Female Color Commentary
I really wanted to watch the Nuggets/Rockets game on ESPN Sunday Night Basketball. The Nuggets are a half-game behind Golden State, they’re facing a crippled Rockets team who just lost their starting center and replaced him with 41-year-old Dikembe “Who Wants To Sex” Mutumbo. I’m not a commentary snob. I’m not the guy who hates every commentator on Earth. Fun game: next time someone says “X and Y are the worst commentators in the world” ask them who’s the best team they can name. Almost without fail, they won’t have an answer.
I rarely notice commentary. During the Nuggets/Rockets game, I did. I only did because Doris Burke was on color commentary. I believe that she’s the only female color commentator (other than Suzyn Waldman, who I hate… but I hate her for different reasons… only some of which are her fault). I ignored her for about the first few minutes of the first quarter until the following line:
“The best way for them to prevent transition scoring is to make their jump shots.”
Really? The way to stop a team from scoring in transition is to stop the opportunity to score in transition, thus allowing your team to get back on defense? The worst part: if this woman is a color commentator in men’s sports - she’s the absolute best they have to offer. The absolute best they have to offer STILL offers senseless observations and the same cliches. I was treated to “he’s a lunch-pail type player” and “Iverson’s the type of guy who never wants to leave the court.”
I have no real point or finish to this so I’ll leave you with a quote I heard: “I don’t really want a woman in the booth unless she looks and sounds like John Madden.”
Spot-on post. If you’re ever looking for “Exhibit B” as your next example, try to find Swin Cash on ESPN’s nightly hoops highlight show. She’s eight kinds of awful, offering up observations like “people don’t realize how good LeBron James is” and “…if he drives towards the basket, you have to stop him…”
Her head full of fake hair intrigues me, however. She’s in the WNBA when she’s not stating the obvious on ESPN and I wonder if she plays with that weave. Someone get Stephen A. on the case.