Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports
All the basketball is lopsided, so TNT has to improvise
You know that moment when you weren’t paying attention in class and then the teacher calls on you so you have to try and improvise something on the fly?
I bet you that’s how TNT’s Ernie Johnson felt tonight, trying to throw to blowout after blowout. The Milwaukee Bucks were throttling the Boston Celtics 100-62, and by that point TNT decided that everyone had seen enough of the carnage that they were going to throw to another game.
The only problem: every other game on was a blowout.
TNT moves off the Celtics-Bucks blowout in the 3rd quarter.
“So, this game is out of hand, obviously. 100-62… And Oklahoma City, by the way, is up 36 at the half, so we’re not going there. So, we’ll try the Knicks and the Mavs, and it’s a 47-28 game…” – Ernie Johnson pic.twitter.com/fXJvptd2m8
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 12, 2024
This is a special day for the NBA, where almost every game on was a complete beatdown. I feel for the poor camera crew that works for TNT, attempting to get games to throw to ready but then having to go off of them because the Oklahoma City Thunder were absolutely destroying the Blazers.
Ernie Johnson is a true professional, though. It’s real difficult to throw to different games on the fly, and he was able to get to a game that was entering blowout territory, and not one that was already there.
It didn’t even matter, though. The Mavericks-Knicks game is so much of a blowout TNT went back to Bucks-Celtics. The poor camera crew, man.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s this: appreciate national tv camera crews. Because they showed up and delivered more than three NBA teams on one night.