SOUND OF THE CITY GAME
Mainstays Breen, Eagle give New York hoops fans a reason to sit up and listen
THE harsh truths about professional basketball at this time in this city are stark. Sometimes, it’s hard not to divert your eyes from the spontaneous slapstick on either side of the East River, clowns to the left of it, jokers to the right, a continual assault on the eyes.
But to the ears, the City Game remains just perfect.
Because at this time, in this city, we are treated three and four times a week to the two best basketball voices in the world — Mike Breen and Ian Eagle, two sons of the metropolis who dreamed impossible dreams when they were young and grew to realize every last one of them.
“To sit courtside at Madison Square Garden for Knicks games as a job?” Breen said one recent night, sitting about 5 feet away from that nightly catbird’s seat. “I take it as an honor and a privilege, and I know it all sounds hokey, but for someone who grew up here, it’s so true. I try to never let myself forget how fortunate I am.”
Says Eagle: “This is the pinnacle. This is the dream. To broadcast basketball in New York City? I don’t ever take any of that for granted.”
Nor should we. This is our splendid soundtrack all across harsh New York winters that seem even uglier when the Knicks and Nets are slipping on banana peels. That’s the way it has always been in the summers, too, a cavalcade of voices who made you listen, made you watch, from Mel Allen to Red Barber, from Phil Rizzuto to Michael Kay, from Bob Murphy to Gary Cohen.
The regal lineage of the basketball microphone is just as majestic, of course, Breen and Eagle the logical — and worthy — heirs to Marty Glickman and Marv Albert.
“I remember as a kid when I’d come here and sit all the way up at the top, what struck me when I first saw Walt Frazier was: ‘These guys are people,” Breen says. “Marty Glickman was like that for me, he was this legend, but he was also real-life flesh and blood, and he invented so much of the basketball vernacular. And then Marv was the greatest basketball play-by-play voice of all time.”
He shakes his head.
“And to follow them? Sometimes I want to ask, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ ”
It sometimes still is surreal to Breen that whenever he shows up for work it is almost always in the company of Clyde. Growing up in Yonkers, the six Breen brothers created a makeshift weight room in their house, and it was a poster of Frazier that dominated the door. Breen’s mother still lives there. So does the Clyde poster. “The edges are a little frayed,” he says.
Breen and Clyde have worked together so well and for so long they’ve become something like the most reliable nightclub act in town — Breen the straight man who can release the occasional “BANG!” when someone makes a key 3-pointer and Clyde the vocal impresario who gen- erally tells his tales in iambic pentameter.
Eagle, meanwhile, has had an array of partners, an eclectic parade starting with Bill Raftery, proceeding through Kelly Tripucka, Mike Fratello, Jim Spanarkel, Mark Jackson and Greg Anthony, now including the first woman to sit regularly behind an NBA team’s color analyst’s microphone in Sarah Kustok.
Eagle will tell you: “You have to understand who’s next to you and that if they’re doing well, we’re doing well. It’s a team effort, and it always is.”
But one of those partners laughed not long ago when he was asked about working with Eagle, joking it was like Tim McCarver once said about Bob Gibson, that every night he pitched, it seemed the other team always seemed to have a bad night.
“Look at what the common thread is there,” Raftery said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that every one of us has been at our best when he’s been by our side.”
Both men do other, high-profile events outside their regular assignments. Breen has been the longtime No. 1 NBA play-by-play voice for ABC and ESPN, and his partnership with Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy has become every bit as enjoyable to listen to as his pairing with Frazier on MSG. And Eagle, who did Jets games briefly on radio, has worked national pro football and college basketall games for CBS for 21 years.
Last Saturday, in fact, he was able to share a unique moment when he called the Syracuse-Miami game for CBS from one of the broadcast tables at Miami’s Watsco Center, while his son, Noah, did the game on WAER as part of the Syracuse college radio team.
“I think doing the other games, I can’t get too caught up in one game or one broadcast,” Eagle says. “There’s always another one later in the week and two weeks down the road. It plays a large role in not getting too high or too low. Of course it’s more enjoyable when a team is winning, but that doesn’t change the job. It’s still the same preparation and the same goal: to be entertaining and informative.”
Both broadcasters understand one of the remarkable things about the job is that their descriptions of plays can — and will — last forever. For Knicks fans, that means dozens of Breen calls during their prior glorious run (when he primarily was working the radio side) that they’ve had to hold dear during this elongated drought.
And Eagle is responsible for one of the unforgettable moments in the history of the YES Network. When Joe Johnson hit a gamewinning double-overtime shot against the Pistons during the 2012-13 season, the camera flashed to Jerry Seinfeld who was sitting courtside, and without missing a beat, Eagle declared: “That was real! And it was spectacular!”
Eagle and Breen are good friends, and while they are on the books every year to see each other the four times the Knicks and the Nets play, they often go to dinner with their wives and spend time talking to each other about their craft. They go back a long time — specifically to 1989, when Eagle was an intern working at WFAN and Breen was doing sports updates there for “Imus in the Morning.”
“That almost doesn’t seem possible,” Eagle says, laughing.
But it is. They are at the top of their game, the top of their profession, basketball voices for a city that still cares deeply about The City Game, caretakers of that passion. Breen said he feels it every time he walks into the Garden, still.
“It’s like a family, I know the ushers by names, know all the workers,” he says. “And the crew I work with at the MSG Network, most have been doing Knicks games for as long as I have, talented professionals and even better people. They are a huge part of what makes the job so wonderful.”
Both are genuinely hopeful better times lie ahead for their teams.
“The Nets have good people in the right spots,” Eagle says. “They’re trustworthy, have a plan. When the smoke clears, there is a process in place to do this the right way.”
Breen, of course, still carries the memory of those childhood trips to the Garden, remembering how much the team mattered to him, how much it matters still to the fans who continue to flock there. The games that have struck him lately are too many of the ones in March and April in recent years.
“The Knicks can be 20 games under .500 and down 10 in the fourth quarter, and they make a comeback, and you’d think it’s an elimination game in the playoffs,” Breen says. “Those games make me realize it’s the fans who make it so special for me. You so want the team to be good again for the fans, loyal and passionate fans who deserve a great team.”
For now, the consolation prize must be great broadcasts, and great broadcasters, a solemn soundtrack of The City Game that has never been better.