While consumption for the NBA Finals was averaging below 10 million viewers on linear television through its first five games, the action ended up culminating in a pivotal Game 7 wherein the Oklahoma City Thunder secured its first NBA championship in franchise history. Although the NBA Finals have been airing on ABC since 2003, there was marked criticism surrounding the ESPN coverage of the proceedings that continued to be perpetuated on Monday. Joe Rose, morning host at WQAM in Miami, Fla., acknowledged that he has had a chance to watch ESPN a lot recently and spoke about his perception of an abundance of coverage featuring Stephen A. Smith.
Smith, who is the featured commentator and executive producer of First Take, has also been a member of the NBA Countdown team for the last several seasons. ESPN recently signed Smith to a multiyear contract extension under which he will continue appearing on the morning studio debate show and across other ESPN programming. On top of that, Smith is also joining SiriusXM Mad Dog Sports Radio where he will host a midday show ahead of Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo in afternoon drive.
“It’s an overdose of one guy,” Rose said of Smith. “Listen, he made a name on his show with the debating on all things sports, and I know he’s now dabbling in a lot of different things, but I see recently some people have just said, ‘Enough, man. Enough of Stephen A. every time you turn around, Stephen A.’s in your face. He’s on this show, he’s on that. Now he wants to have a bigger role on the NFL.’ He has all the NFL guys on his show, and I’m like, ‘Don’t. Please, please keep Stephen A. off the NFL stuff. Let him do his debating show in the morning.’”
Rose expounded on his point by addressing ESPN as a whole and called for the network to hire everyone from TNT Sports for its NBA coverage. The National Basketball Association is set to commence new 11-year media rights deals with The Walt Disney Company (ESPN/ABC), Comcast Corporation (NBC/Peacock) and Amazon (Prime Video) that will grant the league coverage spanning broadcast, cable and streaming television platforms. Although TNT Sports will continue producing Inside the NBA to be licensed to ESPN and hold a global content license, it will no longer be presenting live game broadcasts in the United States.
“Hire all those guys – don’t let any of them go to NBC – and just take the whole TNT team,” Rose said. “The whole thing, the whole thing, and some of those guys on ESPN I like – I like – but some of those shows, why those guys are talking about how everybody’s playing and the big guys need to show up and all the other things that you’re like, ‘Oof, show’s rough, man.’”
Danny “Hollywood” Rabinowitz, the executive producer of The Joe Rose Show, conveyed that he had been thinking this way about ESPN NBA coverage for a while, although he complimented the network surrounding the National Football League. Rose admitted that Smith is very good at what he does, but Rabinowitz feels that he has reached the point of essentially being a cartoon character who is all over the place.
“He’s sports and politics and there’s just so much crap, and they keep giving him more and more stuff,” Rabinowitz said. “They fired that girl off of XM, they’re giving him the show. Guy’s just got a million platforms to spew his nonsense. They brought his daughter on on Game 6 because I think they’re trying to make him seem more human or more likable or whatever.”
Rabinowitz proceeded to explain how the ESPN NBA pregame show is a difficult viewing endeavor, affirming that Kendrick Perkins is “terrible” on the airwaves and that Bob Myers cannot get a word in. On top of that, he called out game broadcast analysts Doris Burke and Richard Jefferson as people who “make your ears bleed” and conjectured that there has to be someone better to call the NBA Finals.
“Everyone who works at TNT is great to be honest,” Rabinowitz said. “They have great broadcasts over there, but to put Doris Burke and Richard Jefferson, it’s just not fair to the viewer at this point. It makes it a rough experience – it really, truly does.”
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