Kevin Harlan: In-game coach interviews don't enhance broadcasts
Kevin Harlan is not high on in-game interviews of coaches, and he came down hard on the idea.
"They all look really uncomfortable, and to be honest I think they look bad," the TNT/CBS broadcaster told Damon Amendolara on The DA Show on Tuesday. "I don't think it enhances the broadcast."
Mere hours later, Harlan's colleague Allie LaForce was the latest recipient of a curt, cold response from Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who notoriously despises the in-game TV requirements.
"I think it is his way, to be honest, in the wake of Craig Sager no longer being on our sideline … he made the Sager thing fun and enjoyable," Harlan said.
"And now he has so much hatred for the fact that he's got to do this, as a lot of coaches do ... rarely do you get any kind of introspective, any kind of depth, any kind of real meat to chew on when they deliver the answer. And I have not worked with a single sideline reporter, at CBS or at Turner, that has not brought this up and said 'I'm scared to death to ask him a question.' ... It almost serves as this gigantic cloud over every broadcast."
Since the 2007-08 season, the NBA's national TV package with TNT and ESPN/ABC has required two in-game coach interviews - the road team at the beginning of the second quarter, and home at start of the fourth.
As a veteran broadcaster, Harlan understands the job the sideline reporters have, but doesn't feel the short interviews add any value. He also said that it's not just Popovich who abhors them.
"When you've got 30 seconds to shove it in?" he said. "The coach doesn’t look good, I think it's a bump in the road that can be avoided, and I think there's a better way to go about it ... the coaches do not like it. Not one of them. They all detest it. They're just not as cranky about it as Pop is."
- With h/t to AA