For 17 years, Mike Breen has been the play-by-play voice for the NBA Finals on ABC. As he heads into his 18th Finals this June, people might view him as the lead voice for the NBA, but it is a title that he isn’t exactly comfortable with.
“I hate the term the voice of the NBA. If you look at it, say Boston gets in the NBA Finals, their radio voice, Sean Grande, he is the voice of the NBA for the Celtics fan,” he said on the latest episode of the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast. “Every team has their own voice of the NBA. Then you have all of our terrific play-by-play people at ESPN, all the terrific play-by-play people at TNT. So, there’s a lot of voices for the NBA. I’m never comfortable with that because there are so many great voices in the NBA and that’s who the fans sometimes think is their voice of the NBA. To me, the voice of the NBA will always be Marv Albert.”
Even though Breen mainly works with Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson during the year, he sometimes gets to work with other analysts on ESPN whether it be Hubie Brown, Doris Burke, JJ Redick, or Richard Jefferson. He says he has a specific way of preparing to work with each of them.
“If I do a game with Jeff and Mark, I’ll get more stats, team ranks, player ranks, team stats, recent trends because those guys, it’s the eye test. What they are seeing right in front of them. When I do a game with Hubie, I’ll prepare very few stats because he loves to use the numbers. If I’m using a lot of numbers when I’m doing a game with Hubie, it’s just too many numbers. With Jeff and Mark, I can do more with numbers because you aren’t just throwing numbers at the viewers at home, which can get crazy sometimes.”
In addition to his work for ESPN/ABC, Breen is the voice of the Knicks on the MSG Network. He enjoys getting to be a part of one specific team for the bulk of the year, and has no intention of giving the job up.
“It’s a team I grew up rooting for. Working with Walt Clyde Frazier, to this day, I still can’t believe I get to sit next to this man. There’s still that poster up in my room in the house I grew up with. Now, this guy has become a lifelong friend. It’s too much fun. The crew at Madison Square Garden, they are all family. It’s a special group. It’s hard to give it up.”
