"ABC waited thirty years for THIS?"

There was a huge shakeup in the sports broadcasting world last year, as the NBA left NBC for apparent greener pastures with the Disney empire of ABC and ESPN. In keeping with tradition, ABC's first broadcast was Christmas day, with a double-header rematch of last year's Conference championships. On the one hand, there's some solace in the fact that John Tesh won't see any more royalties for that little intro theme that NBC would play in every bumper, but on the other, I think maybe they might want to reinvestigate their on-air talent.

Maybe it's the fact that the game was a blowout from the start, but I've heard paint dry with more vigor and enthusiasm than Brent Mussburger and Sean Elliot showed during the Nets-Celtics game. Yes, it was a cakewalk for Jason Kidd and company, but for their sake, I hope those guys were just bored. Mussburger said as much when he made a point of NOT saying the quote in the entry title. The team called a Friday matchup between those same Nets and the Milwaukee Bucks, but I was busy saving Christmas at that point, so I didn't get a good listen. Then again, that game was a New Jersey blowout as well.

On the other side of the XMas double-feature were the Lakers and the Kings, and with them, the biggest blowhard in all of professional sports broadcasting, Bill Walton. There are certainly some announcers that find employment because people "love to hate them," but Walton is just a moron. He makes it actively difficult to watch a game with asinine pronouncements like "Robert Horry is one of the greatest NBA defenders of all-time." I mean, come on, Robert-frickin-Horry? Walton's L.A. cheerleading has reached the point where it's doing a great disservice to the presentation of the game itself, and ABC dropped the ball big-time by deferring to his "star" status on the new network. NBC had the wherewithal to pair the overactive blowhard with guys like Marv Albert and Snapper Jones, who would routinely call Walton's bluffs to hilarious effect. As it stands, no one took him to task after a 7-point Laker lead he called insurmountable evaporated into a Sacramento victory. ABC had better hope that their NBA programming win doesn't disappear as well.