Teach the game more

Out of delicadeza (propriety), I do not comment in public about fellow Filipino sportscasters. Being an older but not necessarily more knowledgeable sports chronicler, I give advice in private and only to those who ask.

This is because we all try to learn how to be better at a task that is enviable but pressure-packed, especially in a social media era. In so doing, we emulate but also assess foreign coverage teams as we try to improve how to call games, perform on the tube and dish out analyses and information.

Of late, I have liked the NBA’s ABC announcing team of Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson. The recent playoffs were a reunion tour for them, as Jackson had to coach the Golden State Warriors (but was later not renewed).

Together with their producers, the three have devised a manner in which they don’t step on each other’s lines. Strategy is Van Gundy’s domain being the senior coach while player skills is Jackson’s area.

The trio also opens a string of zesty zaps at each other, making them not only informative but also very entertaining. You get the feeling that three friends are on a couch or bar somewhere, sharing basketball insights and playful barbs. Jackson was a player when Van Gundy coached at New York and both have now grown out of those roles to be colleagues. Jackson is fast on the draw and Van Gundy is the unsatisfied complainer about almost everything.

Van Gundy cringes over references to his failed campaigns as a coach but there seems to be an unwritten rule not to mention Michael Jordan stories when he is around.  Van Gundy and the superstar had run-ins in the past where Jordan did not take lightly the coach’s snipes about his being an alleged “con artist” who smiles while slaying his opponents.

And I have my beef about international multisport coverages where unknowns take over the mics and attempt to do both play-by-play and analysis. This is the case in the current Fifa World Cup where presumably a battery of British commentators is at the helm.