Even Broadcasters Will Have Double Headers During the NBA Restart
By Liam McKeone
It will be all hands on deck when the NBA restart officially gets underway on July 30. One of the talking points around the bubble environment down in Orlando is that teams are having to make do with less personnel than they're accustomed to because they were only allowed to bring so many essential employees. This is also true for the media teams tasked with broadcasting the games.
TNT announced their broadcast schedule for the NBA's "seeding games" set to take place between July 30 and August 15, when the playoffs begin. With Marv Albert choosing to sit out the restart because of safety concerns, Kevin Harlan and Ian Eagle will be the two main play-by-play callers for TNT, and they'll be pulling double-header duty, too.
TNT has announced its NBA broadcast schedule. One interesting note. On Thursday, Aug. 6, Kevin Harlan will call Heat-Bucks at 4pm ET and Lakers-Rockets at 9pm ET.
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) July 21, 2020
On Sat., Aug. 8, Ian Eagle will call Clippers-Blazers at 1pm ET and Lakers-Pacers at 6pm ET.
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) July 21, 2020
Harlan and Eagle will both have to do whatever it is others in that profession do to keep their voices strong for eightish hours of broadcasting in the same day. I would imagine it's lots of tea with honey.
It'll be wonderful to hear their voices once more, but I imagine it's been a long time since either have done a broadcasting double-header, if they ever had to at all. It takes a unique combination of circumstances for this particular scenario to come into being. 2020 certainly qualifies there. It'll be interesting to note if there's any obvious differences between the first and second broadcasts when it comes to conservation of the voice.