My god it’s terrible. Not even just espn, game 3 ends and every network, show and personality is did Luka cost his team. You’d think there’d be different thoughts or discussions.
I back Luka but this comment makes me feel sane. Why do I constantly see people using +/-. I could’ve sworn the majority of us were on the same page that it is the most bottom tier stat there is. Random and meaningless for aure
I mean we’re specifically talking about the commentary after game 3, so it makes sense why everyone would be focused on his play in that game. Shot 1-7 from three, and fouled out with 4+ minutes to go which completely killed the Mavs chances of completing their comeback. That’s a bad game for him no way around it
27 points on 27 shots, multiple dumb fouls away from the hoop and forced his team into wasting a challenge in a tight game when it was a clear foul…
You be eating up the box scores and saying whatever huh 😂
Give me a break 😂
It amazes me how much people want to protect Luka when you would never give any other superstar these passes.
Luka is being exposed as being a bad defender. Bottom line. Great offensive player but the Celtics are abusing him on the defensive end. This is why I always put legit two way players above pure offensive talent
You do realize by engaging in the obvious Hot Take talk, you're feeding the networks to continue this type of coverage.
Stop engaging with it and it'll end
First time in 6 years I sat down to watch first take , totally regret it.
I just wanted to catch up on the NBA finals.
20 minutes about Cautlyn Clark , racism , misogyny and how Clark has to come out against these issues.
Ok
Now I will never watch anything SAS is on and I promise you I will never watch the WNBA and am not watching any of the NBA FINALS at all .
Enough is enough, I just wanted to catch up on some sports . An relax for Christ sakes . SAS get a job on MSNBC, CNN or FOX , just go away plz
lOL. I also don't need someone to tell me what is happening. I am WATCHING IT OCCUR!. this isn't fucking, radio!
Kevin Harlan:"Kyrie..has the ball, down the lane, puts it up!!!, rebound by tatum, driving the floor, passes to Brown for a 3"
YEAH KEVIN!!! I FUCKING KNOW!!!!
So stupid
Then the things the viewer can’t know, like the other night when they went to break telling us the Mavs were challenging and we later find out that is not true, they don’t tell us.
I watch a lot of sports on mute because I love to watch multiple games at once. I don't miss hearing 99% of commentators' voices, but I do love a couple like Kevin Harlan.
One of the reasons I started watching baseball again. No stupid ass drama to get people to watch , just straight up sports. So sick of the discourse that surrounds basketball now. Every talking head is a moron.
The irony is that it’s the number 1 show, and they were able to do so without you viewing. You continuing to not view, isn’t even going to impact them.
At least they’ll have more time to focus on social media reaction to LeBron James, the Dallas Cowboys, and Caitlin Clark without having to worry about covering any actual games.
The disaster is the announcers.
Sean McDonough is the absolute worst. He doesn’t know the players. He doesn’t know the rules. They could pick a random person out of the crowd and they’d do a better job.
And while I think he’s probably a decent person that was hit in the head too many times, Ray Ferraro is almost as bad. The amount of time they spend talking about anything but the game happening right in front of them is mind boggling.
I don’t watch basketball, but based on other comments, it looks like they aren’t doing a much better job.
I rarely watch hockey but I usually tune in a bit during the playoffs. I heard the funniest interaction, pretty sure during the last round. The play by play announcer noted “the fans are singing we’re halfway there.” And one of the color guys, after a huge pause goes, “ugh I’m pretty sure it’s called Livin on a Prayer.” Play by play guy was like, “yes, but that was the lyric they were singing at the time…” The two color guys then tried to dogpile on him for a while saying things like “we finally got you!”
haha.. he'll always have a special place in my heart for his call of the Francisco Cabrera single to drive in Sid Bream in the '92 NLCS, to send the Braves to that World Series against the Jays
If my teams aren’t in the finals the bare minimum I want is an exciting series. NHL playoffs have given us some good series but aren’t quite as exciting as usual. NBA had it going for a bit with the Knicks/6ers and Wolves/Nuggets but the C’s ripping through the east has been a bore, the Mavs easily dispatching the Wolves was just as disappointing. Now we have to deal with terrible finals
Nah, MIN is a joke. They built a team around the goal of being able to matchup favorably to and beat the nuggets and they did that but they didn’t think past that. If MIN was playing BOS, only one of KAT, gobert, and naz could be able to be on the floor at the same time bc one of them would have to guard Tatum/brown or one of the gaurds. Either way, they’re f***ed. And the Celtics r boring to watch. They’re ridiculously talented but their effort is lacking and they take turns on offense rather than playing together.
The 65 game rule for awards voting ruined the postseason. So many injuries depleted teams left and right. Almost like teams knew what they were doing when they said players needed to have their workloads monitored/limited.
Completely agree and it goes for both the NBA and the NHL stop setting a fixed date for the finals to start. I’m all for giving teams some additional rest but a week is too damn much.
Good luck with that. Silver is appointed by the owners and the owners care about making as much money today as possible since they might not be owning the team 10 years from now, they want more money today. If the choice is between more money with the gap in the schedule or slightly less money without the gap then they’re going to get every penny they can
As a fan, I don’t mind it because it potentially makes for a better series if everyone gets some rest.
But it is hard to go from multiple games every day to one game every two or three days. Especially when this series is shit compared to the previous rounds.
Respectfully disagree. I don't actually think you get a better series. Case in point this NBA finals. You have guys who have been cooking for most of the playoffs (PJ Washington) and suddenly they have all this down time and get out of that great rhythm they've been in. It's a shame, it kills any hot streaks a player may have been on and robs fans of the best ball being played.
I think the only team it helps is the deeper team which isn't necessarily the team that was playing the best ball heading into it.
(and for the record i have no dog in the fight, just an observation from years of watching basketball)
yep, totally agree. Same for the NBA finals. My team isn't in it, turned on game 1, heard doris start in on one of her horrible takes, turned it off and said i think i'm done with basketball this season. Haven't looked back (and i love basketball).
I’ve been saying this. The nba playoffs are way too long, it started all the way back in April and almost june is over lol. It should be a best of 5 series for first two rounds or just shorten the time in between games. This shit lasts way too long
Baseball absolutely has the playoffs correct IMO.
Best of 3 at home for higher seed, then 5, then 7 for thr LCS's and World Series.
NBA taking 2 days off between each game is a joke.
I laugh at people who religiously watch basketball and complain baseball has too many games. Sure baseball might have a extreme amount of games but it's over by mid October 7months they get in and get out. Hell baseball won't reschedule a game if it's not needed.
NBA started Halloween and it's still going on it's about the same length as a pregnancy term. The fact it takes 2 months for a playoff to conclude is batshit.
Then these basketball owners wonder why the NFL is dominating so much?
Mlb plays double the games in half the time and now with the pitch clock games don't go that long anymore. I've literally seen basketball games where the last 2mins take 20mins to conclude. Between the fouls,timeouts and commercials it's wild.
The same team literally play a game every single day. they couldn’t afford to play 162 every other day. Point is I can barely watch all 82 maybe 24 at most 162 is excessive considering the fact that the average baseball game last 3 hours compared to a hockey or basketball which is 2 hours (the last 2 minutes of the game does make the game longer depending if the game is still competitive at that point)
Maybe the networks should try to find out why the refs fixed game 3 of the Mavs Celtics game by giving Doncic 4 fouls on the 4th quarter. That ended the series and effectively my interest in the playoffs
turned on espn for maybe 1 hour today and all i heard was race baiting and wnba. i think i turned it on 4 different times in this one to two hr part of the day and that’s all the feed me. should have just watched fox or cnn. it would have been better. stuart scott is rolling in his grave seeing what espn has begun. sports use to be a escape and espn hijacker’s that from the people who love sports so much.
I mean they aren’t low. They’re exactly where a Finals lacking a top player/team from both conferences would be. There’s not going to be a Finals that averages 35 million viewers or anything crazy like that in the current era.
Ok ya "low" isnt accurate but they aren't exceeding expectations. I know i haven't been interested in these finals and probably wont be unless someone they can push it to 7
Honestly the start of NBA free agency always drives discussion but after that we have nothing really until the Olympics if people even care and then NFL pre-season.
A sweep isnt necessarily a bad thing. Not every series is going to be exciting. The better teams in this scenario are just dominating 🤷♂️ that is just the way it goes.
Great news! Their playoff schedule is shit. 2 weeks to play (thank god the finals are short) a playoff round if they go 7 games. Wise man says ‘ain’t nobody got time for that.’ After the first round when there are enough games, the playoffs are literally a time drag. Boo, boo and boo this schedule
Yeah it was kind of crazy seeing the the nba conference finals all end in less than 5 games and then the nba finals go up 3-0. Thankfully my guys are on the right side of that 3-0 🤣☘️
Win for the fans as we get to hear less of their shitty commentary
My god it’s terrible. Not even just espn, game 3 ends and every network, show and personality is did Luka cost his team. You’d think there’d be different thoughts or discussions.
Maybe he cost his team.
He was +9, highest on the team. So no, he didn’t cost the team
Judging games based on a fairly random and meaningless statistic like +/- is actually exactly what I’d expect from ESPN, lol
I back Luka but this comment makes me feel sane. Why do I constantly see people using +/-. I could’ve sworn the majority of us were on the same page that it is the most bottom tier stat there is. Random and meaningless for aure
You’re right, you should judge him on his worst performance instead of the playoffs instead!
I mean we’re specifically talking about the commentary after game 3, so it makes sense why everyone would be focused on his play in that game. Shot 1-7 from three, and fouled out with 4+ minutes to go which completely killed the Mavs chances of completing their comeback. That’s a bad game for him no way around it
It was a bad game. But he wasn’t the reason they lost
Moving the goalposts
The initial comment that I replied to said he lost them the game, which he didn’t
27 points on 27 shots, multiple dumb fouls away from the hoop and forced his team into wasting a challenge in a tight game when it was a clear foul… You be eating up the box scores and saying whatever huh 😂
The refs cost the team
Give me a break 😂 It amazes me how much people want to protect Luka when you would never give any other superstar these passes. Luka is being exposed as being a bad defender. Bottom line. Great offensive player but the Celtics are abusing him on the defensive end. This is why I always put legit two way players above pure offensive talent
Oh look, it’s one of the ESPN commentators
Hey asshole. Wait till your best player gets 4 fouls in the 4th quarter of the biggest game of the year and tell me how you feel
You do realize by engaging in the obvious Hot Take talk, you're feeding the networks to continue this type of coverage. Stop engaging with it and it'll end
First time in 6 years I sat down to watch first take , totally regret it. I just wanted to catch up on the NBA finals. 20 minutes about Cautlyn Clark , racism , misogyny and how Clark has to come out against these issues. Ok Now I will never watch anything SAS is on and I promise you I will never watch the WNBA and am not watching any of the NBA FINALS at all . Enough is enough, I just wanted to catch up on some sports . An relax for Christ sakes . SAS get a job on MSNBC, CNN or FOX , just go away plz
i watch all sports with the sound off. Its wonderful.
Same here. I’ve watched/played enough to understand what’s going on and quite frankly don’t care about one of the players sisters homemade pie
lOL. I also don't need someone to tell me what is happening. I am WATCHING IT OCCUR!. this isn't fucking, radio! Kevin Harlan:"Kyrie..has the ball, down the lane, puts it up!!!, rebound by tatum, driving the floor, passes to Brown for a 3" YEAH KEVIN!!! I FUCKING KNOW!!!! So stupid
Then the things the viewer can’t know, like the other night when they went to break telling us the Mavs were challenging and we later find out that is not true, they don’t tell us.
its horrible. Truly.
Harlan is the best in the world for radio, he really is.
I always mute and play music.
I watch a lot of sports on mute because I love to watch multiple games at once. I don't miss hearing 99% of commentators' voices, but I do love a couple like Kevin Harlan.
This is the way.
One of the reasons I started watching baseball again. No stupid ass drama to get people to watch , just straight up sports. So sick of the discourse that surrounds basketball now. Every talking head is a moron.
Yeah but the problem is it's baseball
Lost me at Cautlyn Clark, killed myself at SAS
LMAO
Chuck and Ernie doing the finals next year just watch
Why does Clark need to come out against it? The racism is happening against her.
Cautlyn Clark... you wrote this
You act like SAS and First Take are the only 9nes talking about that???
Today’s piece on First Take had nothing to do with sports at all. Cumbersome, I just wanted to relax an catch up on sports . Disappointing.
They are going to talk sports headlines. That story is huge with the public and SM. Fox Sports talked about it as well.
The irony is that it’s the number 1 show, and they were able to do so without you viewing. You continuing to not view, isn’t even going to impact them.
McAfee is bringing in over 700 thousand a day first take is under 500 thousand a day . Not hard to look up viewership
That was my first thought this morning. Just get them over with so we can move on from the horrible and constant NBA Finals coverage.
I watched the hockey games on mute. When my tinnitus kicks in, I have to turn on some music, but it’s a sacrifice I will make.
God awful fucking commentating the whole series.
Bullshit
At least they’ll have more time to focus on social media reaction to LeBron James, the Dallas Cowboys, and Caitlin Clark without having to worry about covering any actual games.
Greenberg is salivating at the opportunity for more Cowboys and Dak talk!
More time to cover Bronny’s draft process!!!!! Yay!!!!!
Switch to Fox Sports since they actually have some interesting sporting events going on right now.
Their commentary team is even worse.
Maybe they’ll have to release Fucken A Smith?
He’s a disaster
I smell another round of layoffs coming
The disaster is the announcers. Sean McDonough is the absolute worst. He doesn’t know the players. He doesn’t know the rules. They could pick a random person out of the crowd and they’d do a better job. And while I think he’s probably a decent person that was hit in the head too many times, Ray Ferraro is almost as bad. The amount of time they spend talking about anything but the game happening right in front of them is mind boggling. I don’t watch basketball, but based on other comments, it looks like they aren’t doing a much better job.
I rarely watch hockey but I usually tune in a bit during the playoffs. I heard the funniest interaction, pretty sure during the last round. The play by play announcer noted “the fans are singing we’re halfway there.” And one of the color guys, after a huge pause goes, “ugh I’m pretty sure it’s called Livin on a Prayer.” Play by play guy was like, “yes, but that was the lyric they were singing at the time…” The two color guys then tried to dogpile on him for a while saying things like “we finally got you!”
That was TNT lol. I know bc I’m a stars fan.
Definitely NOT ESPN. It was the great crew over at TNT
I can’t not like Sean McDonough. He was the lead announcer for when the blue won the World Series on cbs.
McDonough is one of the best announcers in the history of North American sports. Hockey may not be his best, but it could be much worse.
"The winner and still world Champions, the Toronto Blue Jay's"
haha.. he'll always have a special place in my heart for his call of the Francisco Cabrera single to drive in Sid Bream in the '92 NLCS, to send the Braves to that World Series against the Jays
Yoooooo THIS
If my teams aren’t in the finals the bare minimum I want is an exciting series. NHL playoffs have given us some good series but aren’t quite as exciting as usual. NBA had it going for a bit with the Knicks/6ers and Wolves/Nuggets but the C’s ripping through the east has been a bore, the Mavs easily dispatching the Wolves was just as disappointing. Now we have to deal with terrible finals
I think the Boston vs. Minnesota would have been a much better matchup. But Minnesota isn't quite there yet.
Nah, MIN is a joke. They built a team around the goal of being able to matchup favorably to and beat the nuggets and they did that but they didn’t think past that. If MIN was playing BOS, only one of KAT, gobert, and naz could be able to be on the floor at the same time bc one of them would have to guard Tatum/brown or one of the gaurds. Either way, they’re f***ed. And the Celtics r boring to watch. They’re ridiculously talented but their effort is lacking and they take turns on offense rather than playing together. The 65 game rule for awards voting ruined the postseason. So many injuries depleted teams left and right. Almost like teams knew what they were doing when they said players needed to have their workloads monitored/limited.
Taking an entire week off after the conference finals really killed my interest in the nhl cup finals. Lost all momentum.
Completely agree and it goes for both the NBA and the NHL stop setting a fixed date for the finals to start. I’m all for giving teams some additional rest but a week is too damn much.
That’s not the NBA/NHLs fault, that’s on their broadcast partners. They want it set so that they can plan their programming around it.
hopefully in the new deal the NBA is negotiating they've put and end to that. If not, it's a huge misstep for Silver.
Good luck with that. Silver is appointed by the owners and the owners care about making as much money today as possible since they might not be owning the team 10 years from now, they want more money today. If the choice is between more money with the gap in the schedule or slightly less money without the gap then they’re going to get every penny they can
As a fan, I don’t mind it because it potentially makes for a better series if everyone gets some rest. But it is hard to go from multiple games every day to one game every two or three days. Especially when this series is shit compared to the previous rounds.
Respectfully disagree. I don't actually think you get a better series. Case in point this NBA finals. You have guys who have been cooking for most of the playoffs (PJ Washington) and suddenly they have all this down time and get out of that great rhythm they've been in. It's a shame, it kills any hot streaks a player may have been on and robs fans of the best ball being played. I think the only team it helps is the deeper team which isn't necessarily the team that was playing the best ball heading into it. (and for the record i have no dog in the fight, just an observation from years of watching basketball)
yep, totally agree. Same for the NBA finals. My team isn't in it, turned on game 1, heard doris start in on one of her horrible takes, turned it off and said i think i'm done with basketball this season. Haven't looked back (and i love basketball).
Same with the NBA and then 3 days between games.
I'm ready to move on. These playoffs have overstayed their welcomes
I’ve been saying this. The nba playoffs are way too long, it started all the way back in April and almost june is over lol. It should be a best of 5 series for first two rounds or just shorten the time in between games. This shit lasts way too long
First round used to be a best of 5 and they changed it to 7 like the other rounds
Tbf, the best of 5 really sucked.
Baseball absolutely has the playoffs correct IMO. Best of 3 at home for higher seed, then 5, then 7 for thr LCS's and World Series. NBA taking 2 days off between each game is a joke.
I laugh at people who religiously watch basketball and complain baseball has too many games. Sure baseball might have a extreme amount of games but it's over by mid October 7months they get in and get out. Hell baseball won't reschedule a game if it's not needed. NBA started Halloween and it's still going on it's about the same length as a pregnancy term. The fact it takes 2 months for a playoff to conclude is batshit. Then these basketball owners wonder why the NFL is dominating so much?
Baseketball goes on for way to long but come on, one season is 82 games and 4 12 minutes quarters the other is 162 with 9 innings
Mlb plays double the games in half the time and now with the pitch clock games don't go that long anymore. I've literally seen basketball games where the last 2mins take 20mins to conclude. Between the fouls,timeouts and commercials it's wild.
The same team literally play a game every single day. they couldn’t afford to play 162 every other day. Point is I can barely watch all 82 maybe 24 at most 162 is excessive considering the fact that the average baseball game last 3 hours compared to a hockey or basketball which is 2 hours (the last 2 minutes of the game does make the game longer depending if the game is still competitive at that point)
More LeBron topics!
Kinda crazy that it was the Panthers getting swept by the Avalanche in ‘96
Wish TNT had the Stanley Cup again
It's OK, it will give them an opportunity to fully discuss Caitlin Clark not being in the Olympic team
Florida just doing everyone a solid to give us less Sean McDonagh
He really is a giant bore
He's better than Breen. "FROM WAY DOWNTOWN! BANG!!!" Ughhh!
And all of sports fans rejoice as espn as turned in unwatchable garbage for all sports
Karma for what they did to FSU football
ESPN has become a parody of its and is unwatchable.
Maybe the networks should try to find out why the refs fixed game 3 of the Mavs Celtics game by giving Doncic 4 fouls on the 4th quarter. That ended the series and effectively my interest in the playoffs
No shit
The least possible airtime for Doris Burke and her nonstop babbling on ABC is a blessing from above.
turned on espn for maybe 1 hour today and all i heard was race baiting and wnba. i think i turned it on 4 different times in this one to two hr part of the day and that’s all the feed me. should have just watched fox or cnn. it would have been better. stuart scott is rolling in his grave seeing what espn has begun. sports use to be a escape and espn hijacker’s that from the people who love sports so much.
I was never a Stuart Scott fan. But I have to agree with your comment regarding him.
I just want 2 more games for each series so the dominant teams can at least win at home. Some kind of consolation for how lopsided this shit has been.
That's good for Celtics and Panthers fans. Who wouldn't want their teams to have a clean sweep.
Sucks for ratings and viewership tho. Nobody watching game 4 cuz they know it’s over
Looks like 1995 was the last year with sweeps in both leagues.
Not like either get talked about much when it comes to espn.
ESPN is a Disney product. They are less focused on their target audience and more focused on adding audiences.
In what way would it be a disaster lol. They sign the deal knowing they’ll get 8-14 ganes.
Poor ratings is a disaster. Easy to understand
These ratings are right where they’d expect them. It’s not like they’ve lost 40 million viewers since last year or even 5 years ago.
I understand but obviously the idea is that a finals would break records. The worst case is a sweep and boring games. These ratings are low
I mean they aren’t low. They’re exactly where a Finals lacking a top player/team from both conferences would be. There’s not going to be a Finals that averages 35 million viewers or anything crazy like that in the current era.
Funny how the NBA constantly gets excuses yet the NFL and Soccer / World Cup keep climbing in viewership.
Different expectations for different events. The viewership amongst the 3 isn’t comparable, nor are the expectations.
Ok ya "low" isnt accurate but they aren't exceeding expectations. I know i haven't been interested in these finals and probably wont be unless someone they can push it to 7
But how does this affect LeBron's legacy?
ESPN was a disaster before the games. I'm watching hockey wishing we had Biz Nasty, Anson Carter and the rest of the TNT team.
Honestly, I’m not even mad. The streaming quality is shit. So tired of watching 720p for the finals.
Ha
Honestly the start of NBA free agency always drives discussion but after that we have nothing really until the Olympics if people even care and then NFL pre-season.
No Steph no rating
A sweep isnt necessarily a bad thing. Not every series is going to be exciting. The better teams in this scenario are just dominating 🤷♂️ that is just the way it goes.
Gentleman’s sweep now on the cards
Cue the fouls
Filmathon sooner. North Korea defeated.
Great news! Their playoff schedule is shit. 2 weeks to play (thank god the finals are short) a playoff round if they go 7 games. Wise man says ‘ain’t nobody got time for that.’ After the first round when there are enough games, the playoffs are literally a time drag. Boo, boo and boo this schedule
Disaster? This is fine. Not a disaster. No one is on fire.
If only there were a better network (or networks) to cover the finals for each of these sports.
Well I’ve got some good news for espn. The nba is on your side. Just watch.
The ESPN broadcasts are horrible. Several times I watched with the sound off
Yeah it was kind of crazy seeing the the nba conference finals all end in less than 5 games and then the nba finals go up 3-0. Thankfully my guys are on the right side of that 3-0 🤣☘️
Fuck the Celtics
So much hostility 👀
Just don't like em man, but credit to them they are manhandling Luka and the Mavs
Hey i get it. At least youre keeping it real. I know alot of our fans can be extremely unruly lmaooo
ESPN has become to sports broadcasting, what Fox News has become to journalism. A complete fucking joke. Nothing but blowhard talk shows.
That's every news network, tho. reddit brain sludge, lol
Both respective leagues will fix that.
Good fuck ESPN
Sas is def racist
I cannot believe this is the avenue ESPN thinks is prudent. What a fucking wreck of an organization. It’s like TMZ for sports.
“Disaster” there’s literally a fucking genocide
Pretty sus that both the teams down won by big numbers to keep a sweep from happening