Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 9, 1991 TAG: 9102090075
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
Bob Costas has become the signature voice of NBC Sports, and Sunday's All-Star outing (1 p.m., WSLS Channel 10) at the Charlotte Coliseum will show why.
Costas will do the pregame, game, halftime and postgame. It is likely he will leave concession sales to someone else, but who knows? After all, his weekly "Costas Coast to Coast" radio show - yes, he will do that Sunday night - is appropriately named.
Costas, 38, hasn't done pro basketball play-by-play in a decade, but his pinch-hitting for Marv Albert on the game - Albert's mother died Tuesday - is no stretch.
Now primarily a sports studio and late-night talk show host, Costas did a few college basketball calls for NBC over the years, as recently as 1986.
"To tell you the truth, the play-by-play I miss is baseball play-by-play," said Costas, who continues to mourn the Peacock's loss of the national pastime. "But there are certain things you do miss when you're the pregame guy.
"You miss the energy of being at the site, the crowd, the atmosphere. You miss the feel of the game to a certain extent."
Costas, in his Charlotte hotel Friday, said even he is wondering how rusty he will be. Then, calling an NBA All-Star Game isn't like doing Game 7 of the World Series.
"In a game like this, you use the crowd as part of the play-by-play," said Costas, who, with analyst Mike Fratello, will certainly form the shortest team in NBA history. "You use the sound of the ball bouncing off the court, the grunts and groans under the basket.
"You don't try to use descriptions as much as you write captions. And you try to do some overview stuff. For instance, when Clyde Drexler's at the free-throw line, maybe you talk about what the acquisitions of Danny Ainge and Walter Davis have meant to Drexler's Portland team."
Costas was scheduled to be one of NBC's two NBA play-by-play men this season, until the network couldn't pry away a cable anchor - Hannah Storm of CNN or John Saunders of ESPN - to work the pregame show with former Lakers coach Pat Riley.
"I knew it was the right decision [moving to the NBA studio] clearly from the first moment," Costas said. "It was obvious that if you picked one guy to do NBA play-by-play, it had to be Marv.
"The NBA to Marv is like baseball is to me. He's a natural. We have Dick Enberg, who is great on basketball play-by-play, and Don Criqui, who's done a lot of basketball. But we didn't have many people with that same kind of background as a studio host."
So, Enberg was given the NBA game-calling role with Albert, but Enberg was unavailable to work Sunday's game because he is in Bulgaria for the European Figure Skating Championships.
That left Costas with another assignment, but it's about time he is getting to call a good pro basketball game. He started his professional career, at 22, by calling the Spirits of St. Louis in the ABA in 1975. He also did Chicago Bulls games in 1980-81, the pre-Michael Jordan days.
Those were the days before the nation recognized his name, before he started calling network baseball, before his wit and wisdom had pushed him to two Emmy Awards and a pair of National Sportscaster of the Year awards.
Costas is a success not only because he's one of the best at what he does. He has become a favorite of many viewers because he realizes that sport and entertainment are one and the same.
A native New Yorker transplanted to the Midwest - he lives in suburban St. Louis with his wife and two children - Costas has managed to juggle fame while dodging overexposure.
One of Costas' strengths is that he can be anecdotal without becoming boring.
"My fondest memory of the Spirits came in April 1975 in the ABA playoffs," Costas said, realizing it wasn't too difficult to select the good times from his days with that franchise. "The Spirits had lost 11 consecutive regular-season games to the Nets, and then lost Game 1 of the playoffs to them.
"Then, they somehow came back and beat the Nets four straight. The deciding moment, Dr. J. committed a turnover for the Nets with 20 seconds left, and so the Spirits had the ball, down one, with about 15 seconds left.
"Then, Freddie Lewis dribbled the clock down and then hit a turnaround jumper at the buzzer. The locker room was bedlam."
The Spirits went on to lose in the next round to the Kentucky Colonels. The ABA became history after a merger with the NBA.
If Costas survived the ABA, he'll make it through Sunday's workload.
by CNB