‘Miami is going to be there’: Barkley, Shaq assess Heat. And All-Star, Super Bowl TV news
During a TNT conference call late Tuesday afternoon, I asked the network’s popular studio analysts – Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal – where they would rank the Heat in the Eastern Conference and to assess the team’s chances of making the Finals.
Their answers:
Barkley: “This is going to be the most fascinating second half in NBA history. Milwaukee is still the team to beat. But we have no idea what’s going to happen in Brooklyn… and Philadelphia. I’m so excited for the second half of the season. You talk about must see television.
“Anybody who tells you they know what’s going to happen in Brooklyn and Philly, they’re talking [expletive]. I love the trade by Brooklyn [to get Ben Simmons]. I don’t know how they got all that stuff for James [Harden]. If they can get healthy, they can be really scary. I mean really scary. [With Philadelphia], we have to see how James and Joel [Embiid] will co-exist.
“We know what Miami is going to do. They’re going to play hard. They’ve got arguably one of the best coaches in the NBA. But the wild card are the 76ers and Brooklyn Nets.
“I think Milwaukee is the best team but Miami is going to be there, Brooklyn is a wild card, Philly is a wild card.”
Smith: “The Eastern Conference is probably the best it has been in at least a decade and a half easily. Chicago, we haven’t even talked about them. Brooklyn in the eighth spot can win the whole thing. You have a team in eighth spot that might be in a play-in situation that can win the whole thing. That never happens in basketball. There is no clear favorite to win the championship.”
O’Neal: “Miami culture wise, how they play, they’re definitely in the top four. You have to look at matchups. Who’s playing, who’s not playing? It will be exciting. Miami is up there, Chicago is up there, Milwaukee is up there. Brooklyn, now that their team is solidified, they look a lot more dangerous than they have in a long time. But it’s all about matchups.”
ALL-STAR CHANGE
Heat legend Dwyane Wade will have quite a stage for his debut as an NBA game analyst: Sunday’s All-Star Game.
Wade, who has worked exclusively as a studio analyst for TNT, will call the All-Star Game with Kevin Harlan and Reggie Miller.
Barkley originally was expected to call the game with Harlan and Miller, but Turner instead opted to use its studio crew – Johnson, Smith, Barkley, O’Neal and Draymond Green - on an alternate telecast of the All-Star Game on TBS.
In the process, the All-Star Game will become the latest sporting event to be presented to viewers in multiple forms.
ESPN has done this with several events, including a megacast of college football’s national championship game, offering telecasts with different video perspectives and announcers.
Wade, a regular in TNT’s studio on its Tuesday package, is not transitioning to a game analyst role. But TNT believed Wade — a 13-time All-Star — would be a sensible replacement for Barkley.
Harlan is replacing the retired Marv Albert as the voice of the All-Star Game on TNT.
But the network said it hasn’t decided whether Harlan will replace Albert as the play-by-play voice for the network’s conference finals this season. Ian Eagle, Brian Anderson and Harlan are all under consideration for that role.
And Turner also must decide whether to use a second analyst (likely Stan Van Gundy) alongside Miller and either Harlan, Eagle or Anderson on the conference finals.
MIAMI FINISHES LAST
As is often the case with Super Bowls, Miami-Fort Lauderdale produced the lowest rating for the game among 56 major markets monitored by Nielsen Media.
In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, 27 percent of homes with TV sets were watching the game, which equates to a 27 rating. Fifty-five percent of TV sets in use were tuned in.
Those were huge numbers but well below ratings for other big cities.
Cincinnati led all markets with a 46.1 rating, followed by Detroit at 45.9 and Pittsburgh at 45.6.
The Dolphins’ ratings were the worst in the league this season excluding the two cities (New York and Los Angeles) that have multiple teams.
But not all South Florida sports ratings bring up the rear among nationally televised events.
For parts of the last decade, NBA Finals ratings in South Florida ranked in the top 10 among the 56 markets, even when the Heat wasn’t playing.
The low sports ratings, compared with other markets, is partly a byproduct of the fact that a significant percentage of South Florida’s TV households watch primarily Spanish television.
Nationally, Sunday’s game had 112.3 million viewers across NBC, Telemundo, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, NFL Digital platforms and Yahoo Sports mobile properties.
That made Rams-Bengals the most watched Super Bowl since 114.4 million tuned in to NBC for 2015’s game between the Patriots and Seahawks.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 5:02 PM.
