http://www.sportsfrog.com/jon.jpg

Fuck yeah.

http://www.sacbee.com/100/story/38927.html


Former NBA guard Jon Barry will provide analysis and studio commentary this season for ESPN. Excellent choice. Barry won't hesitate to call out a player for dogging it.

yes i love it. so what is the dick weasel cast - JB gonna look like this year?

AWESOME NEWS!!!!

JB in the hizzy!!! No look commentary will be invented!

Damn, I thought JB was going to be in the studio.

Looks like he's doing games with Walton/Tirico.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2006-10-22-sports-on-tv_x.htm


Jackson, Barry join ABC/ESPN for NBA coverage

ABC/ESPN will today announce a wide-ranging overhaul of its NBA coverage, which starts Nov. 1. It includes new faces, roster cuts and a new No. 1 analyst.

ABC/ESPN's coverage of the NBA hasn't matched the panache of TNT, which deploys established stars such as Charles Barkley and Doug Collins as the league's other national TV carrier. But at least the Disney outlets aren't standing pat in what Norby Williamson, ESPN executive vice president, calls a "big turnover."

On tap:

•Mark Jackson becomes ABC's lead analyst, replacing Hubie Brown. He'll team with Mike Breen, who last season became the network's lead NBA play-by-play announcer when Al Michaels left to work NFL games at NBC.

Jackson, who played with seven teams in a 17-year NBA career before retiring in 2004, was a bright spot among the analysts used in ABC's studio show last year. ABC will drop one of those analysts, Scottie Pippen.

Jackson, like Fox NFL announcer Joe Buck, will assume a rare double duty. ABC's pregame show will move out of the studio and air from the game site. Jackson, like Buck on Fox's NFL games, will appear on the pregame, then announce the game action.

Williamson says the ABC pregame show will be more focused on being on-site hype for the game itself rather than a gabfest about overall NBA issues: "Look at our Monday Night Football model; that's philosophically what we're thinking about."

•Brown still gets a pretty big role. He'll become ESPN's lead NBA analyst, teaming with Breen, and also work with Mike Tirico as ABC's backup team on regionalized coverage or doubleheaders.

What's with Tirico? It's understandable that ESPN's Monday Night Football announcer can find time to join ESPN's NBA coverage for its Nov. 9 start. But this guy must run on batteries: The Detroit Tigers season ticketholder flew from Dallas, where he prepped for tonight's New York Giants-Cowboys game, to the St. Louis Cardinals' win in Detroit on Saturday, then flew back Sunday. Like he doesn't see enough sports.

Brown might yet return to the top to work ABC's NBA Finals in a three-man booth with Breen and Jackson. Says ESPN's Williamson: "We'll make some decisions when we get to the playoffs."

•Jon Barry, who ended a 14-year NBA career in retiring from Houston last season, will team with Bill Walton and Tirico on ESPN games. Barry, son of Hall of Famer Rick Barry, replaces Steve Jones. Jones played with Walton at Portland three decades ago and called games with him at ABC and, earlier, on NBC — serving as a sensible guy and the perfect foil for Walton's sometimes otherworldly sensibilities.

ESPN's Williamson calls Jones, a longtime Trail Blazers announcer, "a true professional and great human being." But he also notes Barry is especially "relevant, having just retired."

•Other new faces who'll pop up all over ESPN's various outlets and shows but aren't expected to call games include ex-NBA players Jamal Mashburn, Allan Houston and Kiki Vandeweghe.

Out: Paul Silas and B.J. Armstrong.

No look commentary will be invented!

LOL, Al Micheals has been doing that for years. He never watches the game.

Al would rather tell that human interest story that no one watching the game is really interested in.

And I take issue with:


Walton's sometimes otherworldly sensibilities.

When have Walton's sensibilities been anything but otherworldly?

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/sports_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_83_5133729,00.html


Tomasson: Barry may have found his calling

A little thing called an NBA career got in the way. But Jon Barry figures he finally has arrived where he thought he might end up.

In the eighth grade, Barry took a speech class. It called for him to make a presentation.

"I decided to do a sports broadcast," Barry said. "I wrote a regular newscast for sports and read it into the camera. My teacher gave me an A-plus. I remembered that. I always kept that in the back of my mind."

As an NBA player, Barry didn't have a lot more than C-plus talent. But the guard lasted 14 seasons, much of it on grit.

When Barry, 37, was waived by Houston in March, the Nuggets, whom he played for in 2003-04, tried to sign him for the home stretch. But Barry, battered from years of diving for loose balls, decided it was time to hang up his high-tops and get into broadcasting.

It hasn't taken him long to make an impact.

Barry went through summer auditions and ESPN liked his stuff. The network hired him to serve as an analyst this season for 37 games, pairing him with play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico and analyst Bill Walton, mostly on late-night games Wednesdays and Fridays.

It's like father, like son, part two. Barry is the son of Hall of Famer Rick Barry, who also moved into broadcasting.

"Talk about following in my footsteps," said Rick Barry, who lives in Colorado Springs. "He's followed in my footsteps in two careers."

When he was a youngster, Jon Barry followed his father around when he did broadcasting work. It rubbed off on him.

Let it be known, though, Rick Barry's style didn't completely rub off on Jon. His father could have been known as Rip Barry.

"I won't have that pedal-to-the- medal (approach)," said Jon, who averaged 5.7 points in his NBA career. "I think there's a tactful way to point out that a player made a mistake."

Rick Barry offers this assessment: "I was brutally honest. Jon is just honest."

Jon Barry won't sugarcoat it. When Tirico asked him on the air Wednesday what Detroit was doing wrong early in a game at Sacramento, Barry said, "Everything." He added the Pistons' "jump shooting has been left in Salt Lake City," where the team played two nights earlier.

ABC/ESPN has such confidence in Jon Barry, the network broke up the longtime team of Walton and Steve Jones, who had developed a unique bantering style dating to the 1990s with Walton, who said it was the "decision of the powers" to replace Jones but clearly has embraced Jon.

Walton long has been good friends with Rick Barry. He met the son when Jon was 5.

"Jon grew up thinking for himself, questioning authority and having an opinion," Walton said.

Barry often uses that opinion on Walton, known to take hyperbole to another stratosphere. During a game last week, he called Walton a victim of having attended "too many Grateful Dead concerts."

Walton has no problem with the banter. He pointed out in a phone interview he has "not been to enough Grateful Dead concerts."

"I'm having a fabulous time working with Jon," Walton said. "He's incredibly bright, quick-witted, tremendously analytical and he has a sense of the beauty of basketball."

Rick Barry is also proud of Jon. He likes the "humor and the insight" he provides.

Rick Barry was a top playoff analyst for CBS by the mid-1970s even though he didn't retire as a player until 1980. In the 1980s, he was a pioneering analyst for Turner Sports, when cable began to become a key outlet for NBA games.

Rick Barry, who now hosts an NBA show on Sirius Satellite Radio, has an idea for a future gig. He said he recently pitched to ABC Sports executive Mike Pearl the idea of Rick and Jon doing a broadcast of a game involving San Antonio, which features Brent Barry.

No word yet on whether ABC will let Jon be honest about his brother and Rick be brutally honest about his son.

He's way better than Walton, but who isn't.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061117/SPORTS0105/611170388/1127/rss13


Shock's Cash will make history as NBA analyst

Detroit Shock forward Swin Cash has become the first active WNBA player to serve as an NBA analyst.

Cash will make her debut on ESPN's Kia NBA Shootaround pregame show at 7:30 tonight.

She will report from the studio for ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNEWS throughout the season. Cash previously was an analyst for ESPN's coverage of the 2005 NCAA women's basketball tournament.

Cash has won two WNBA championships (2003, '06) with the Shock. She was the second overall pick in the 2002 draft out of the University of Connecticut.

Hmm... I wonder why Swin Cash was picked. It couldn't have been because she is hot, is it?

Why wouldn't they pick someone like Deanna Nolan?

Swintayla (the name means "astounding woman")

http://www.imgspeakers.com/_images/speakers/Cash_Swin.jpg

wow, i saw Cash on the floor at the Palace during the Hornet's game. i guess she was researching?