The NBA were coming to London Town with another regular season game. This would see the home team Detroit Pistons taking on the New York Knicks.

SKY Sports would be broadcasting the game live in both 3D and 2D. The 3D commentary team would be Daniel Routledge and Karl Brown and they were looking for someone to handle the 2D commentary with Rob Paternostro. Is this something I would be interested in?

Well the answer is YES!

And so it is that on Thursday the 17th of January I am on the way to London to broadcast on SKY Sports 1, armed with a ton of stats and to be honest I am absolutely terrified.

Elsewhere on mikeshaft.com I have speculated as to whether I could ever commentate an NBA game.

Now I have never been to a regular season NBA game but having seen possibly hundreds of games on television I wondered whether I would be able to stay in control.

In BBL (British Basketball League) Basketball when a great play takes place I like to give it the Oh BABY! treatment.

The problem that I had was that there were so many great plays in NBA games that I figured it would all be too much for me.

Recently I had been broadcasting some BBL games on The New SUNSET Radio on mikeshaft.com and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. In fact during a recent encounter between Manchester Giants and Glasgow Rocks one of the listeners decided that he would start an Oh BABY! counter. He tweeted at the end of the game that the count was 12, and that was a BBL game!

I arrived at my hotel just before 2:00pm on game day and immediately had a nap. I then got up and headed for the O2 Arena. I had worked at the 02 before during one of the GB Men’s campaigns. I loved the venue. It had everything and the sound was amazing. On that occasion I was doing the court-side announcing.

I say announcing because that was a FIBA game and they simply do not allow commentary. Tonight would be an NBA game and I would not be heard inside the venue. I would be on SKY Sports’ flagship channel and I could do all the commentating I wanted.

Among the ton of papers that I had with me were a few cards with lists of things that I definitely wanted to mention. Top of the pile was something that was nothing to do with the Pistons and the Knicks. It was Rob Paternostro’s Leicester Riders win in the BBL Cup Final a few days earlier at the NIA Birmingham. This had been a fantastic British Basketball occasion and I thought it deserved a mention.

My co-commentator at this NBA game was going to be Rob Paternostro and he is one of my favourite people in British Basketball. Further, he is without doubt my favourite colour commentator of recent years. I say recent years because ‘back in the day’ my favourites were Billy Mims and Kevin Cadle.

Colour commentating requires a very special skillset and Rob has those skills in abundance. He is knowledgeable about the Game of basketball and the NBA in particular.

I remember when the USA Basketball teams came to Manchester in the summer of 2012 I had hoped to broadcast the games live and suggested that I wanted Rob as my co-commentator.

Unfortunately, through no fault of my own, I did not get to broadcast the games in the end.

So I arrive at the O2 and the first person I see is Kevin Cadle who arrived at exactly the same time as me. I knew this was a good omen. I was just looking for a face I knew and there it was. We had a quick chat and then Kevin went into make-up and I went to the SKY truck area where a meal had been laid on.

Now I want to take a moment to comment on a problem of mine. I live with diabetes but I do not let it run my life. I know all about the dangers of not looking after it so I am careful to eat the right foods and to eat at regular intervals. Whenever I am booked to work I always tell people that I am diabetic. The problem that I have found is that if I do not have a proper meal I can get disorientated.

There are 2 occasions when this became a problem for me. One was in a BBL televised game at Plymouth when I mixed up Tony Dorsey and Lynard Stewart all the way through the game.

Now these are my two favourite BBL players of recent years and when I looked back at the tape I knew I had to find out what went wrong. Had I forgotten who Dorsey was and who Lynard was?

I don’t think so.

I had to find out why it happened. I narrowed it down to the meal(?) that had been provided by the production company before the game. This was in the days of Setanta.

It came is a small bag and was a white sandwich and chocolate bar a piece of fruit and a small drink. It was the kind of meal that you would give to a 5 year old at a birthday party.

The second episode came on the final day of the Wheelchair Rugby Tournament at the Paralympics in London when the staff restaurant decided that they would start to close up early.

There was very little on offer food-wise and this nearly led to an absolute disaster for me.

Having commentated on the Bronze Medal game I announced that the Gold Medal game, which I was not commentating, would involve China(?). Actually the game was between Canada and Australia. Fortunately I was able to correct myself immediately and as I like to say nobody died.

Thankfully the food laid on by SKY for this NBA game was a of the highest order and would have graced any London Restaurant. I had the Salmon in teriyaki sauce with fries and carrots. It was first class. I was joined by Rob and Daniel and we had a great chat about everything basketball.

We then went in to the arena and I began to prepare for my first ever NBA game.

The floor was full of people as the build-up began. There were dozens of cameras as rehearsals took place. The Anthems were practised and every aspect of the presentation was worked on. As the game got closer and closer the tension began to build.

With about 2 hours to go I got my first major shock.

The awesome SKY Sports News were doing a live link-up with the O2 and they wanted Rob and I to be the guests on the 3 minute piece.

Again I was was terrified but I was ready. It went great and even better for me as I picked the Knicks to win this one while Rod went for the Pistons. (What does he know?)

And so it is game time and the ball goes up. We are off and nobody tells the Pistons that the game has started and suddenly they are down 15. They trail for all of the first half.

Carmelo Anthony has his way with them.

Early in the 3rd they would make a run and cut the deficit to 4 but the Knicks would re-group and pull it out to a comfortable win.

I thoroughly enjoyed the event as a whole even if the game itself didn’t live up to the billing. I was impressed with Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler both of whom I had seen in Manchester during the summer prior to their Olympic Gold Medal win and with JR Smith who was simply stunning for the Knicks.

The Pistons found it hard to compete with the rampant Knicks but Will Bynum did a great job for his coach and big men Monroe and Drummond showed some stuff.

The best thing about the whole event for me was that the Pistons, whose home game this was, brought all of their game night presentation including Dancers, Announcer, Dunkers etc. etc. etc.

One day our game will get to a level like this at venues like this.

As MLK said…I still have a Dream!

 

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