YES, plenty is expected from B’klyn this season
Ian Eagle has spent nearly three decades calling Nets games, but the YES Network play-by-play man said this promises to be the most auspicious campaign in team history. Arguably, it’s going to be the strangest, with the broadcast team calling road games from Barclays Center due to COVID-19 precautions.
“I’d say this is the most anticipated season in Nets history,” Eagle said Tuesday on a Zoom call promoting the season, his 27th. “With everything that was done last offseason, combined with moves made this offseason, I can’t think of a year where Nets fans felt like they were part of the overall conversation about the league more so than this year.”
After the Nets’ television ratings jumped 13 percent last season from 2018-19, they’re expected to vault again this season with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving back.
“I can tell you we’re going to treat the Brooklyn Nets as big as any event or any team we have on YES,” senior coordinating producer Jared Boshnack said. “The Brooklyn Nets this year are going to be treated like the national story they are.”
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, that will mean calling road games from Barclays Center, as the YES crew did during the NBA’s bubble last season.
“While we may be detached from the action, it’s our job to not let the viewer feel detached,” Eagle said. “The job is still to inform and entertain. Just because you’re not up close doesn’t mean you have a built-in excuse to change the way you do your job.
“Being the conduit from the event to the viewer, that’s what we do.”
➤ So far, Irving has made it tough for anybody to be a conduit between himself and the fans. He has refused to speak to the media during camp, only issuing a statement.
“I don’t want to say he won’t talk to the media, even though that’s kind of how it should be interpreted,” YES analyst Richard Jefferson said. “The worst thing you can tell the New York media is that you’re never going to talk to the New York media.
“His goal is to just play basketball and limit that. Whether or not he’s able to accomplish that, or how the NBA or the Nets in particular will handle that, that’s to be seen.”
Irving made waves on Durant’s podcast, “The ETCs,” during the NBA Finals when he praised Durant as the only teammate in whom he has had confidence to make lastsecond shots, omitting LeBron James.
Jefferson hosted James on Monday’s “Road Trippin’ ” podcast and the Lakers star admitted, “I was a little like, damn … I only cared about his well-being, both on and off the floor. And it kind of hurt me a little bit.”