BS. His playing experience doesn't seem to add much to his commentary.

Every time Boller mentions Hayward, he has to say the 9th pick out of Butler. Who on the planet--or at least in Utah--doesn't know Hayward was the 9th pick. It's really time to let that go.

Harpring is a female favorite I guess. My wife wants to put a trash can over his head and beat it with a stick, so not all the women like him.

Both of them repeat themselves way too much and abuse the same cliche's. The Jazz have tried a lot of local talent, none of which were much better.

If you newbies had heard Zelmo Beaty do the color/analyst stick with Hot Rod, you wouldn't think Harpring and Boller are so bad. I think somebody forgot to give Beaty a sound test!

[TDIDDY]

Its so nice every now and then when Ron gets to come down and be with Boler he was on the other night and it wasn't until the 2nd q that I realized Matts sorry ass wasn't there

[edfmx86]

I honestly dont think Matt is THAT bad. It is nice having Boone do games tho.

[Ern III]

Harpring is a female favorite I guess. My wife wants to put a trash can over his head and beat it with a stick, so not all the women like him.

*Boler's voice*

"I'm lovin' it!!!"



I was thinking about this today, the "live promo" phenomenon. I remember when this type of ad first entered the in-game arena. Announcers would frequently over-elaborate for the sake of pimping the product (perhaps hoping for a delivery truck the next day) while attempting repartee born of nothing more than pure facetiousness or buffoonery. After a while, there must've been some sort of redress in the production meetings, or upstairs at the networks, and they became slick, brief, "let's just do this and move on" commercial annunciations in an almost blanket sense. As if there was an acceptance that it was a necessary evil of an announcer's job and, since they didn't really know much about what they were promoting most of the time, were realising what uninformed, unfunny (especially with such limited source material) dickheads - or worse, whores - they were usually conveying of themselves.

But, every now and then, when someone unaccustomed or comparatively unprofessional gets handed a mic, such as an ex-player, we get a regression to the early days, and a live read is turned in to the sort of lame act we repeatedly get from Harpring, enabled by Bolerjack. Or Chris Webber's "Popeye" read last week, which wouldn't have been remarkable for its frivolity except that Dick Stockton was obviously reluctant to do anything except get on with calling the game.

[retiredcoach]

I don't think Harpring and Boller are much worse than some of the national play by play people. A few of them were at the All Star circus.

Sad as it is, US color/analysts are better than the European ones. When I'm out of the country, if there's a game on that I decide to watch, I get so frustrated with the slow uneventful commentary--not the soccer guy and the goal crap, but the basketball people, I mute the TV.

Sometimes I've sat for minutes and not heard anything thinking I had it muted, then all of sudden some commentator says a couple of sentences and then quits talking again. I'm not sure they know there's a game being played.

[Soul Patch]

Nothing compares to Bill Walton to doing the Fiba games in 2006.

[UTJazzFan_Echo1]

I completely disagree with you. He has been our best color commentator in recent history BY FAR.

I actually really enjoy listening to him. At least he isn't senile and he actually knows something about NBA basketball.

You guys are crazy.

[red4hf]

I like the job Harpring is doing.......

The other guy, though, is a complete moron......

[Luigi]

I laugh every time he uses the telestrator to circle the entire screen

[seejaydeja]

I laugh every time he uses the telestrator to circle the entire screen

Well, did you know he used to play football? That's probably why

I couldn't stand him up until after Sloan left. I don't mind him so much anymore. Sure, he's an idiot, but at least he loves the team he's calling for. I wouldn't mind Boone back though, I'd LOVE to see Malone take his spot...

[BarneyGumble]

Boone was better. And shame on whoever alluded to Boone not knowing anything about NBA Basketball

[seejaydeja]

im pretty sure we could get some legitimate Harpring memes going if anyone had the time.

[Fido]

Its funny because I used to hear these same comments about Boone. So now that someone else is doing the broadcast, everyone thinks Boone was better and wants him back. Harpring isn't that bad. If you have ever heard the broadcast guys for some of these other teams you would realize we actually have it pretty good with these guys.

[jazzfan1971]

I'm sick of Matt as well.

2 reasons:

- His propensity to exaggerate. Every game he does someone is the best in the league at something. And it wouldn't be bad if that person was actually the best in the league, but, he just says that when he things someone is good at something.

- His critiques of Jazz effort on defense. He'll often say things like, "you can't let a guy beat you like that", or, "You have to get out on that guy", or, "you can't let that guy shoot open shots". But, he has nothing to say about HOW you do so. And sometimes the Jazz defender will be right there with a hand in the face of the offensive player and Harpring still thinks it was bad defense or effort if the guy scores. His critique is empty and often innacurate. If you want to talk about someone not doing their job, tell us what they should have done instead. Something like, "It's CJ's job to close out on that player, he's sagging to far into the paint to recover. He needs to position himself another 10-12 inches closer to his man."

[The59Sound]

I agree with that. And then, of course, there's always the issue of an ex-player ripping on guys for something he was bad at it.

It's not as bad hearing Harpring make critiques as, say, Tim Legler or Greg Anthony, but still -- as much as I loved watching you play, Matt, you really don't have the credibility to constantly attack defensive exception, especially when you don't offer suggestions for what could be done better (as you said, 71).

In general, I've actually found him easier to listen to as the season's gone on, but he's still not great. I do actually find some of the banter between him and Boler entertaining. For some reason, Harp's awful readings of advertisements (the constant Intelli-bed ones in particular) usually amuse me.