By way of Awful Announcing comes this charming clip the first quarter of Thursday’s Miami Heat vs Atlanta Hawks game wherein Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller and Sir Charles Five Buck Box It Rocks It Rocks Barkley discussing Weight Watchers, Dwight Howard and how sad the Hawks are while accidentally mic’d and on-air.
I think we can all agree that sports play-by-play would be at least 100 times better if announcers could say what needs to be said, such as:
Barkley: “Man I can’t stand to watch this Atlanta Hawks team play.”
Harlan: “This game is terrible.”
Barkley: “It is.”
Harlan: “Look at this game, 31 percent, God almighty.”
…and could start low-fat beef with Sara Rue over the ethical implications of getting paid thousands of dollars to lose two pounds a week:
“I thought this was the greatest scam going, getting paid to watch sports… this Weight Watchers thing is a bigger scam.”
That’s a fun sentence to take out of context. Barkley is being affable and saying, “hey, this is so easy I’m getting paid to do basically nothing”, but it can just as easily be blockquoted to mean “these jerks at Weight Watchers are stealing your money, just have some self control, your digestive system is not FourSquare why do you need points”. Yeah, I can only make this so controversial, but the clip is fun, and if announcing was more like this I’d listen to everything they had to say and not just tune out until the NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE-type stuff started.
I think the true highlight of the clip is Barkley’s “I DON’T GIVE A F**K WHAT DWIGHT HOWARD WANTS” face in response to Reggie.
(p.s. Sorry Sara Rue, I’m glad your jeans fit now but you looked better before.)
