Jim O'Donnell: Pending retirement of Marv Albert is like recalling the peach baskets
TRYING TO IMAGINE AN NBA without Marv Albert is like trying to imagine an NBA without basketballs.
But that's the way it will be next month when the 79-year-old sportscaster retires at the conclusion of the Eastern Conference Finals on TNT.
That final buzzer will bring to an end an NBA broadcast career that began in January 1963.
His debut was a Sunday afternoon matinee featuring the New York Knicks at Boston.
Marty Glickman, the Knicks incumbent radio play-by-play man, was delayed on a trip home from France.
An S-O-S went out to Albert, then 21 and an extraordinarily ambitious chap who had finessed his way into a shadow as Glickman's ace acolyte.
Albert and younger brother Steve Albert took a Saturday train to Boston from 178 Kensington, their Aufrichtig family home in Brooklyn's Manhattan Beach.
They hauled along an old Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder and spent much of the ride reading newspapers in prep for the sudden assignment.
In the end, the Celtics and Bill Russell won.
Fifty-eight years later, it's safe to say the NBA and sportscasting in America came out far ahead.
Albert's first regular No. 1 role was as voice of the NHL's N.Y. Rangers in 1965.
Two years later, when Glickman retired, he joined the traveling troupe of the Knicks.
That was just in time to first touch national celebrity as the energized "New Yaawk" voice of Red Holzman's championship NYK in 1970 and 1973.
The background would come in handy two decades later when Albert called the first five of the Michael Jordan-Phil Jackson NBA crowns on NBC.
That Bulls span also augured one of the many great Jordan trivia questions:
When His Royal Airness theatrically shrugged at his own shotmaking during Game 1 of the 1992 Finals vs. Portland, who was he shrugging at?
Answer: Albert, manning play-by-play center court at the United Center alongside Magic Johnson and Mike Fratello.
He missed the 1998 Finals after NBC fired him following a lurid trial involving charges of sexual assault pressed by a recurring paramour in suburban Washington, D.C.
The tale is long and sordid and perhaps would be unsurvivable professionally in 2021.
It ended mid-trial when Albert elected to accept a plea bargain of guilty to one misdemeanor and probation rather then risk an extended prison sentence if the jury found for the complainant.
(A remarkable interview by David Letterman during the first phase of Albert's imaging rehabilitation and mitigation is available by YouTubing "The Marv Albert Interview on Late Show, November 12, 1997." Letterman came through for his old chum.)
Two years later, Albert was back courtside for Turner and that's where things will conclude in June.
His confidence, his talent and his transcendent knack for making ordinary games entertaining put Marv Albert forever in the platinum tier of national sportscasters.
He could unfailingly make the peach baskets sparkle.
STREET-BEATIN': Major League Baseball '21 is making the no-hitter about as rare an individual TSA clearance at O'Hare. (When a Detroit Tiger pitches one on the road - as Spencer Turnbull did Tuesday night at Seattle - it suggests Bucket No. 3 on "The Grand Prize Game.") ...
NBC's wire-to-wearied coverage of "Alibi Bob" Baffert and the Preakness overlooked one enduring component of the thoroughbred racing industry: The game is designed to baffle. (No foolin' equals no fools which equals no inside gain.) ...
Will Zalatoris - the low-pulse blond cornstalk who finished a teasing second at The Masters - tees off in his first PGA Thursday at 12:58 p.m. (ESPN, ESPN+). In his only other majors start as a pro, he tied for sixth in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot last year. ...
The Jay Mariotti-Teddy Greenstein feud is back on, which makes for nice, niched summer stock. (Mariotti launched the newest broadside in his online column; Greenstein - long of the Chicago Tribune - is now dabbling in content startup for PointsBet.) ...
Bruce Wolf is kicking wires over a possible new media initiative. The career irreverent remains one of the four funniest men of the past four decades in Chicago sports media, along with Tim Weigel and Steve Rosenbloom. ...
Both WSCR-AM (670) and WMVP-AM (1000) had tiny upticks in the latest Nielsen Audios, which essentially covered April. (The stations could always merge, which would leave Chicago with only one struggling sports talker.) ...
And Ricky Hummel, on the gross media overkill about Justin Fields at the Bears rookie minicamp: "Are they sure Sid Luckman did it this way?"
• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.