The Brooklyn Nets dominated the Atlanta Hawks 127-110 in London in a game featuring the NBA’s Global Games initiative, but there was another dominant performance in the broadcast booth, by play-by-play man Ian Eagle and color commentator Jim Spanarkel.
The two sent each other into fits of laughter on numerous occasions throughout the game, usually with weirdly injected and often misused British slang. This wasn’t canned broadcaster laughter; this was genuine. It was over-the-top (“what if I called you a wanker?”), it was silly (“RIGHT IN THE NOGGIN!”), it was endearing (“This guy can dance!” “Jimmy, if the fans are not seeing it, you can’t really refer to it. I know you’ve been in television for a while.”), and it was everything we’ve come to expect from the Eagle-Spanarkel tandem: informative, off-beat, and hilarious.
On a related note, Eagle recently won the award for New York State Sportscaster of the Year.
