He Went Beyond a Call to Duty

In everyone’s life, there are moments that seem insignificant at the time but turn out to be turning points.

Tom Tolbert had one of those in 1993. It led to his becoming a member of the NBA’s top network announcing team.

Tolbert will be working alongside Brad Nessler and Bill Walton when ABC televises Sunday’s Laker game against Philadelphia. And those three will be calling the NBA Finals.

In 1993, Tolbert was a bench warmer for the Clippers, which tells you something about the status of his NBA career. An avid sports fan, he was listening to Jim Rome’s radio show one day and decided to call in.

“I don’t even remember what the topic was,” Tolbert said this week. “Something about college football, I think.”

Rome’s screener answered the phone and Tolbert identified himself. The screener, as instructed to do whenever someone of note called in, began asking Tolbert basic questions to make sure he was who he said he was.

After about the fifth question, Tolbert said, “Why would anyone want to impersonate me?”

It was a legitimate question. Tolbert was put right through. Rome and his listeners immediately discovered that Tolbert was glib, smart and funny.

At the time, the Clipper front office was upset with Rome and had banned players from going on his show. So Rome asked Tolbert if he was worried about getting in trouble.

“What are they going to do, give me negative minutes?” Tolbert said.

After that first stint, Tolbert became a regular contributor to Rome’s show.

When Tolbert’s NBA career ended in 1995, he took a year off. Then, as he and his wife Lorrie began to start a family that now includes three children and a bulldog named Max, it was time to worry about the rest of his life.

Tolbert was the co-Southern Section 2-A player of the year at Lakewood Artesia High in 1983. He then spent two seasons at UC Irvine, but barely played.

“The coach, Bill Mulligan, and I didn’t see eye to eye,” Tolbert said. “I guess the problem was he is 5-7 and I’m 6-7.”

After one season at Cerritos, where he was the co-state junior college player of the year, Tolbert went on to Arizona, where he was the second-leading scorer behind Sean Elliott on a team that also featured Steve Kerr and Anthony Cook. In Tolbert’s senior season, Arizona was ranked first in the nation all season until losing to Oklahoma in the Final Four.

“I was a sociology major at Arizona,” Tolbert said. “I have no clue what that prepares you to do.”

His guest appearances on Rome’s show got him thinking about broadcasting. He landed a job as a sports talk-show host at San Francisco’s KNBR, a position he still holds. He also landed some local TV work in the Bay Area, and that led to a lower-level commentating job at NBC at the start of last season.

Tolbert was moved into the studio after the Jayson Williams mess, and that led to a job as studio analyst and game commentator for ESPN at the start of this season. ABC executives, realizing Walton needed a Steve Jones or somebody to keep him on course, asked Tolbert a month ago to join Nessler and Walton.

Shooting the Messenger

When someone gets into a tough spot, as Jim Harrick finds himself, too often that person goes on the attack and shoots the messenger rather than simply trying to clear his name.

Harrick, the former UCLA coach now at Georgia, has been accused by former player Tony Cole of academic fraud and making improper payments. Harrick has chosen to attack.

In an interview with CBS’ Greg Gumbel last weekend, Harrick described Cole as “a bitter young man” and “very revengeful.” And Tuesday, during a guest appearance with the Sporting News radio network’s Tim Brando, Harrick’s target was ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap, who broke the story.

“I was disappointed the way it came out on television because they had this thing since October,” Harrick said. “They sensationalized it.”

Then, copying a ploy Bob Knight once used against Schaap, Harrick said, “I don’t know if Jeremy is trying to make a name for himself, or what he is trying to do, but I know his dad [the late Dick Schaap] would never have done anything like that.”

Harrick added that it was “unprofessional and it’s sleazebag.”

Marathon Recap

It was obvious Channel 4 had communications problems in covering Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon. The on-course reporters couldn’t hear co-anchors Fred Roggin and Toni Reavis.

While Alberto Salazar often just said he couldn’t hear, wheelchair race commentator Bob Molinatti, a two-time L.A. Marathon winner, decided to simply start talking whenever he saw wheelchairs on his hand-held television. Under the circumstances, Molinatti did a fine job.

Meanwhile, Channel 52’s Spanish-language coverage drew rave reviews from Latino viewers, particularly because of its focus on Latino runners. Sports director Jorge Victoria said that 15 of the 18 prepackaged profiles on Latino runners made it on the air and that his station stayed on the air an extra half-hour.

Channel 36, a local cable channel, has been reshowing the marathon all week. The final showing will be Saturday at 8 a.m. Channel 36 took out the commercials, reducing a four-hour telecast to about three hours.

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Short Waves

Following Sunday’s Laker game on Channel 7 will be a another edition of “Sunday Sports Zone,” with Rob Fukuzaki and Michael Cooper from the ESPN Zone in Anaheim. After the show, Walton will make a non-televised appearance at the restaurant and prizes will be given away.... The last two episodes of “Bill Walton’s Long Strange Adventure” will be on ESPN at 5 and 5:30 p.m. Sunday.

The Avengers’ game Sunday at New York will be televised by NBC, but not on the West Coast. The game starts at 9 a.m. PST, and NBC wants to put on a game later in the day here. So Los Angeles instead gets San Jose at Chicago at 3 p.m., after the Doral golf.... NBC has five consecutive weekends of PGA Tour events, as the tour makes its swing through Florida.

Fox Sports Net will televise the first two rounds of next week’s Pacific 10 basketball tournament at Staples Center, with Bill Macdonald as the host. The announcing teams will be Barry Tompkins and Dan Belluomini, and Steve Physioc and Marques Johnson. Jim Watson will serve as the sideline reporter for all games.... CBS will televise the championship game and all games will be broadcast on XTRA (690 and 1150).

Beginning Monday, ESPN and ESPN2 will have more than 20 hours of coverage from the Pacific Life Open tennis tournament at Indian Wells. The men’s final will be shown on ABC March 16 and the women’s final will be on ESPN2 later the same day.... Tom Kelly, the late Jimmy Lennon and his son, Jimmy Lennon Jr., will be among those inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame Saturday at noon at the Spaghetti Factory in Hollywood.

In Closing

Kareem Adbul-Jabbar will be a CBS commentator during the NCAA tournament, working with Dick Enberg and Matt Guokas. When that team worked a recent North Carolina State-Duke game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Guokas sort of dominated and Abdul-Jabbar seemed timid. But he did show a sense of humor.

When Enberg made a crack about overview from the cramped television booth high above the court, Abdul-Jabbar said, “It may have a great overview, but it was designed for the seven dwarfs.”