Heat Announcer Reflects

It has been a tough time for Miami Heat announcer David Halberstam, fined $2,500 by the NBA for making racially insensitive comments during Miami’s March 19 game against the Golden State Warriors. “Other than the week my father died, it’s been the roughest week personally.”

Halberstam’s problems arose when he said during the Warrior game that slaves on Thomas Jefferson’s farm “would have made good basketball players.”

“What I really meant to say was that if slaves had had the opportunities that they were denied, they would have been good lawyers, doctors, and whatever else,” Halberstam said. “Basketball just came to mind.”

As soon as he made the remarks, Halberstam saw his statistician shake her head. He realized how what he had said would be interpreted.

“That night, I think I slept about an hour,” Halberstam said. “It was punishing, painful and harrowing.”

Halberstam said he’s not a racist. He points out that his sister-in-law and her children are black, and during the first 11 years of his career he broadcast games for New York Division III schools, including Medgar Evers University, a predominantly black college.

“Often, I was the only white person in the building, and I felt completely comfortable,” Halberstam said.

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The Cleveland Cavaliers, fighting for the last playoff berth in the Eastern Conference, will be without their starting backcourt for at least one game. All-star point guard Terrell Brandon re-injured his bruised tailbone and sat out the second half of Friday’s loss to the Heat and will not play tonight at Dallas. Shooting guard Bobby Phills has a strained left groin and probably will sit out the next four games.