Everybody knows about the NBA Bloopers Top 10s. While I’m waiting for the Euroleague Bloopers of the season, I collected the Euroleague TV commentator Top 10. And this comes pretty close to the NBA blooper series.
10. Maybe not a real blooper but a commentator’s free expression of “And Reyes misses the first (free throw) – as usual” is quite uncommon and should be mentioned here.
9. Some commentators were just known for their phrases. So there was the “they have numbers” guy, but probably the most annoying was the “up and in” commentator. Well, it became funny when the up and in shots did not go in and he came up with the legendary up and in, no good!
8. I mean we have no problem here with somebody who has an accent when speaking English or imperfections in grammar, as we do, too. But talking about the Piss and Friendship Stadium when referring to the Olympiakos home court was some kind of funny.
7. Euroleague TV was not only present during the Live Streams. They also have set up a very interesting YouTube channel. One of my favorite clips was the Dajuan Wagner portrait: Dejuan (sic) Wagner is a very consistent player. Well, you can check yourself what my thoughts were about that one here.
6. Despite all the technical problems in the beginning, BallinEurope was always a great supporter of Live Streams. But even technical problems cannot be the reason to switch to the halftime screen when a coach takes a timeout with 20 seconds to go in the 2nd quarter.
5. Some of the commentators must have been a bit tired when a game came to the end, or how can you explain a sentence like, “0 points, 5 fouls and 0 points for Mark Dickel“?
4. As we know now, not all commentators have a basketball background. So confusion about names was quite frequent in the beginning, like Delonte West playing in Bologna, Carlos Arroyo with Cibona or even players that were only called number 10.
3. Of course, some European players have difficult names, especially our friends from Hellas. And there plays a guy called Vassilis Spanoulis, or is it Spanoulissis or even Spanolouissis. We still don’t know.
2. Mispronunciation of MVP names is a no-no. Well during one night, I had some serious doubts about the sobriety of the Euroleague TV commentators when they came up with new players called PapalAUkas, Jaseekeveejuzz and also referring to some drunken fans.
1. The absolute and uncontested number one was the commentator of the Lottomatica Roma versus Panathinaikos game in the regular season. He reunited all the above mentioned bloopers in just one game. Just listen to the best of we have made of that game and enjoy.
In the end, I want to thank however the ULEB for the creation of Euroleague TV. Even if we have not been very nice with you throughout the season, it is a great feature and allows every fan to watch the games he wants (well not in every country though). Well, we saw that Euroleague TV has added two huge experts to their commentator team for the Final Four in the persons of former UCLA Bruin and Zalgiris Kaunas player Jiri Zidek and Milano all-time great and Italian commentator legend Dan Peterson. At least we know that Peterson knows Ball Feenomenale well.
