Fiorentino is preparing for his final call with Heat
Longtime TV analyst will be honored at his last regular-season game tonight.
MIAMI— Tony Fiorentino has done it all during his 30 years in the Miami organization an assistant — with the Heat and WNBA Sol, a scouting coordinator, a summer camp director and 15 seasons as a television color analyst.
But through it all Fiorentino, who will call his final regular-season game tonight, never felt he left the sidelines.
“People have asked me, ‘Do you miss coaching?’ ” Fiorentino said last week. “And I said, ‘No,’ because I run the Heat camps in the summer, which is a form of coaching, and I feel like I was coaching on the air.”
Fiorentino, 68, will leave the broadcast booth but remain with the organization running basketball camps and working community events. He has teamed with Eric Reid to call more than 1,100 games. Reid and Fiorentino are the only announcing team in the league where both have been with their organization from its inception.
The Heat will honor Fiorentino during halftime tonight. He could work a few playoff games.
“It’s really unique to work with somebody that you’ve been friends with for 30 years,” Reid said. “The chemistry was natural. Everything people heard was real. We’re both from New York.I knew of Tony when he was a high school coach. Then we both get to Miami and all these years later we’re paired up to do games. Just a great experience working with a true lifelong friend.”
Former Heat guard John Crotty, 48, will replace Fiorentino. Crotty has been a member of Heat broadcasts for 12 years, working with Mike Inglis on radio and appearing on Fox Sports Sun’s studio show.
Fiorentino echoes Reid’s sentiments, saying one of the things he is most proud of has been working alongside a close friend.
“It’s always about who you work with,” Fiorentino said. “And all we ever tried to do was be honest, entertain and inform the fans. And I think we did that for 15 years. Even though we wanted to win, the Heat to win, and we favored the Heat, we were always very honest with calls, we were very honest with the opponents, giving the opponents credit.”
Opposing coaches and referees have approached the pair to credit them for their work ethic — Fiorentino and Reid are one of the few broadcasting duos who attend every opponent coach’s media session before each game — and objectivity.
“I think they appreciated the honesty we had on the air,” Fiorentino said. “We don’t ever try to kill anybody. We do have a great relationship with most of the coaches in the league.
“I was a coach when I started announcing. I learned a lot from Eric on how to ask questions and try to get the most information you can to make the game more enjoyable for everybody. That’s cool to get that respect from those people.”
Fiorentino had the knowledge from being a former coach, something that helped prepare him for when he started analyzing the game and for a living.
“I was trying to educate the fans and look at the game through a coach’s eyes,” he said. “My job was always to try to figure out why a coach did what he did.
“I’m a little biased, obviously, but I think coaches make the best a n alysts because sometimes it’s how you say something. A player may not be playing well, but there’s a way to say it without killing the player.”
Fiorentino has seen the highs (three titles) and the lows (15 wins in 2007-08). But that 2007-08 season stands out.
“What I’m most proud of for us is that we did our best job I think when we won 15 games,” Fiorentino said. “We brought it every night. If you were listening to our broadcast you would never know we won 15 games that year. It’s easy to do it when you’re a championship team. But to bring it every night and be prepared. … ”
Fiorentino was asked about specific moments from his broadcasting career that stood out. Here are three:
■ Dwyane Wade’s coming out during the Eastern Conference semifinals against the New Orleans Hornets. Wade, a rookie, scored the game-winner with 1.3 seconds remaining in his first playoff game, giving the Heat a 91-89 victory. “That’s the game when Dwyane Wade came of age, when he made the winning shot and I said something like, ‘Stan Van Gundy went to the rookie and he delivered.’ So that was cool.”
■ Another Wade game winner, this one in New York, stands out. “We’re from New York and we know how passionate the fans are. There were 20,000 fans here and I said right after Eric did his thing, ‘How do you quiet 20,000 New Yorkers? Make Dwyane Wade make a jumper at the buzzer.’ So, I really enjoyed that one.”
■ Not all of the memories involved Wade, or even a magical play. One night in Minnesota, Fiorentino mentioned how a young boy in the stands was eating all kinds of junk food. “We’re getting ready to do the open and we’re sitting on our stools looking toward the stands and we see a kid eating an ice cream cone, he’s eating a cookie and we’re thinking, ‘Man, he’s eating too much stuff.’ Don’t you know, I think it was the second quarter, all of a sudden we hear something, I turn around, the kid threw up all over my jacket. And we were just starting a West Coast trip, it was a suit I had to wear again on the trip. So I had to send it to the cleaners when we got to Los Angeles.”