On a Tuesday night, LeBron James needed just 36 more points to make history. As is typical throughout his career, James made quick work of the milestone – the NBA’s all-time scoring record – surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s previous mark of 38,387 points with a 15-foot fadeaway jumper.
The game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder garnered conspicuous anticipation, as some high-demand tickets were being resold for more than $1,000 with no guarantee of the record being broken that night. Nonetheless, James put up 38 total points that night to officially become the new record-holder. 38,388 points later, the crowd was on its feet watching Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, pass the torch to “King James.”
“It was such a fun moment and such a fun night to be there,” said John Ireland, radio play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Lakers. “The moment almost took care of itself.”
Ireland was one of five play-by-play broadcasters who had the distinction of narrating the moment as it happened to viewers around the world. TNT’s national television broadcast peaked at 3.72 million viewers during the 11:45 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. window, during which James hit the record-breaking basket. It was the most watched regular season NBA game on TNT in five years, opening night audiences notwithstanding.
Amid a sell-out crowd at the arena and millions more consuming the game from around the world, it was the responsibility of the broadcasters to accurately depict the juncture and appropriately tailor it to its audience. Ireland estimates that approximately 90% of his audience consists of Lakers fans, many of whom may be stuck in traffic on one of the infamous freeways near Los Angeles and are waiting to turn on a television.
“Leading up to it, I just described what I was seeing,” Ireland said. “What I normally do when I’m doing radio is I try to be the eyes and the ears for the listener who’s in the building.”
As Tuesday’s game approached closer, Marc Kestecher knew there was a chance his assignment of Lakers-Thunder would intersect with James’ reaching the top of the scoring ladder.
Throughout his career at ESPN Radio, he has called a countless basketball and football games nationally, including various championship contests. His previous experience allowed him to settle into the atmosphere without feeling immense levels of pressure, a tangible feeling that manifested itself in the form of arm pain before Game 1 of the 2017 NBA Finals.
“You definitely feel the pressure of not making a mistake,” Kestecher said, “but you can’t live in that pressure – otherwise you’re going to make a mistake. I don’t remember feeling any pressure as he got closer and closer to 36 points on that night.”
Preparing to call a moment of immense magnitude is something many broadcasters never get to genuinely think about, let alone experience during their careers. As the likelihood of James breaking the record Tuesday night in Los Angeles grew, broadcasters had to alter their typical process of getting ready for a game to accommodate the potential occurrence. Of course, an aspect of that preparation came in understanding the context of the record and the recent milestones James had eclipsed to put himself in this advantageous scenario.
One of the video boards inside Crypto.com Arena displayed a graphic of the total points for Abdul-Jabbar and James and kept an active count of the difference. Throughout the night, the arena’s game presentation team also displayed facts and information about James that the broadcasters were able to implement in their commentary.
On ESPN Radio, Marc Kestecher broadcast the game to a national audience, meaning that he needed to familiarize listeners with both teams. As history approached, he thought about his vast experience behind the mic and simply allowed his instincts to take over.
“You are clearly in touch with where he is [and] how many points he needs,” Kestecher said of James, “and then you just call the game because if you get too caught up in the moment, you might lose it and you only get one chance at these…. You really want it to be organic in the first time you do it.”
In the preceding days, Kestecher tried not to completely script the milestone; however, he did not arrive indolent without a plan in place on how to best call it. Although he did not pen the call verbatim beforehand, he was fully cognizant of what he wanted his call to encapsulate.
“When I listen back to what we did, I could see the exuberance of the moment and maybe it’s because I almost wasn’t ready for it even though I had planned it for days,” Kestecher siad. “There were loose ideas of what I wanted to do, and then you execute it.”
Conversely, John Ireland had, to a degree, thought about scripting his call, but not in a paradigmatic manner most broadcasters try to avoid. In the days leading up to the game, Ireland was listening to a playlist featuring songs by the late Prince and suddenly came across “Partyman” from his 1989 “Batman” album.
Suddenly, he remembered that LeBron James is not only a fan of Prince but also dressed like Batman at several Halloween parties over the years. Prince’s inspiration for the song was derived from actor Jack Nicholson who happens to be an avid fan of the Lakers and who portrayed the Joker in the movie.
Additionally, the song was released in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar’s final year in the NBA during which he scored his 38,387th point, which had represented the scoring record for the previous 38 years, 10 months, and two days (14,187 days). The opening lyrics in the first verse are: “All hail the new king in town. Young and old, gather ‘round,” aligning with James’ longtime moniker of “King.” It gave Ireland an idea for his call of the illustrious moment.
“That was rattling around in my head and I thought, ‘If it’s not a free throw or a dunk – [if] it’s a jumper in the middle of the game – that’d be a fun thing to work in,’” Ireland said. “Sure enough, he hits a fall-away jumper, the game stops and what came out of my mouth was: ‘All hail the new king in town. Young and old, gather ‘round.’”
Ireland also wanted to provide a call that Chris Morales and Mario Ruiz would be able to utilize at ESPN LA 710, the same station on which he co-hosts the Mason and Ireland show weekday afternoons. Once the Lakers game ended, the pieces of radio production featuring his call of the moment were airing less than 15 minutes later – one longform piece promoting 38,388 consecutive seconds (approximately 10.6 hours) of commercial-free sports talk broadcasts the next day (Morales); and a shorter station imaging piece (Ruiz).
“These guys are like audio wizards,” Ireland said. “Give them something to work with – anything – [and] they’ll turn it into these really cool promos and imaging, and they’ve been doing it for 10 years. I’m always kind of thinking in the back of my head, ‘What can I give to Chris and Mario that they can use after the moment’s over to promote it?’ and all that.”
During James’ record-breaking game Tuesday night, Kestecher was contending with the challenge of not only embracing the protracted crescendo towards the apogee but broadcasting the Oklahoma City Thunder for the first time all season.
The Lakers’ local radio broadcast also dealt with the same situation, as the teams had not previously met this season. Add on the fact that the sophomoric Thunder roster is the youngest on average in the NBA, and the broadcasters endured concentrated preparation to effectuate a satiable sound.
“If I normally study two hours for a team [that] I haven’t seen yet, I probably did three for this one,” Ireland disclosed. “I would equate it to getting ready for a midterm or a final where you’re allowed to use notes for an open-note test. I prepare a lot of notes; I have a shot sheet for each team that has every player and a bunch of facts about them on it.”
Radio is oft-described as a medium conducive to play-by-play announcing more so than analysis, simply because of the sheer amount of information that needs to be communicated to the listener. Especially in the NBA, where the shot clock is of a 24-second duration, it is complicated to find convenient moments wherein an analyst can proffer their takeaway.
Yet on Tuesday night, Ireland knew that Mychal Thompson, his analyst and a former teammate of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s on the Lakers, would be able to offer an unparalleled frame of reference about what it was like to be around a player who had made history.
“My absolute favorite part of the job is getting to do the games with him,” Ireland said of Thompson. “He is one of a kind… [and] says whatever pops into his head. I never have to implement him into the game [because] he just jumps in, and he’s great at it…. I think he’s the best color guy in the league.”
The growth of the game of basketball has led the sport to consistently dominate a sector of the sports conversation year-round, regardless if there are games to be played, significant transactions or rumors abound. Usually for any media professional following the league, remaining cognizant of the quotidian news and ostensibly perdurable storylines is preponderant in contextualizing on-court play and its innate entropy.
“Most people have now found out the information that is swirling all around the globe,” Kestecher said of consumers tuning into the broadcast, “and now you want to take the highlights of all that and put it in perspective. I think that’s our little cog in the wheel is we’re delivering what’s happening in real-time for a game, and we’re also putting into perspective all the news and information of the day [and] of the week. Sometimes there’s even breaking news while it happens, so you have to have a quick opinion on it.”
“Your job, if you have a platform and you’re a broadcaster, is to sell what you see because the game sells itself,” Ireland added. “It’s great – the reason it’s my favorite sport is [because] there’s a poetry to it. It’s like listening to jazz music; you never know which way it’s going to go.”
Derek Futterman is an associate editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
