Damian Lillard pulls up from wayyyyyy downtown …
And Kevin Calabro calls it from even farther away: A studio in Portland.
Jerami Grant fights through a tough screen …
And Lamar Hurd struggles to make out what’s happening on a small monitor.
The cost-cutting Portland Trail Blazers don’t think you’ll notice that their broadcasters won’t be on the road next season. It’s a decision, first brought to light by Dwight Jaynes and Chad Doing on their afternoon drive-time show on KPOJ-AM, that the team says is not final.
Thank God for that.
It should be reversed immediately.
To Blazers fans everywhere, wherever they may be, this is a total kick in The Schonz.
Television broadcasters like Calabro, Hurd, Brooke Olzendam and radio play-by-play man Travis Demers are the connective tissue between the Blazers and their fans.
Did you sit up at night listening to Bill Schonely and Brian Wheeler, marveling at the fact that they were inches from the action, describing with breathless wonder — for you — what exploits Clyde Drexler and Brandon Roy had just performed?
I know I did.
Lickety brindle up the middle and straight to your heart.
The decision by the Blazers comes as many are questioning Jody Allen’s financial commitment to the team. Sure, she’ll spring for the $122 million two-year extension for Lillard, but what about really investing in the team, in the city, in the fanbase?
Ask yourself: Would her brother have pulled a stunt like this? Would Phil Knight?
The same team that paid to bring in ESPN anchor Neil Everett to serve as its studio host is now pinching pennies over hotel rooms and per diem for a small, dedicated team of broadcasters.
It doesn’t add up. Absent the announcers unanimously requesting this move over COVID-19 concerns, then the Blazers have no defense.
That’s at least one thing fans have gotten used to over the last decade.
If margins are truly that tight over at Vulcan LLC, the Blazers could find ways to cut back on the broadcast without gutting it entirely.
But fans have to ask themselves, just how much do the Blazers really care about the viewing experience if they won’t put their employees in the best position to do their jobs?
Even in the digital age, maybe especially, the majority of fans experience the team through the local broadcast.
But the Blazers seem to think they can get by with a watered-down version. In a statement, the team’s president of business, Dewayne Hankins, said the Blazers will be “leaning in” to statistics, data visualization and will “incorporate all the lessons we’ve learned through doing remote broadcasts during COVID-19 over the last two years.”
What everyone has learned over the last two years is that remote broadcasts stink.
Broadcasters fumbled to identify players, had no feel for the scene, and offered little unique insight.
That’s not a knock on Calabro and Hurd — or Jordan Kent, who gamely navigated the 2020 bubble year alongside Hurd.
Broadcasts around the NBA, and across sports, were awkward, but that awkwardness was forgiven as we all could extend a modicum of grace as everyone made the best of pandemic-induced circumstances.
What’s the excuse now?
It’s an impossible ask.
Broadcasters may get paid by the team, but they work for the fans. These are people who board the same planes and buses as players, who share off-night dinners with coaches, gleaning information and reaping the benefits of behind-the-scenes access that fans dream of.
Vin Scully just died and a nation of sports fans wept.
Why?
Surely, not because he could recount Don Drysdale’s xFIP or Maury Wills’ WAR or Mike Piazza’s wRC+.
It’s stories.
It’s always been stories.
The pandemic served a crushing blow to quality sports journalism. But not a fatal one.
And it will stay that way as long as misguided instincts like these don’t prevail.
Without broadcasters on the road, relationships will suffer. Yes, the Blazers will have their broadcasters on site for the 41 home games at Moda Center, but take it from someone whose spent the bulk of his professional life chasing pro basketball teams across the globe.
Home games are not where the magic happens for reporters and broadcasters. They aren’t where trust is built.
It’s exploring the world’s largest Bass Pro Shops inside The Pyramid because that’s what there is to do on a Tuesday in Memphis. It’s practical jokes. It’s joining tables in Boston because what are you doing at this restaurant, too?
It’s being stranded in Minneapolis because the bus froze on New Year’s Eve. It’s a broadcaster swapping ties with a head coach because the coach realized he was wearing the opposing team’s colors.
It’s sharing pictures of your kids because these are some of the only people in the world who would understand what a grind life on the road can be.
These are the moments that make broadcasters part of the team. Part of the family that fans also belong to. Without them, broadcasters like Calabro, Hurd and Demers are just detached narrators locked in a box, straining to summon the excitement that fans on the ground get to actually feel.
Intangible, maybe, but I promise you these moments enrich the fan experience of turning on a game after a hard day at work.
You can’t put a price on them, although Jody Allen is trying.
Maybe the result is some small savings for the Blazers.
It’s an unquantifiable loss for their fans.
-- Bill Oram | boram@oregonian.com | Twitter: @billoram