Accidents happen.
In new Knicks radio and TV man Spero Dedes, the local march of screaming shills and game-wreckers has been interrupted.
Friday, for a second straight week because young old pro Mike Breen was calling a national telecast, Dedes worked MSG’s Knicks telecast with Walt Frazier and Bernard King.
Why a three-man call? I don’t know, but Dedes made it work, and work well. There was no stepping on one another, plenty of good basketball chit-chat, a few laughs, and Dedes kept a close eye on the game.
Above all, Dedes, for a second straight week, conducted an intelligent basketball telecast for intelligent basketball fans. What more can you ask — other than that Jimmy Dolan doesn’t find out?
Dedes, a member of the sports TV and radio Fordham Instructional Team in a league once dominated by Syracuse, also demonstrates the significant knowledge that distinguishes radio from TV. On TV, he allows much of the self-evident action to speak for itself. Imagine that.
And, though Dedes, Frazier and King have fallen short of ripping the Knicks the last two Fridays — a 14-point home loss to the Bucks, then a 10-point loss at Miami — they provide enough nose-holding to have this message passed along to Knicks fans who are Time-Warner cable subscribers: You ain’t missing much.
* King at a courtside microphone brings back memories. Long before John Sterling’s forced, self-promotional nonsense destroyed Yankees radio, Sterling was doing the same to Nets radio broadcasts that featured King.
In the Nets’ late 1970s Piscataway days, Sterling, as he does now to Yankees, tried to foist lame nicknames on Nets players. But none was more lame or forced than his labeling of King as “Bernard, B.B., Sky King!” Yep, he took all the King connections, short of Martin Luther King, that he could cleverly connect, and repeatedly screamed it through our radios.
Of course, no one bit. Not one player, coach, writer or fan called Bernard King “B.B.” or “Sky” or “Bernard, B.B., Sky King” — unless they were mocking Sterling. But Sterling persisted.
On the night King returned from a drug and alcohol suspension, Sterling, as King was introduced as a member of the starting lineup, stood and repeatedly gestured to the crowd, trying to encourage a standing ovation.
The Nets were playing the Rockets that night. During the national anthem, moments after Sterling’s act ended, Houston coach Tom Nissalke left his bench, stomped over to Sterling and angrily told him he was a disgrace.
Just give it to us straight, for goodness’ sake
It’s not just that goofy, faux-hip expressions have replaced practical ones — fumble is now “putting it on the ground,” pass rush has become “defensive penetration” — they’re often misapplied.
Saturday on ESPNU’s West Virginia-Syracuse game, what used to be called a breakaway led play-by-player Beth Mowins to instead say: “The Orange, with numbers.”
Yeah, they had numbers: One. A long pass allowed Syracuse to score on a one-on-none.
And too many college basketball telecast directors are still stuck in remote-control formula shoots.
It doesn’t matter if a team is pressing in the back court, thus any of dozens of things that can happen in the next two or three seconds might be lost to viewers, after a basket, the director already has decided to cut to a close-up of the shooter, the bench, the crowd, or all three.
But why not first look at what’s going on in the game? It’s as senseless as when a football team starts to go to a no-huddle offense yet the truck still calls for crowd shots, sideline shots, replays. Game after game, these basketball cutaways are predetermined; who cares what’s happening on the court?
* Oren Stevens, for years known to sports fans as a regular contributor to Ch. 5’s Bill Mazer-hosted, Sunday night “Sports Extra,” died over the weekend, from cancer. He was 73.
Stevens, real name Steve Ornstein, after leaving the Army as a lieutenant, did, as they say, lots of things.
Although he had no sight issues, he was the eye-patched model in Hathaway shirt ads. Later a restaurateur, he was an owner of Oren & Aretsky then the red-hot night spot Tatou, where presidential candidate Bill Clinton played saxophone.
Stevens also acted in TV (“Bonanza,” for one) and movies (a significant role in the 1969 hit “Downhill Racer” with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman).
Above all, he was a good guy and great family man.
The service will be tomorrow at Riverside Chapel at 76th and Amsterdam, 11:45 a.m.
(By the way, Bill Mazer, now 92, is still with us.)
Not so Super for fans with tickets
I don’t care how much Super Bowl tickets can be resold for, when the NFL mandates face values of $1,200 and $900 per ticket, commissioner Roger Goodell’s “It’s all about the fans” claim becomes pure sarcasm.
* A very odd thing was witnessed Saturday on ESPN. Highlights from the Friday night’s Jazz-Mavericks game did not include even one slam dunk.
Someone’s gonna pay for that!
* Another week of reporting — here, there and everywhere — that home teams winning college basketball games are “stunning upsets.”
That it’s more difficult to win on the road than at home has been a 100-year reality, yet that’s now ignored in favor of polls that change every week.
* Len Berman, for an 18th straight year, hosts the Thurman Munson Awards Dinner, tomorrow at the Hyatt. Honorees include J
ohn Flaherty, Yogi Berra, Mark Teixeira, R.A. Dickey, Chris Mullin, Dikembe Mutombo and Daniel Murphy.
* Worst paragraph ever: There are mistakes, then there are mistakes. Yesterday, in this space, I wrote that Richie Ashburn and Jack Whitaker were among a number of Philadelphia-based sports voices to have died in the last two years.
Well, Ashburn died in 1997, and Whitaker, 88, is, for crying out loud, alive! As golfer Roberto De Vicenzo once said, “What a stupid I am!”
* Yesterday’s Novak Djokovic–Rafael Nadal Australian Open final lasted so long — nearly six hours — that before it was over on ESPN, it began again on ESPN2 as an “Instant Classic!”
Kidding, just kidding, but it sure seemed that way.