You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television (35 page)

JOHN MADDEN HAD A
lot of favorite players, but there’s no doubt that at or near the top of the list was Brett Favre. So it’s fitting that in the four seasons that John and I did
Monday Night Football
together, one of our most unforgettable games centered around Favre.

It was late in the 2003 season, and the Packers were in Oakland. The Raiders were coming off a season in which they’d made it to the Super Bowl (losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) but they were already in steep decline. The Packers, per usual during the Favre era, were headed to the playoffs.

Whenever we’d meet with Brett before games, he was always engaging. You’d get him going and he was very expansive. There were meetings where you’d want to ask twenty questions or delve into a dozen topics, and you’d be there with him for an hour or more. Some answers would go twenty minutes. And John, of course, could talk football with him all day.

Before this game in Oakland, the Packers were staying at the Claremont Hotel in the Berkeley hills. We sat in a third-floor conference room for our meeting. I was sitting to Brett’s left and peering through a small circular window that looked out over San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge out in the distance. Favre was going on and on and on. And at one point, apparently I began to glaze over a little. Brett, who never missed very much, looked over at me, smiled and asked, “Hey, Al, are you still with me?”

Somehow I came up with this: “Brett, you have to understand something. Look over there. I can look just beyond you and I can see the Golden Gate Bridge. How many times in your life can you look at two American icons in one blink of an eye?”

We laughed, the meeting ended, and then Brett quietly went off to play nine holes of golf at a nearby course with Doug Pederson, the backup quarterback. Pederson had a cell phone with him, and after a couple of holes, it rang. It was Deanna Favre, looking for her husband, trying to reach him to tell him that his father had died. Irv Favre had been driving in Mississippi and suffered a heart attack behind the wheel.

Like any son who loved his father, I thought back to when my own dad had died. He’d been diagnosed with lung cancer in July 1982, and died on February 11, 1983. It was a six-month, straight-downhill deterioration and I was in denial the whole way. Still, when somebody dies like that, you have time to accept it and process it—even though I never really completely did. When somebody dies suddenly, I don’t know how you react to that. Here’s Brett and there was no chance to say good-bye. You’re the son and you’re two thousand miles away. I remember thinking when we heard it,
What’s going to happen? Will Brett go home? What will he do?

In our scene set that night, I asked John what he expected would happen. He didn’t know because there was almost nothing to compare it to. Nobody knew.

We know what happened. Mike Sherman, the Packers coach, left it up to Brett. And Brett decided to play. And not only did he play, but he turned in one of those one-for-the-ages magical performances. The numbers: 22 of 30 for 399 yards, and four touchdowns. Watching it live made you rub your eyes in disbelief. It seemed like no matter where he threw the ball, it got caught.

One thing I always knew when I was paired with John in 2002—the ride was going to be a lot of fun. I’ll say! We worked together for seven seasons—four on Monday nights and three on Sunday nights. If you were to ask me my favorite telecast with John, without hesitation it would be Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa following the 2008 season. The Pittsburgh Steelers rallied late, driving ninety-three yards for the winning touchdown, to beat the Arizona Cardinals in what many people felt was the best Super Bowl ever. It might be my all-time favorite telecast. Fred Gaudelli, Drew Esocoff, and our entire production crew were as good as the game. They didn’t miss a shot. You name it—it was brilliantly covered. And I never felt more in sync with a partner than I did that day with John, who as usual, was right on top of everything.

After the game, I wished I would have relished it even more. Why? Because two and a half months later, John would retire. The announcement was sudden and unexpected. I was shocked. John summed it up in quintessential fashion—“It’s time.” There was one thing, though, that
wasn’t
shocking. John Madden went out on top.

IN 2002, THE SAME
year John Madden came to ABC, the network made another acquisition: the National Basketball Association. After more than a decade on NBC, the NBA’s new television deal meant the Finals would air on ABC—but the majority of games—in both the regular season and playoffs—would be televised on ESPN.

After the first season of the new deal, NBA commissioner David Stern, a man never known to suppress his opinions, was not thrilled with his new broadcast partner. He felt that there was nothing that distinguished the ABC games from the ESPN games. One of the reasons was that Mark Shapiro, ESPN’s executive vice president for programming and production, was in charge of the presentation of both packages. Stern had no use for Shapiro, and no interest in dealing with him. The commissioner let it be known to both the ABC and ESPN top brass that he wanted the ABC games to have a special sheen—similar to how
Monday Night Football
on ABC was presented. And one of the several ways he thought that might be accomplished was by bringing me in as the play-by-play voice for the ABC games.

Now, when ABC had originally made the NBA deal, they were contractually obligated to offer me the opportunity to do the games—it was written into my deal that I would get a first look on any new package. It was clear to me that ESPN was going to be the dominant force, so I didn’t express much interest. And to top it off, they made me an offer that basically said, “We don’t want you.” But now in the summer of 2003, David Stern had communicated to Bob Iger at Disney, and George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN, that he would like me to be a part of the package. In September, an offer came to me—I would announce a half dozen regular season games, several early-round playoff games, and then the Finals. It would be my first experience doing NBA games since my ill-fated and abbreviated few weeks with Chick Hearn and the Lakers, and my first time doing basketball games on a regular basis since UCLA in the mid-seventies. This time, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And to enhance the production end, they hired Drew Esocoff, who’d already wowed people in his three years on
Monday Night Football,
to direct the NBA games. I was excited, but also, having been away from basketball for so long, I had a degree of trepidation.

One thing I insisted on in my contract was that I would report to Mike Pearl, then the executive producer of ABC Sports, and a man who had been front-and-center in creating the NBA template at Turner Broadcasting. Even though Mark Shapiro was overseeing the coverage, I didn’t want to deal with him. I had dealt with him before, and would come away feeling that with Shapiro, to put it mildly, I couldn’t trust what I was being told. One example came in 1998 when he asked me to serve on a select, blue-ribbon panel that would be limited to a “handful” of people who would choose the greatest athletes, coaches, and events for ESPN’s SportsCentury project. I later learned that this so-called select panel included well over a hundred media members, mainly sportswriters, who it would turn out had only a cursory role in determining the actual final results, which I also learned had been basically predetermined by Shapiro and ESPN. It was a complete waste of my time, just a transparent attempt to generate publicity for the project by including writers from all over the country. Ironically, Shapiro had gotten his first big break in television from my brother, David, at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. While I had followed my dreams in the booth, David had become one of sports television’s top producers. And in 1992, he had hired Shapiro as one of his production assistants.

Before I knew it, suddenly, it was November. I was in the middle of the
Monday Night Football
season, my second with John Madden. And now the NBA season had started as well, but I still didn’t have a partner. The first game on my schedule would be Christmas Day with the Lakers hosting the Houston Rockets at Staples Center. I needed to get in some practice, so Mike Pearl and I arranged for me to do a couple of practice games at Staples Center on nights when the Lakers were playing. We’d have three or four cameras at our disposal, so it was almost like doing a real game, except the broadcast was just going to a control room and a tape machine. Mark Jackson, the former All-Star point guard, had just retired after sixteen seasons in the NBA, and was living in Santa Monica and looking to get into broadcasting. So Mark came down to Staples Center and he and I did a Lakers-Knicks game. Not great, but okay. When I rode with Mike Pearl back to his hotel, I said to him, “Mark is going to be very good someday. He’s just very green right now. And I haven’t done a game in over twenty years—and I’m green. I think the best scenario is for me to work with somebody with a lot of broadcasting experience.”

(Jackson would unretire before season’s end to join the Rockets, and ironically, I’d call a playoff game that he played in for Houston.)

Now I was starting to get nervous because Christmas was fast approaching, and I needed a lot more work. Fortunately—at least fortunately for me—there was an NBA team three thousand miles away that had faltered right out of the gate. The Orlando Magic had started 1-10, and their coach, Doc Rivers, had gotten fired.

Rivers had played thirteen seasons in the NBA, and had gotten into broadcasting when he retired. Then, in 1999, he’d been hired by the Magic—with no prior coaching experience—and promptly won Coach of the Year honors, leading an overachieving group to a 41-41 season. However, in 2003–04, Rivers’s team got off to that awful start.

Mike Pearl, who had worked with Doc at Turner Sports, called him the day after he was fired to gauge his interest in returning to broadcasting sooner than later. A few days later, Doc was on a plane to Los Angeles to do a practice game with me. And right away, it was obvious—it just worked. I was better with him. He was comfortable with me. Often, it takes time to build chemistry with a partner. Once in a great while, if you’re lucky, it clicks from the start.

As Rivers’s deal was being negotiated, Pearl asked me if I wanted Doc to come back for another practice game.

“But he’s living in Orlando,” I said. “I need as much practice as I can get, but I don’t want to ask him to fly all the way across the country to do this again.”

“Won’t be a problem,” says Mike. “If it will make you guys better, Doc will do it.” And he did. We actually did
two
more practice games. It was an early sign about what kind of a terrific partner Doc Rivers would become.

We made our on-the-air debut on Christmas Day. Yao Ming and the Rockets beat the Lakers, 99–87. We did five more regular season games, including Cleveland rookie LeBron James’s first visit to Madison Square Garden. And we had a blast. Doc and I both love golf. He used to play for the Clippers so he knew Los Angeles. We shared a number of favorite restaurants—and agreed that our all-time favorite was Toscana in Brentwood.

So much of the spotlight that season was on the Lakers, who’d won three of the last four titles, and had acquired a pair of future Hall of Famers, Karl Malone and Gary Payton. Some people were expecting them to win seventy games. Instead, they were good, but certainly not dominant. Plus, this was the year that Kobe Bryant had charges of sexual assault in Colorado hanging over his head, and was flying back and forth to court dates in Colorado. And, with Phil Jackson’s contract expiring, and with his health of some concern, questions about his future hung over the team. There was a lot going on with the Lakers—good and bad—and it made for great television. The Lakers finished the regular season 56-26 and Doc and I went to Houston to call the fourth game of the Lakers-Rockets first-round playoff series. On the day before the game, Doc called my hotel room and wanted to talk.

He walked in and said, “First, I can’t tell you how much fun I’m having doing these games. It’s really been great. Exactly what I needed. And I know I’ve told you that there are only a couple of coaching jobs that I would even think about considering.”

“So which job are you taking?”

“Well, Danny Ainge called, and the Celtics have offered me the job, and—”

“Doc, that’s great.”

I knew that coaching was still in Doc’s veins. I was just hoping he’d hold off for a couple of seasons.

Boston needed an answer quickly. Doc accepted right there in Houston. So long, podner.

Still, ABC agreed to let Doc work the rest of the 2004 playoffs. The Lakers beat Houston in five games. Then they met San Antonio in the Western Conference semifinals. The Spurs won the first two games at home. The Lakers won the next two in Los Angeles. Game 5 in San Antonio was a prime time Thursday night game on ABC.

At halftime, I walked out through the tunnel to use the men’s room next to the Lakers locker room. As I’m walking in, the owner of the Lakers, Dr. Jerry Buss, is walking out.

“Hey Jerry, what’s your coach going to do?” I asked him.

He rolled his eyes, and with a hint of exasperation answered, “I don’t know. You know Phil . . .”

And then he added something totally unexpected.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though. If your guy hadn’t taken that Boston job, he’d have been
my
guy!”

I said, “
Really?”

He said, “Oh, yes.”

Then, as I walked back to our courtside broadcast table, I only had one thought.
Do I tell Doc what I just heard?

I sat down and realized I couldn’t hold back. So about thirty seconds before we go back on the air for the second half, I say to Doc, “Listen, you won’t believe this. I just ran into Jerry Buss and he said that if Phil steps away, the job would have been yours.”

Doc looked straight ahead. He later told me he was thinking about the beach, playing golf at the Bel-Air Country Club, and ordering his favorite two-sauce pasta at Toscana. And then he said with a twinkle in his voice, “You know, I’m not sure if the ink on that Celtics contract is
totally
dry.”