vorbis wrote:yeah after a few more games, the team has a ton of rust to work through. stephanie and dell don't yet seem to have a rhythm as to who's going to talk, and when. they also haven't quite worked out how to react to each other.
a few times dell has given some solid analysis and then stephanie's response is simply laughing, sometimes fake, sometimes not, or resorting to cliché cheers like "way to go, team!" over a positive stat. I imagine that'll be the type of thing that will take a few weeks to work out.
we all know that both of them are super sharp. stephanie is very quick to identify fundamentals and their impact on plays, and dell has a great feel for how offense and defense are 5 players working in tandem. dell's also very good at analyzing replays. stephanie is very perceptive in her scouting of opponents and matchups. the tools are there, which is what makes the hiccups frustrating for now 4 games into the season.
you can tell a huge difference when stephanie interviews a player before the half or just after the final buzzer. she's a lot more comfortable there. so you know there's a seamless broadcast in there somewhere. but for right now it's awkward.
eric, I think I'm quickly losing patience for him. I realize he might be under some kind of directive to provide ENERGY!! for younger audiences maybe, but man he gets on my nerves. it's hard to get a feel for the game when any play that happens near the rim gets an ear-splitting shriek. NBA games have nuance. not every play is amazing, some are clever and pretty, but not necessarily exciting. if he'd just mete out his excitement a little more organically it would make a big difference.
also yeah, the homerism is really grating. I'm not asking the guy to be a wooden stoic but keeping things in perspective is really important to me. especially when there's going to be a minimum of 82 of these **** things.
hopefully as stephanie and dell get more comfortable with each other, he'll figure out his role and chill out a little bit with the yelling and overstating things.
I enjoyed reading your take on that. I agree with pretty much everything, tho oddly I'm not annoyed with Eric (yet?). There are so many worse announcing teams around, that I appreciate they aren't like that. Esp when I have to listen to morons who can barely put a sentence together. THAT I cannot tune out, but Eric being all homer and enthused, I can more or less tune that out when I want to.
Dominique, or the Clippers guys, or the Houston buffoons. Mute that ****.
This crew doesn't always know how to fill up the air time all the time, but that's not such a bad thing. In general, I'd rather hear less from crews than hearing filler, which most of it is.
I enjoy the Miami announcers best. They say interesting things but are not intrusive with their comments, and they're even-handed and try to be balanced instead of just entertaining, and it's obvious they truly enjoy the game but don't have to squeal loudly to convey that.