Since today is Valentine’s Day, allow me to lead off with a dating joke that was a killer back when I was in the sixth grade. This one was guaranteed to get uproarious laughter even if the listener had heard it three or four times before:
- Q: Why did the skeleton break up with her boyfriend?
- A: She didn’t have the guts to keep dating him.
- BaDaBing! BaDaBoom!!!
Moving on … Hubie Brown signed off the air last weekend at the age of 91; he had been the color analyst for basketball games on television for about 35 years. And he was very good in that role; in fact, he made it to the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2005 as a broadcaster.
Prior to becoming a fixture on NBA telecasts, Hubie Brown was a player and a coach. His playing career was brief; he played college basketball at Niagara; he played basketball while in the Army; he played briefly for a team in the now defunct Eastern League of pro basketball. He began coaching in 1955 at the high school level; he was an assistant coach at the collegiate level and finally got a head coaching gig in the old ABA.
He began his broadcasting career in 1982, and he did many games as the color analyst with the likes of Al Michaels and Mike Breen. Those pairings were excellent to the point that Brown was nominated for an Emmy Award back in the 1990s. I, for one, will miss hearing Hubie Brown on NBA telecasts.
Bonne chance, Hubie Brown.
Switching gears, but staying with basketball … Back in the summer, it was announced that Doug Gottleib was going to be the head basketball coach at Wisconsin-Green Bay. No big deal there; Gottleib had played at Division 1 schools and had played professionally in leagues not quite at the NBA level. He also had a little coaching experience in international basketball. The wrinkle in that announcement was that Gottleib would be the head coach of the Green Bay Phoenix And Also continue to be the host of a sports radio program on FOX Sports five days a week.
At the time, I wondered how he was going to juggle two full-time jobs without inventing or discovering the 36-hour workday. But Gottleib said he had a plan for success and that he was going to “give it a go”. Things seemed to be OK at the start of the season; the Phoenix started off with a 2-3 record. Those joyous days are well in the past because as of this morning, Wisconsin-Green Bay owns a record of 2-23. That’s right; they have lost 20 games in a row in the Horizon League.
The optics here are not good to begin with but they found a way to get a bit worse last week. In the lead-up to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, Gottlieb did one of his shows as a remote from “Radio Row” in New Orleans. With the team sporting such a bad record, that lack of attention to the team/program got plenty of attention. Nevertheless, the Athletic Director at Wisconsin-Green Bay is supportive of Gottleib and indicated that he knew about this “excursion” well in advance and had no problem with it.
When questioned about this, Gottleib said:
“If people want to think I’m not doing my job because I’m in New Orleans doing a radio job, which had been preplanned, again, there is nothing I’m really going to be able to say. Other than, my players like playing for me and we are going to compete.”
He is correct. There is nothing for him to say that will change anyone’s mind about this situation; winning a significantly higher fraction of the basketball games that the team has scheduled would be about the only thing that stands a chance of changing a building narrative here.
Finally, here is an assessment of a situation from Brad Dickson, formerly with the Omaha World-Herald:
“Tragic news tonight. While flying over New Jersey Santa’s sleigh was mistaken for a drone/alien spaceship and shot down by a homeowner. More later on this developing story…”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
I have never been a fan of Doug Gottlieb on the radio. He knows basketball pretty well, but his “takes” on other sports tend to be very shallow. I, therefore, believe he should quit the radio and devote all of his energies to coaching basketball.
Gil:
Agree that he definitely “knows” basketball and that he has the background to be a good coach. His radio show is OK but not much more than OK in my opinion. I think the major problem with the 2-23 Wisconsin-Green Bay team is that Gottleib is only a part-time coach because he is still doing that radio show 5 days a week. John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski didn’t try to do those two things at the same time.