Craig Ackerman and Matt Bullard were the only announcers in the NBA that did not open coverage with a Kobe Bryant tribute last night. Thanks to the wonders of International League pass I watched every Kobe tribute video today, from each team's commentators' perspective. The Rockets made no change to their normal presentation and Ackerman even sounded like a hype man when he was previewing Austin Rivers’ extremely emotional interview about Kobe’s passing. When they came back from commercial, they left it to Cayleigh Griffin to take on the hard task of delivering the Kobe tribute. That’s pretty weak of the Rockets and the pair of them, especially Bull who would surely have had some sort of personal experience that he could have shared. Some of the other broadcast teams were pretty quick to move onto the game, like Orlando, Miami and San Antonio, which all acknowledged Kobe’s death as a tragedy but said the show must go on. Chicago opened by making it about MJ, but then Stacey King provided some lengthy insights into his experiences with Kobe, while Dallas’ game preview started with a long monologue about Kobe’s impact on the league. Others were extremely emotional. Minnesota's main announcer sounded like he was about to cry in the intro, they talked about Kobe at length, then for some inexplicable reason Karl-Anthony Towns was given a microphone. The Timberwolves’ tribute video was on point though. Sacramento's coverage hit hard too. It was tough watching Luke Walton's interview, he was clearly hurting and battling to keep it together. Hopefully Houston’s video team is working on something special for when the team gets back from this road trip or maybe the next game because that game presentation today seemed callous and uncaring. They should have done a lot better. and Kobe should have been front and centre. I get that the Lakers are a hated rival but show some respect. The question is do Ackerman and Bullard actually have the capacity to better? Kobe was a legit all time great and Bull didn't even mention his name, while all Ackerman did was excitedly preview the Kobe Bryant "news". Kobe deserves a lot more respect than those two idiots gave him yesterday. Extremely disappointing from the Rockets organisation as a whole.
The Rockets played Sunday afternoon in Denver. they covered it for almost the entire game and the Rockets went through public grieving two days in a row.
Yep, I looked at that too and they opened coverage the exact same way. Didn't mention Kobe even though the news broke well before tipoff.
What exactly is dumb about it? Kobe was an iconic figure and the Rockets doing as little as possible to pay him his respects is gross.
The announcers don’t produce the show. Their OB truck and director is in charge of any pre-game packages such as a tribute. I thought Bull and Craig did remarkably well on Sunday against Denver. I don’t know what feed you were watching but ‘they didn’t mention Kobe’ is just absolutely false.
I was referring to the intro only for the Denver game. I haven't had a chance to watch the entire thing as it tipped off at 3:30AM here
Dude, Craig was almost crying on the air during the game in Denver. Bull and him could hardly keep it together.
Really? They talked about him after the first time out lol. They had a graphic, sad music and players crying on the screen.
