Exactly a week ago in this space we gave tribute to a man clearly past his prime, CNN talk-show host Larry King, who will be hanging up his suspenders from the cable news network in the fall at the age of 76.
We chose to give love to the Brooklyn native not for what he has become – a bloated caricature of a serious broadcaster – but more in a nostalgic hue, it was more about the joys that he brought to radio listeners for years with his overnight program on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, and even in his glory days with Ted Turner's creation.
But Larry King does need to depart. While television credits speculate about a successor (Katie Couric, Piers Morgan), we now move over to the sports broadcasting world, where the nation's eyes were focused last night on what is known as the four letter network, and their one hour special that would broadcast live to the world where NBA star LeBron James would be declaring his future in the league.
With the announcement days ago that Team James had sought and bought time for the one hour special, popular opinion began to sway heavily against the Cleveland Cavalier star, though in fact it has been the sports media, particularly in the dominant New York City market, who has seized on July of 2010 as the nirvana moment, when a group of professional basketball stars, led by King James, would be free agents, and teams had begun over the past couple of years to start saving "cap space" to make salary room for such stars.
No team – and no media market – has been covered more insufferably in that time than the extremely mediocre New York Knicks, who were considered the gold standard of the game about 40 years ago, though they did have some memorable teams back in the early 1990's led by coach Pat Riley.
But back to last night. ESPN had said that James would make "The Decision" by 9:15 p.m. In fact, it didn't happen until 9:25, and we had to hear some inane questions by former ESPN guy Jim Gray, who apparently finessed his way into doing the interview while chatting courtside before the NBA Finals with uber superagent Ari Emanuel and James adviser Maverick Carter.
The foreplay last night was absurd. Okay, a couple of questions to prepare everybody for The Question. But no, Gray kept on asking about every little thing, including if LBJ "Are you still a nail-biter?"
As NY Times Sports TV columnist Richard Sandomir writes today:
Was this in the script? If so, shame on ESPN. If Gray winged it, shame on him.
James’s choice, Miami, confirmed Broussard’s reporting (as it did the June 28 report by the former ESPN reporter/analyst Stephen A. Smith). But Gray’s deliberate, four-corner teasing cynically dragged out a now-annoying drama.
The first question, “Which team are you going to play for?” could have been followed by any or all the other questions that sought answers about the process that led James to his decision. But Gray could not stop the inane foreplay and turned a simple Q&A into a tortured interview.
Who cared, before hearing where James was going to play, how many people knew his decision, when he made it, whose advice he listened to, or if enjoyed the recruitment process that he orchestrated? Only one thing mattered: his decision.
But ESPN was ultimately at fault.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2010.