Chin likes her team for Monday’s Celtics game
Soon after coming to NBC Sports Boston in 2013, Abby Chin
emerged as a popular personality among Celtics fans as the sideline reporter on game broadcasts.
She also spent the 2020-21 season as the network’s Celtics studio host. That was after returning to NBC Sports Boston in December 2020 following a brief and unwarranted four-month absence after she’d been laid off in wide-ranging cuts by parent company NBC Universal.
On Monday, as part of the network’s all-female broadcast team for the Celtics-Pistons matchup in commemoration of Women’s History Month, Chin will take a turn in an unfamiliar role as the color analyst.
“I’m really excited and a little anxious,” she said. “I can’t wait to see how it goes and what it feels like to be in that chair and to do something very different from what I’m used to.”
Chin has done some color on Celtics games in the recent past — but on the radio, where she has filled in for Cedric Maxwell at times alongside play-by-play voice Sean Grande on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s broadcasts.
“But this is a totally different thing,” she said. “Obviously, calling a game on radio requires much more description. I’m actually really curious how this is going to go, because we have never been all together before in one place.”
The “we” she references includes play-by-play voice Zora Stephenson, now of NBC Sports, who in April 2021 became the first female broadcaster to call a Milwaukee Bucks game; fellow analyst and Connecticut Sun player DiJonai Carrington; and sideline reporter Kayla Burton, now with ESPN.
Amina Smith, in one of her final assignments for NBC Sports Boston before heading to ESPN as a “SportsCenter” anchor, will host the studio program, along with two analysts: Sun president Jennifer Rizzotti and Celtics scout and Maine Celtics assistant general manager Ashley Battle.
“We had an introductory call last week and it was really nice to get everyone on a Zoom call together,” said Chin. “But these amazing women are so busy and they’re just in all different places. So I don’t think we will be all in one place until we get to the TD Garden on Monday night.”
In the search to find the best talent fits for the broadcast, NBC Sports Boston collaborated with the Celtics and the Sun.
“I know it has been important to everyone to have it be something that’s still authentic to a Celtics broadcast while also finding the best possible people to fill these roles,” said Chin. “I feel like part of my role is to kind of be that thread throughout.”
A couple of years ago, Chin had conversations with Northeastern about doing color on its basketball broadcasts, but that fell through in part because the games would have aired on NESN.
But Chin has no aspirations of turning Brian Scalabrine into Wally Pipp. She’s too happy in her sideline reporter role.
“I love the sideline,” she said. “The one season I was in studio, it was nice to not have to travel. But my first trip back on the road, I remember it so vividly. We were in Orlando, staying at the Four Seasons at Disney, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is where I’m meant to be. This is my happy place.’
“It’s just so different being with the team every day and not getting caught up in all of the outside noise that is coming at them, especially in a season like this where they’re doing so well and any loss brings about so much unnecessary negativity. On the road, it’s nice to kind of be insulated from that.
“I love talking to the players. I love telling their stories every day. I’m so excited for Monday’s broadcast. But the sideline is absolutely where I want to be and what I enjoy doing.”
In the minority?
The final two episodes of “The Dynasty” dropped Friday on Apple TV+. Your loyal neighborhood sports media columnist (right, me) wrote favorably about the entire 10-episode arc back on Feb. 14, when the first two episodes were set to air.
A month later, I’m kind of waiting for someone else to join me in saying they enjoyed it.
To me, someone who has followed the Patriots since roughly the day Chuck Fairbanks bolted to the University of Colorado, the candid and often hilarious player interviews and the reels of previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage outweighed ownership’s predictable narrative-twisting.
In retrospect, I do think I insufficiently acknowledged the Krafts’ shameless shirking of responsibility for anything that went wrong because I was anticipating them to do just that, and therefore not surprised.
But I also think those who suggest Bill
Belichick is being scapegoated for everything
should listen to those player interviews a little closer.
The Krafts’ finger-pointing is one thing, but when ultimate Patriots such as Matthew Slater and Devin McCourty talk about how bad the Belichick/Tom Brady relationship got, that carries real weight.