Ahead of a highly anticipated Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night, the Athletic’s sports media columnist Richard Deitsch connected with sports business editor Dan Shanoff to talk about the expectations and pressure — not on the teams, but on the league and its broadcast partner ESPN to deliver a great experience for fans.
Shanoff: It’s a cliche, but it’s also true — the two greatest words in sports are “Game 7.” What kind of pressure are the NBA and ESPN under to deliver a presentation that matches the moment, or is “Game 7” the kind of thing that no league or network can screw up, because it’s so inherently interesting/dramatic?
Deitsch: There was a very famous monologue delivered by Al Michaels prior to the start of ABC’s coverage of the famous Miracle On Ice game:
“What we have at hand, the rarest of sporting events — an event that needs no buildup, no superfluous adjectives.”
(Shanoff sidebar to readers: Take 60 seconds and watch the first 45 seconds of the broadcast, just Michaels’ intro right at the start of this video. It is as close to perfect as it gets in sports TV.)
