Sportscasters as Solid Assist Men

I learned something in watching Israeli TV coverage of the European basketball championships while in Jerusalem recently. I learned that you don’t necessarily need sportscasters on a sports telecast.

The Israelis had them, but we didn’t talk the same language.

Unable to understand the Hebrew-speaking announcers doing the games, however, I still could follow the action merely from the pictures. It was simple: The ball either went in the hoop or it didn’t.

All right, some of the game’s nuances--like the score--were only sporadically evident (Israelis are not big on graphics). But otherwise I fared well, and there was a certain purity in viewing a sports event minus talk.

A novel idea--a sports telecast without announcers or verbal clutter.

Actually, it’s been tried on American TV as an experiment, with apparently inconclusive results. Certainly no one has publicly advocated making the practice permanent.

The no-announcer concept isn’t so outrageous when you consider that most people seem to do fine while attending games in person without having someone along to interpret what they’re watching. When it comes to sports on TV, however, Americans seem to require authority figures, just as they require Alistair Cooke to explain “Masterpiece Theatre.”

And it is hard to imagine CBS coverage of the continuing National Basketball Assn. Finals without the presence of Dick Stockton and Billy Cunningham, who have emerged as one of TV’s preeminent sports announcing teams. They’re terrific.

Judging sports announcers means navigating a subjective mine field that can blow up in your face. Consensus is impossible. When I mentioned to someone recently how much I enjoyed Stockton and Cunningham, the look I got back was one of shock. “They’re too bland,” I was told.

If this is blandness, let’s have more.

CBS has the right announcing team in place for the four-game-old Los Angeles Lakers-Detroit Pistons clash.

Brent Musburger belongs where he is--in the studio, puffed up and pontificating (speaking of clutter). And Tom Heinsohn, with whom Musburger teamed for the preceding Lakers-Dallas Mavericks series, belongs where he is--at home watching the finals on TV.

The word solid was invented for Stockton. He is steady, knowledgeable and unselfish. If only NBA players were as consistent. If only every point guard were as good at dishing it off to a teammate.

Heinsohn and Cunningham are both former NBA stars and coaches. Despite improving greatly this season, however, Heinsohn still cannot match the analytical and raw verbal skills of Cunningham, who says what he thinks and says it with candor, precision and clarity, reading between the dribbles as some people read between the lines. Cunningham is no one-dimensional observer merely stating the obvious. He brings peripheral sight to his job as commentator, seeing the entire court the way Magic Johnson does in running the fast break.

Cunningham’s panoramic vision was exemplified by a sequence late in Sunday’s game when Piston Isaiah Thomas stole the ball from Michael Cooper of the Lakers. In rat-a-tat fashion, Cunningham drew from the replay not only the obvious--that Thomas had made the steal and was immediately surrounded by Lakers--but also that the other Pistons were standing around down the floor and not helping him, and that he traveled or took steps with the ball while trying to wriggle through the trapping defense.

That was a lot to pull from a single play.

Meanwhile, director Sandy Grossman has mostly made the right decisions, including putting in an occasional court-level shot for diversity. And the camerawork--even if it should be almost automatic by now--has been exemplary.

It was a CBS replay that showed that the referees made a possibly crucial mistake in denying the Pistons a sure breakaway jam that would have narrowed the Laker lead to three near the end of Game Two.

Any highlight film of the finals would also have to include Sunday’s half-time show in which flabby Utah Jazz coach/funnyman Frank Layden took umbrage at being named the NBA’s worst-dressed coach by designer/clothes critic Mr. Blackwell.

“Who was that twinkle-toes?” asked a counterattacking Layden, as Musburger tried to contain his laughter. “How would you like to be fitted for a pair of Bermuda shorts by that guy?”

Maybe basketball telecasts with talk aren’t so bad after all.