The clash vs. the chase
It has been 25 years since O.J. interrupted Game 5, forcing a unique dilemma for NBC
Matt Bullard was sitting on the Rockets’ bench on the evening of June 17, 1994, when he turned toward a television monitor in search of a replay from the Rockets-Knicks game that was unfolding a few feet in front of him at Madison Square Garden.
When he finally found a monitor, however, Bullard was startled to see, rather than Houston and New York playing Game 5 of the NBA Finals, a white sports utility vehicle, driving leisurely along an empty highway.
“And I asked myself, ‘Why are they showing a commercial in the middle of a basketball game?’ ” Bullard said.
It was no commercial, as Bullard would come to learn, but arguably the most bizarre juxtaposition of sports and real life yet inflicted upon the American psyche, an event that NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw described as a “modern tragedy and drama of Shakespearean proportion.”
Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the flight of the infamous white Bronco carrying O.J. Simpson and his sidekick Al Cowlings, which led Los Angeles police down the San Diego Freeway in Los Angeles while the Rockets and Knicks played Game 5 of the Finals in New York.
The collision of sports and real life wouldn’t happen in similar fashion these days, when NBC and other over-the-air networks have alternate screens to accommodate simultaneous developments. MSNBC, however, was two years in the future in 1994, so NBC had no choice but to divide its attentions between Simpson and basketball.
“It was the strangest broadcast I’ve ever been part of,” longtime play-by-play announcer Marv Albert, who called the game with Matt Goukas, said last week. “We were watching the chase while we were watching the game.”
NBC switched from the game for a Simpson update in the second quarter, leaving with 6:39 to play and returning 5:57 before halftime. Other than periodic updates regarding Simpson, it stayed with basketball until late in the third quarter.
As the chase unfolded, with the Knicks leading 59-53 with 3:50 left in the third period, NBC split its screen between the RocketsKnicks and Simpson. It would not return to a full screen shot from the game until 6:57 to play in the fourth quarter with New York leading 72-71, en route to a 91-84 win to take a 3-2 lead in the best-ofseven series.
Albert said he remained at courtside while NBC was focused on Simpson. During the third and fourth quarters, when NBC used a split screen, the audio was NBC News’ coverage of the Simpson chase.
NBA Entertainment has a clean, full-screen feed of the game that it included in a DVD set issued in 2006. The only sound during the time that NBC was focused on Simpson was crowd noise and the faint sounds of Albert clearing his throat on occasion.
“There was a discussion about whether we should continue airing the game telecast, and apparently it was decided to do what was done,” Albert said.
“The weird part was seeing the fans in the lower bowl coming down and hunching behind the scorer’s table so they could watch (the slow-speed Bronco chase).”
Albert said Knicks general manager Ernie Grunfeld and Dave Checketts, the team’s president, were sitting in an arena suite watching the game when they noticed the hubbub below. When they checked their monitors, they, like Bullard, thought they were watching an in-game commercial when they saw the camera shot of the white Bronco.
While Bullard said the Rockets were focused on the game, word spread quickly on the bench.
“(Rockets guard) Kenny Smith once told me that (coach) Rudy Tomjanovich asked the players during a timeout what they were doing, looking at a TV screen in the middle of the NBA Finals, and Kenny said he told him, ‘O.J.’s on the run,’ ” Albert said.
“So it was a different night, I must say.”
Bullard, who did not play during Game 5, said at the time he was miffed that NBC chose to focus on the Simpson chase,
“My perspective was that the NBA Finals were the most important thing to have on TV, not a Bronco,” he said.
Viewers, however, preferred the real-life drama of the evening. NBC registered only a 7.8 Nielsen rating for the split-screen game/ chase, the lowest-rated NBA Finals game rating since the early 1980s.
By comparison, a CBS analysis of Nielsen data indicated that 95 million watched the Simpson chase on assorted networks that combined for a Super Bowl-like 48.4 rating.
Game 5 remained the lowestrated Finals game of the post-1980s NBA until 2003, when Game 3 of the Spurs-Nets series rated only 5.2 on ABC.
Twenty-five years later, Albert said he doesn’t remember much about Game 5 other than the hubbub caused by the Simpson chase.
“I know the final score because I checked it out the other day, but it was not a memorable game,” he said. “That was a different style of basketball, well before the 3point barrage came into existence. The Knicks played a rugged, physical style and tried to keep the score down, but they ran into a very good Rockets team with Hakeem Olajuwon and Kenny Smith. The Rockets were the better team.”