Tag / NBA

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NBC Upfronts

Sports continues to be a big driver for NBC For the first time in 23 years, with the NFL, MLB, the NBA, and college football taking up a good part of the fall schedule, which was released on Monday.  The week gets off to a familiar start in September with two hours of The Voice returning for another round on Mondays, followed by Line of Fire, a new drama starring Peter Krause.  Come November, St. Denis Medical and The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins take over the first hour as The Voice goes to a single hour.  Tuesday will belong to the NBA when its season begins in October.

Wednesday and Thursday continue to be dominated by Dick Wolf franchises, with his three Chicago series running back-to-back-to-back on Wednesday and the two original entries in his Law & Order franchise the following night.  Thursday starts with a civilian version of the Peacock hit reality show The Traitors, hosted by Alan Cumming.  Happy’s Place and Newlyweds, a new comedy starring Téa Leoni and Tim Daly, kick off Friday, followed by a two-hour block of Dateline.  The weekend is dominated by football, with the Big Ten or Notre Dame on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday.

On the bench, NBC has one drama, one comedy, and a game show waiting for midseason.  The Rockford Files stars David Boreanaz in the role originally made famous by James Garner in the 1970s.  Sunset P.I. takes a comedic approach at the private investigator space, starring Jake Johnson and Jane Levy.  Finally, Today co-host Savannah Guthrie will host a live version of Wordle.

Shows gone from our television sets include Brilliant Minds and Stumble.

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Breaking Barriers

Later today, a woman is scheduled to umpire a regular season major league game for the first time.  Jen Pawol, who has been a minor-league umpire since 2016, is being called up for a doubleheader between the Marlins and the Braves, working the bases in place of the home plate umpires, who only work the one game.  She is then slated to work behind the plate for Sunday’s series finale.

Pawol, a 48-year-old graduate of Hofstra University, worked spring training games in 2024, becoming the first woman to do so since 2007. She is only the third woman to ever umpire a major-league spring training game.  She also became a crew chief in the International League last season.

MLB is behind the times in this area.  The NBA had its first female referee debut 28 years ago, while the NFL has had female officials for the past ten years.  Hopefully this leads to more opportunities for interested women to find a career in baseball.

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NBC Upfronts

For the first time in 23 years, the NBA is returning to NBC and that was the focus of their new fall schedule, released on Monday.  The week gets off to a familiar start with The Voice returning for another round on Mondays, followed by Brilliant Minds, the sophomore medical drama starring Zachary Quinto.  Tuesday will start off in September with a second installment of The Voice followed by On Brand with Jimmy Fallon, an unscripted series where the boorish Tonight Show host staffs a premier marketing agency with “the most creative, clever and competitive go-getters he can find.”  When the NBA season begins in October, it will take over the night.

Wednesday and Thursday continue to be dominated by Dick Wolf franchises, with his three Chicago series running back-to-back-to-back on Wednesday and the two original entries in his Law & Order franchise the following night.  Thursday wraps up with another season of The Hunting Party.  On Brand with Jimmy Fallon will continue on Friday, followed by a two-hour block of Dateline.  The weekend is dominated by football, with the Big Ten or Notre Dame on Saturday and the NFL on Sunday.

Come November, things will shift again.  The two-hour Monday edition of The Voice will be shrunk to one hour to make room for the displaced Tuesday comedy block, which will be anchored by sophomore hit St. Denis Medical.  The Friday comedy block with also return, with fellow sophomore Happy’s Place back to lead off the night.  At this point, the second half of both hours is undetermined.

On the bench, NBC has three comedies and one nature documentary series. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins reunites Tracy Morgan with Executive Producer Tina Fey in a comedy where a disgraced former football player is on a mission to rehabilitate his image.  Stumble is from Jeff and Liz Astrof.  The final comedy is an untitled community center project from Sierra Teller Ornelas. In Surviving Earth, viewers will go back in time to see how life not only survived cataclysmic events but thrived.

Shows gone from our television sets include Found, The Irrational, Suits LA, Night Court and Lopez vs Lopez.

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Connecting The City 2.0

Back in 2021, Nike announced they would be introducing City Connect uniforms to Major League Baseball, reimagining each team’s look to “celebrate[s] the bond between each team and its city.”  The White Sox were one of the first to get a City Connect, the infamous Southside set that was widely recognized as one of, if not the best rendition of the initial go-arounds.  Each City Connect uniform combination was intended to last for three years.

Four years later, the second wave of City Connects are being released and the White Sox will likely find themselves on the bottom of most rankings.  Announced yesterday, the new uniform set is the first collaboration between the MLB and NBA, as the jerseys basically adopt the Chicago Bulls look, with red jerseys with black pinstripes, black sleeves, and Chicago across the chest in a very Bulls-like wordmark.

First, the good: I like the black hat with the winged sock logo and the red brim.  And that’s about it.  The jersey looks like a cheap generic that you would pick up at Walgreens or Osco, not something a major league team would wear.  The black pants have red stripes down the sides with “SOUTHSIDE” repeated in black within the stripe.  Overall, this seems like a lazy, bottom of the barrel idea and I can’t see how this City Connect program will last long-term if they are already down to ideas like this.

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Walking In Memphis

With the ninth pick in the 2024 NBA draft, the Memphis Grizzlies selected Zach Edey, the two-time National Player of the Year from Purdue.  While this may have been a stretch according to many so-called draft experts, the Grizzlies were determined to get a center and they saw Edey as the best option on the board.  We will have to wait and see how Edey’s game translates to today’s NBA.

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A New Voice

On Thursday, the White Sox announced that John Schriffen, a 39-year-old from New York, had signed a multi-year deal to become the team’s new television play-by-play announcer.  He replaces Jason Benetti, who, due to growing frustrations with the White Sox front office, left in November to fill the same role with the Tigers after seven years in the White Sox booth.  Schriffen, who is biracial, becomes the second Black television play-by-play announcer in MLB, joining Dave Sims of the Mariners.

This will mark Schriffen’s first play-by-play assignment for a team, he has broadcast Korean baseball for ESPN during the pandemic and has done some MLB work for ESPN Radio.  His other work at ESPN includes college basketball, college football, college baseball, the XFL, NBA preseason, G-League and Summer League.  After multiple interviews, he met with team owner Jerry Reinsdorf and color analyst Steve Stone this past weekend in Arizona for a final audition.  “We hit it off immediately,” Schriffen said. “Everybody knows Steve Stone is the greatest. He has done everything in baseball broadcasting – the dude is a legend.”

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Gone Too Soon

Word broke yesterday morning that former Purdue basketball standout Caleb Swanigan, who was just 25, had died.  Swanigan, who had an unstable childhood before being adopted by former Boilermaker Roosevelt Barnes, spent two seasons at Purdue, declaring for the NBA draft following his sophomore year in 2017.  His NBA career ended in 2020 when he declined to enter the NBA Bubble due to personal reasons.

Swanigan, who struggled with his weight as a child, had started putting on weight again following his departure from the NBA.  At just 25 years old, he died of natural causes yesterday in a Fort Wayne hospital.  Hopefully he can find some peace now that seemingly eluded his life on Earth.

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By The Numbers – 23 Bonus!

In 1929, uniform numbers appeared on the back of baseball jerseys for the first time, thanks to the Indians and the Yankees. By 1937, numbers finally appeared across all uniforms, both home and away, across both major leagues. Since that time, 81 distinct numbers have been worn by members of the White Sox, while the Cubs boast 76.

Sunday, we continued our look at those players, picking our favorite, if not the best, player to wear each uniform number for both Chicago teams with #23.  Today, we take a special bonus look at player who famously wore #23 for other Chicago teams, making it possibly the most successful jersey number in town.

Michael Jordan was selected by the Chicago Bulls with the third overall pick in the 1984 NBA draft.  He would go on to become the greatest player in the history of the NBA, leading the Bulls to six titles, nabbing six Finals MVP awards, five MVP awards, three All Star Game MVPs, one Defensive Player of the Year award, and the 1985 Rookie of the Year award.  He was a 14-time All Star, 10-time first team All NBA, 9-time first team All-Defensive, 10-time scoring champion, 3-time steals leader, and 2-time Slam Dunk Contest champion.  A member of the NBA’s 50th and 75th Anniversary teams, his #23 has been retired by both the Bulls and the Miami Heat, for whom he never played.

Selected by the Bears him in the second round of the 2006 NFL Draft, Devin Hester quickly became one of, if not the, greatest return specialists in NFL history.  In his first 13 weeks as a professional, Hester recorded six return touchdowns, including three punt returns, two kickoff returns, and a then-record tying 108-yard touchdown from a missed field goal against the New York Giants.  As the Bears advanced to the Super Bowl, Hester became the first and only person to return the opening kick of the Super Bowl back for a touchdown.  2007 added an additional 6 touchdowns, followed by 2 quieter seasons.  In 2010, he added an additional 3 punt returns for touchdowns, followed by 2 punt returns and 1 kickoff return in 2011.  He added an additional punt return in 2013, his final season with the Bears.  This past September, in his first year of eligibility, Hester was nominated for the induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

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Connecting The City

Back in April, Nike announced they would be introducing City Connect uniforms to Major League Baseball, similar to their ColorRush and City uniforms for the NFL and NBA respectively, which reimagine a teams look and “celebrates the bond between each team and its city.”  The Red Sox were the first to both announce their uniforms and to wear them, a blue and yellow monstrosity based on the finish line of the Boston Marathon which they wore against the White Sox on the weekend prior to Patriot’s Day.

Yesterday, the White Sox released their design, which they will debut next weekend against the Tigers.  The jerseys and pants are mostly black, with white pinstripes and retain the olde English S to spell out Southside rather than Sox on the jersey.  The white sock patch, currently only seen on the black alternates, graces the left sleeve.

All things considered, this could have been much worse.  They retained the team’s color scheme, which has been a constant since the end of the 1990 season.  Assuming they only appear for the weekend series and then go away for the remainder of the season, I have no complaints.  In fact, one of the videos the team posted on Twitter showed the Southside logo on a sweatshirt that may end up in my closet one day.

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Winter Meetings Roundup

After a lot of build-up leading into the Winter Meetings, things were pretty quiet for the White Sox, with their only move being a trade with the Rangers, acquiring outfielder Nomar Mazara for minor leaguer Steele Walker.  Mazara, who will begin the 2020 season at age 24, has spent 4 years in the big leagues, putting up consistent, if unspectacular, numbers.  While the White Sox hope they can finally unlock the potential that led to Mazara signing what was, at the time, the largest international amateur bonus of all time, the unspectacular numbers he’s put up in Texas would still be a mass improvement over the production the team received in 2019.

Walker, the second round pick of the White Sox in 2018, is only one year younger than Mazara and has yet to progress past high A ball.  He was ranked as the #6 prospect in the Sox’s system by MLB Pipeline, but is probably years away from breaking through to the big leagues, if he ever does.

In other news, the June draft is moving from the MLB Network studios in New Jersey to Omaha, site of the College World Series.  The move allows for more potential draftees to be in attendance, putting on caps and making the television rounds like their counterparts in the NFL and NBA.