BOOM-SHAKALAKA!
Timmy McCarthy on his cult basketball commentary and how he took on cancer
TIMMY McCARTHY reckons the Phoenix Suns will win the NBA title. ‘Home court advantage is such a big thing,’ he says a few hours after watching Milwaukee Bucks level the final series at 2-2, a game that will be remembered for Giannis Antetokounmpo’s extraordinary late block on Deandre Ayton, a move worthy of RTÉ commentator McCarthy’s trademark ‘boom-shakalaka’.
This year’s final has some Irish interest. Pat Connaughton, shooting guard with the Bucks, has deep Galway roots and has spoken previously of playing for the country of his grandparents.
‘If he is interested, it is something that should be looked at, even for a couple of years. It would be an enormous opportunity for the game here,’ McCarthy suggests.
The Corkman has spent a lifetime immersed in basketball. He won three league titles with Blue Demons during a 12-year playing career that coincided with the game’s boom period of the 1980s. He played more than 100 times for Ireland and was captain for more than half of those games. As a coach, he took Tralee Tigers to an emotional Superleague title in 1996 and took Ireland to within a whisker of reaching the game’s top tier, losing a play-off to Denmark. However, he says the coaching job that meant the most is when he led Athlone’s Marist College, with his sons in the team, to their first All-Ireland schools title.
Over the next few weeks though, McCarthy will be known for only one thing. The colourful and distinctive voice of RTÉ’s Olympic basketball coverage. With his unique phraseology and natural enthusiasm, he has garnered a cult status since commentating on his first Olympics back in 2004. Like much of life, the gig cropped up by chance.
McCarthy stopped playing at the relatively young age of 29, to spend more time with his three young children, and was asked by RTÉ to be Ger Canning’s analyst and co-commentator for National Cup finals. He had been doing that for 13 years when he was asked by a director to call the action in a Spain-Czech Republic women’s game during Athens as Canning was unavailable.
‘It was an exciting game, went to a couple of over-times before Spain won, and I guess I got caught up in the excitement,’ McCarthy recalls.
Someone in RTÉ liked what they heard and it was decided that he would start calling games on his own, rather than analysing them. It is why we will hear about Kevin Durant shooting from downtown when we watch Gregg Popovich’s Team USA in Tokyo.
‘Most of the terms I used, “downtown” and “coast-to-coast”, they are just normal basketball terms. But “boom-shakalaka” is my own creation. I don’t know where it came from, I was commentating on that game and it just came out and has become something I use.
‘When I was the analyst, my job was to explain why things were happening on the court. But as the commentator, my job as I saw it was to explain and also entertain. Basketball is an entertaining and exciting game and the commentary should be too. All I am trying to get across is my love and passion for the game, and the majority of people seem to like the way I do it, because here I am, looking forward to commentating on my fifth Olympics.’
Just three years ago, a fifth Olympics was a long way from his mind. He was in the battle of his life. Diagnosed with the most aggressive form of prostate cancer, McCarthy had successful surgery in Galway clinic and then had to contend with 18 weeks of chemotherapy and 35 rounds of radiotherapy.
Every cancer journey is different, but many begin from the same spot. In a consultant’s office, being told the worst news imaginable. McCarthy can still remember the exact time and date when Dr Eamonn Rogers told himself and wife Anne of his diagnosis. 11.01am on February 28, 2018.
‘When I heard that word, my playing career, coaching career, my commentating, they all became irrelevant. I captained and coached my country, got 103 caps for Ireland and was captain 58 times, but all of that became irrelevant. It didn’t matter. When you hear cancer, your mortality hits you right in the face. The only thing that was relevant was my family and how I could give myself the best shot against this.’
McCarthy drew on his years as a coach and also his professional background as a business consultant to prepare himself for the fight.
When he coaches a team, the
philosophy is simple. It is about getting the ball in the best position to take a shot. And that is what he would do here.
He was also determined to control what he could. Control the controllables, as he would often tell his players. ‘I thought about what I could control through my treatment and there were three things – my nutrition, exercise and my work. ‘I followed the nutrition plan to the letter, worked right the way through it and kept myself active. I learnt to listen to my body, rather than my mind because your mind might tell you that you are tired when you are not because you might be down or feeling sorry for yourself.
‘I didn’t do anything that would jeopardise my treatment but I tried to stay active as much as possible. Played as much golf as I could. Some days, I might be able to play 15 holes. Another day, it might have
been four or five but I would try to get out on the course. And if I could only hit the ball 100 yards with a seven iron, whereas I was hitting it 150 yards before treatment, I would tell myself that at least I am hitting it.
‘All of that was important. I was determined to stay in as positive a mindset as possible. I have always been a positive person anyway, but this was a real challenge, as anyone who has gone through it knows. Dark thoughts do come into the head during treatment, it is only natural. I would do everything I could to chase them out, because I was determined to get through this for my family. And I got myself through it, with the help of my family and the Lord.’
He had his final round of radiotherapy on November 1, 2018 and completed hormone treatment late last year. Having turned 60 in 2020 McCarthy is feeling good, ahead of going on duty for the upcoming Olympics. ‘It has been a tough couple of years, health-wise, but I am feeling in good form now,’ he explains.
Through it all, he kept working. Coaching too. St Brigid’s, his local GAA club, asked him to help with their senior football team last year. With many of the players that had taken them to an All-Ireland in 2013 having drifted away, they had a young and inexperienced team. But McCarthy ended up winning a Roscommon county title with them.
Long before Jim McGuinness and Jim Gavin brought basketball drills into their training sessions, McCarthy understood the benefits of the game for GAA players. He trained
St Finbarr’s when they won a Cork hurling title in 1988 and was part of Dave Power’s management team for Wexford footballers a few years ago. He also ran a basketball camp for kids during lockdown which taught them the fundamentals of the game and he is especially proud of the fact that three of his grandchildren – Jack, Cathal and Noah – were among those hanging on his every word.
Although his has been a life dedicated to Hoops, soccer was McCarthy’s first love, playing for St Mary’s on the northside of Cork city. He played basketball for the first time while in primary school, coached by Seánie Murphy at the Iona boys club. ‘And seven years later, I was playing on the same team as Seánie,’ McCarthy remembers now.
He has lived in Athlone for more than 20 years but remains Cork to the bone. And when basketball exploded in this country in the ’80s, its epicentre was on Leeside. People queuing to get into the Parochial Hall or Neptune Stadium for the local derbies. A different time.
‘My family used to have to bring sandwiches and tea, because they knew the queues were that long,’ McCarthy chuckles. ‘I was fortunate to play during that era and play with and against some of the best players to ever set foot on a court in
Ireland, guys like Jasper McElroy, to my mind the best American to ever the play the game over here.
‘I was lucky that in my 12 years, I won everything the game had to offer. And the game itself brought professionalism into Irish sport. We were the first to have sponsor’s names on jerseys, the first to do stretches and warm-up exercises. It was the influence of all the Americans coming over and bringing the game to another level.’
McCarthy decided to retire at the end of the 1980s, while still national captain and having just been named the Irish Player of the Decade. ‘It might have seemed premature, but myself and Anne had three young kids too and I didn’t want to miss out on them growing up.’
Five years earlier, he had ruptured his cruciate and medial ligaments in his knee and through his own determination, got back to the level he had been at previously.
‘It’s not like doing your cruciate now. When you think back to the ’80s, it was usually career-ending. Only two top-level sportspeople in Ireland had ever come back from one – Pat Spillane and Colm O’Rourke. But I was determined, so it felt like I had five extra years.’
In its heyday, there were 30 senior clubs dotted around the island, each of them with at least one American. But by the end of the 1980s, interest was declining. And then, it suddenly fell off a cliff. There are plenty of theories as to why that was the case. McCarthy feels that moving from two Americans to just one for each team definitely had a major effect while in his own native city, he feels the growth of AIL rugby and reemergence of Cork City as a force in the League of Ireland also played a part.
However, he believes the sport needs to stop harking back to its golden age.
‘The first thing the sport needs to do is stop competing with the ’80s and enjoy the game for what it is today.
‘We have our international teams back, which is a huge thing for the sport, because young players can now aspire to putting on the green jersey again. The sport needs to look at what we have now and what we can do to make it better. Make the league the best league it can be.
‘In my career, I played in front of 5,000 people at Parochial Hall and I played there in front of about five people. But both times, I played to win, to be the best I could be. And that is what the sport can do. Be the best it can be.’
Whether as a player, coach or commentator, it is what Timmy McCarthy has tried to do.
And having faced up to his own mortality, it is something he is determined to do for quite a while yet.
‘EVERYTHING I’D DONE...PLAYING, COACHING AND COMMENTATING WAS SUDDENLY IRRELEVANT’