Dallas has had a lot to be excited about when it comes to its sports teams recently. Both the Mavericks and the Stars played in their conference championship series and the Mavericks season is still going on as they advanced to the NBA Finals. Game 1 did not go as planned as the Boston Celtics got out to a big lead and ended up with a 107-89 victory. With all of the celebrating and positive talk on the Dallas sports radio airwaves over the last month or so, I wanted to see how the city would handle the blowout loss and so I tuned in and eavesdropped in on K&C Masterpiece on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas.
The show is hosted by Kevin Hageland, Cory Mageors and former Major League pitcher Mike Bacsik along with producer Reginald Adetula. On this particular show, Bacsik had to duck out a little early to get ready for his other duties as an analyst for the Texas Rangers television broadcasts on Bally Sports Southwest. Bacsik played for the Rangers as well as the Indians, Mets and Washington Nationals. He is perhaps best known as the pitcher who surrendered Barry Bonds’ record breaking 756th home run.
I’ve never been a big fan of four hour shows as I think it asks hosts to keep their energy level up for a little too long. This show, however, flew by and none of the talent seemed to ever lose any of the energy they started out the show with.
Obviously, the Mavericks-Celtics game was going to dominate the discussion on this day and the show came out of the box firing. Strong opinions came out from everyone on the show about what they had seen but also, and most importantly to Mavericks fans, how the team could bounce back or if they even thought they could bounce back at all.
I knew this would be a show I could get into when Mageors gave this description about his feelings on the game. “My overaction to this is you know how when you played NBA Jam where a guy would get on fire, and you would literally see the fire on the ball…that’s what it felt like,” he said “It felt like [Boston was] on NBA Jam and all of them were on fire, and [the Mavericks] were just that team that couldn’t figure out how to beat them. We were the computer last night.”
They all agreed the Mavericks had their work cut out for them but continuously pointed out things that would give fans hope about the rest of the series and the obvious point that it was one game and should the Mavericks be able to come back in Game 2, they would’ve accomplished what they wanted, which was to at least win one of the first two games in Boston.
“This is the toughest opponent, by far and probably the most complete team…they have faced so far,” Hageland pointed out while also noting the Mavericks 1-6 record in Game 1’s under Jason Kidd.
Mageors added he believed a reason the team could feel optimistic was, “That wasn’t my best team, they can only get better because they were miserably bad.”
Bacsik is not one to hold back and while he can go long, he backs up a lot of what he says with good facts and statistics. No matter what he is saying, you can tell he is just a passionate Dallas sports fan. He can both give his perspective having been a professional athlete and talk like a fan who just wants the local teams to do well.
Bacsik added some humor as well with a story about jumping in his pool at halftime of the game to get his mind off what he had just seen. He said he then got on his Peloton and all of a sudden, the Mavericks made a little run, so like any good fan, he thought he needed to stay on the Peloton to keep the rally going. Unfortunately for the Mavericks, the comeback was short lived.
In addition to the Mavericks talk, the show had ‘Friday Shoutouts’ going on where listeners and those watching on YouTube or Twitch could send in messages for the hosts to read on the air. There were a lot of birthday wishes, wishes to wives who were about to give birth, someone who had quit smoking and there was even one from someone who said it was their 44th birthday and four years ago they had considered suicide, but ended up with the best four years of their life. Hageland did a good job of mixing in the shoutouts with the rest of the discussion.
Sometimes it is difficult to work in regular segments on days like this where you could really make a case for talking about nothing but the NBA Finals. For the most part, the show handled it well, although there were a few times, such as a sponsored baseball segment that turned into a lot of talk about baseball cards, where a listener tuning in might not have gotten what they wanted on this particular day if that was all they heard.
Getting back to the Mavericks-Celtics talk, the show brought on Mike Procopio, the former Director of Player Development for the Mavericks and later had former Maverick Sam Perkins on. Both guests were really good and added solid opinions about the series. Perkins was on mainly to promote a signing he was doing the next day, but he was great talking about the current Mavericks and also the 1988 team that took the Lakers to 7 games in the Western Conference Finals. I did not have ‘Detlef Schrempf injury discussion’ on my bingo card for that day, but I love sports nostalgia and really liked Perkins talking about playing Len Bias and explaining how good of a player he was, even going as far as saying he was more athletically gifted than Michael Jordan.
The guys on K&C Masterpiece are super comfortable together and you can tell they’ve worked together for a long time. The three hosts have been together since Bacsik joined in February 2020, with Hageland and Mageors being together as a duo for much longer. With four voices, you’d expect there to be more talking over one another, but even when they’re all trying to jump in, they do a really good job of waiting until the other person finishes their point. Adetula seems to know just when to crack open his mic from the other side of the glass, either to add an opinion, drop a fact or give a correction when needed.
They aren’t afraid to wander off-topic for a bit, but never seemed to do it too long. On this episode you had times where conversation would drift off about Mageors struggles with the in-studio television which he couldn’t get to change from the 1984 Super Bowl to the College World Series and there was time spent trying to figure out if Boston Market restaurants still existed in the Dallas area. All of it was done in a way that was entertaining, you felt like you were, literally, eavesdropping in on friends having a conversation. They mentioned their wives and kids and you even learned that Bacsik didn’t know until this very day that doughnut holes are not actually taken from the middle of a doughnut.
I always appreciate when a show is doing a lot of sponsor reads and the sales team at 105.3 The Fan should be commended as there were several sponsored elements to the show, including a read done prior to each segment. The hosts also did a good job with their live endorsement reads.
The show didn’t take any phone calls but read several text messages and social posts throughout to get the take of the fans. They even had a clever ‘Combo Platter’ segment where listeners had to give a Mavericks opinion but also name either their favorite doughnut or doughnut shop for National Doughnut Day.
In the last hour, Mageors did a ‘C-Block’ segment where he talked about his daughter’s meal requests for her birthday weekend and he also talked about the United States upsetting Pakistan in cricket. It was a fun segment and later they did a ‘Masterpiece of the Week’ bit where they played clips of things they had said earlier that week, generally leading to someone on the show getting laughed at. This edition of the segment even included a much-appreciated BSM Top 20 mention.
The best thing you can say about a show is that you left it wanting more. In this case, K&C Masterpiece delivered. It was easy to see why the show does consistently well in the ratings and was the top midday sports show in the demo in BSM’s most recent ratings report.
The opinions were strong, the analysis was smart, and the group was entertaining. There was a clear direction for each segment and most of the teases were a good pitch to keep listening further.
I did wish the old-fashioned sour cream doughnut, the clear champion of all doughnuts, got a little more love, but it’s hard for a show to get everything right.
Dave Greene is the Chief Media Officer for Barrett Media. His background includes over 25 years in media and content creation. A former sports talk host and play-by-play broadcaster, Dave transitioned to station and sales management, co-founded and created a monthly sports publication and led an ownership group as the operating partner. He has managed stations and sales teams for Townsquare Media, Cumulus Media and Audacy. Upon leaving broadcast media he co-founded Podcast Heat, a sports and entertainment podcasting network specializing in pro wrestling nostalgia. To interact, find him on Twitter @mr_podcasting. You can also reach him by email at Dave@BarrettMedia.com.
