Something is Missing

Last Friday, ESPN’s the Sports Guy dedicated a column discussing the recent trades in the NBA. In reference to the Pau Gasol for Kwame Brown trade he said that Laker fans “should feel really, REALLY lucky right now.”

Truer words have never been written. I haven’t felt this happy to be a Laker fan since 2003-04 when the Lakers, with the newly signed Gary Payton and Karl Malone, began the season with an 18-3 record.

The Lakers are 9-1 with Pau Gasol. Kobe, when not getting ejected out of games as he did last night, is playing great with his bad pinkie. Bynum’s recovery appears to be going well. Lamar Odom is playing some of the best basketball of his NBA career. The bench is continuing to perform extremely well.

The only thing missing aside from a championship, is Chick Hearn’s voice. It’s been six years since Hearn passed away and listening and watching Laker games hasn’t been the same since. Sure Hearn had started making a lot of mistakes while calling games, like referring to Shaq as Kareem, towards the end of his broadcasting career, but there was still that something about his voice that just screamed “Los Angeles Lakers.”

Since Hearn stopped calling games, there have been three individuals who have tried to fill the shoes of that giant of sports announcing: Paul Sunderland, Joel Meyers, and Spero Dedes. Sunderland called games for the Lakers from 2002 to 2005. I didn’t have much of an opinion of Sunderland. I knew he was in a no win situation since he was Chick’s immediate successor. He was a little bland but I thought he did an admirable job.

Chick Hearn was one of the only announcers who did a simulcast of the game for television and radio. Somehow he managed to do an excellent job of describing the action well enough for the radio listeners to get a good picture of what was going on without boring the television viewers with descriptions of what they were watching. After Sunderland’s first season, the Lakers did away with the simulcast and made Sunderland the television guy and hired Joel Meyers as their radio voice. When Sunderland was let go, Meyers took over the television spot and Spero Dedes was hired to do radio play-by-play.

I didn’t mind Joel Meyers as the Lakers radio voice, since I don’t usually listen to a lot of radio games. However, when he switched over to television I was exposed to him a lot more and quickly grew tired of him. One of the first things that really stood out for me when I started watching him is that he was much more of a homer than I expected, especially when it comes to complaining about the referees. Now I’ll be the first to complain about bad officiating, but as a fan, that’s what I’m supposed to do. I don’t need to hear it from an announcer who I expect to be somewhat impartial. I just don’t get much insight from listening to Meyers. It doesn’t help that he looks like a turtle.

So now I’m hoping history will repeat itself and that Dedes will eventually replace Meyers. I like the way Dedes calls a game. He doesn’t complain about the refs as much as seems a lot more objective, more like Chick used to call games. However, no one is perfect and I do have one bone to pick with Spero. Last week before the Phoenix show I was listening to the pre-game show while I was on the road. Matt “Money” Smith, host of the pre and post-game shows, and Spero were discussing Pau Gasol’s first game as a Laker at Staples Center and the reception that the Laker fans gave him. Then Spero made a reference to the large Spanish population in Los Angeles. I wanted to reach through the radio and smack Spero on the head. Obviously Spero meant Latino not Spanish. But I can’t really hold it against him too much since he is from the East Coast. But now that he's in LA, he needs to learn how to tell the difference between Spanish people from Europe and Latinos from Latin America.

Hopefully he’ll get straightened out soon and won’t make the same mistake again. And hopefully he takes over television duties soon. He won’t be able to truly replace Chick, but I’ll be able to enjoy the Lakers’ recent success a little more.