Talk all the crap you want about him announcing, he’s still awesome.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him and sharing a few drinks with him a handful of times. I’d bump into him in the Tampa airport when I traveled and he was great to sit and chat with. Unbelievably nice and he had a genuine happiness that JB brought our program back to prominence.
Not indicting them as people, but I think if Bill Walton and Dick Vitale ever did a game together, my head would deflate from all the blood pouring out of my ears.
My gut tells me Howard wants to bring Bajema up to speed, and displace some of the playing time of Nuñez. As of right now Nuñez has a very limited skillset at this level.
Of course F Wagner will eventually take the starting spot of Nuñez, but Howard might want the mix of Nuñez’s minutes to be for DDJ and Bajema in the end result. If he can’t splash shots, he impacts very little on a game.
Yeah I don’t know what everyone else is thinking but the drop coverage seems like an obvious choice vs Haliburton. Seems like this will be a test to see if Michigan can do what they’ve done really well the last few years: not over helping.
Walton is the worst. Never talks about the game. Just a voice of Rand McNally about his travels and Indian Reservations that he visited. Likes telling where he ate delicious salmon in the town of the game he is doing. He does a disservice to the fans listening and to the players playing by giving no value to the game going on in front of him.
I honestly don’t think he even knew who James Wiseman was yesterday. They brought a draft analyst on during the game and he said Wiseman would be the #1 pick and Anthony Edwards would be #2. 5 minutes later when the other announcer brought up Edwards as the projected #2, Walton responded with “who do they have as #1?”. The other announcer just leaned into making fun of Walton’s memory at that point.
My annoyance with Walton is that he almost distracts me from a normal game watching experience. I’m not expecting incredible insight from a color commentator, but I am expecting a viewer experience that doesn’t include hearing Marcus Bingham getting compared to Kevin Garnett, or growling animal noises, or pretending that he hasn’t met his co-workers, or all three of those before the first media timeout.
I’m not necessarily lauding many other analysts out there; however, to emphasize Wpb’s point, Walton is about Walton, and my reasons for watching the game is to enjoy the game itself. With respect to Reegs’s point, I love Raftery because he adds his own personality but knows the game he’s calling is his first priority. That’s the key to me. Vitale knows that a game is going on, especially if it’s in Durham, but long strings of him yelling “oh” when someone makes a transition dunk grates on me; it’s become more fantastical as he’s aged. I appreciate their personas, but I’m not hot boxing in a VW van before a Phish concert, nor am at a motivational seminar on how to be perpetually excited and yelling about how excited I am. I’m watching a college hoops game.
I think Bill Raftery is the best and it’s not close. I don’t mind Walton because he doesn’t try to really analyze the game. He knows he’s just there to provide entertainment. I’ll take him over Vitale, easily.
Bilas and Dakich can be very good. But sometimes they are full of themselves