ESPN NBA analyst Hubie Brown recently began his 20th season calling games for the network, and Colin Cowherd has nothing but respect for Brown still putting on the headset.
Brown has been calling games with ESPN since 2004, but the 2023-24 season marks Hubie’s 50th involved in the NBA. The Hall of Fame coach turned 90 years old last month.
“Hubie Brown is 90 and still not only lucid, excellent on the air,” Cowherd said Wednesday on The Herd. “90!”
Cowherd is 59 years old, but he told Jason McIntyre he hopes to have the career longevity that Hubie has been afforded.
“I tell people this all the time, you better get used to me,” Cowherd said. “I’m doing this til I’m 88.”
McIntyre asked if he would ever consider doing basketball play-by-play, but Cowherd, who said he had previous experience calling minor league baseball games, didn’t think he was cut out for that type of grind.
“Play-by-play is exhausting and I don’t like travel,” Colin Cowherd said.
Brown told The New York Post this week that at his age, fitness is the key to maintaining the fire and passion he has for his work.
“I know you’re saying, ‘Well, gee, you’re 90,'” he said. “Well, you don’t think you’re 90, because you have a schedule for your company — ESPN/ABC — where they are the highest level of the profession of NBA games, and you are not only performing for viewers in the United States but you also realize there are 215 countries getting the games. So how could you not prepare for the maximum of knowing the two teams that you’re going to do?”
“As I got older, say 75 or so, I stopped staying up to watch the West Coast games that would end at 1 a.m. I stopped that,” Brown added. “I try to go to bed at 11 p.m. and get 7-8 hours of sleep. That has helped me greatly in the last 15 years. I would stay up until 1 — then you cheat yourself of your rest.”
