Catching up with Celtics broadcasters Drew Carter and Brian Scalabrine at the start of their first full season together
In his first year, Carter called only the road games, while Mike Gorman handled the home broadcasts.
When the Celtics and NBC Sports Boston were seeking a play-by-play voice before last season to split time with and eventually succeed beloved longtime voice Mike Gorman, analyst Brian Scalabrine auditioned with, by his estimate, a dozen broadcasters.
He knew within five minutes that Drew Carter should be the choice.
“The chemistry just clicked right away,’’ said Scalabrine, who is now in his 11th season as a full-timer on Celtics broadcasts. “That’s not to take away from others who auditioned. But I knew Drew was the right guy almost immediately.”
“It’s nice of Scal to say that,” said Carter in a separate conversation, “because we met about two minutes before we did our audition.”
It may have taken some Celtics fans a bit longer to recognize that Carter was the right choice, through no fault of his own. In his first year, he called only the road games, while Gorman, who fittingly wrapped up his 43-year career as the Celtics’ television voice with a championship, handled the home broadcasts.
Last season was, of course, about saluting Gorman, savoring listening to the voice of Celtic generations for one more go-round, and giving him the proper sendoff.
It was a tricky circumstance sometimes to be the new guy behind the microphone for half of the games, which Carter acknowledges.
“Walking around with Mike and hearing people tell him that he’s the only Celtics voice they’ve ever heard is kind of intimidating,” said Carter, who said Gorman was extremely supportive of him.
“I know how much the team means to people. I know how much the broadcast and specifically the announcers mean to people, and the understandable reverence fans here have for Mike and Tommy [Heinsohn].
“I wanted to do right by Mike and do right by the fans. When I’d hear some of the criticism on sports radio or whatever, I’d start to worry if I was getting in the way of fans’ enjoyment. For someone like Mike to have basically a 100 percent approval rating is miraculous in this industry. I don’t think that happens very often. So at times I was definitely feeling the weight of following him last year.”
Through the first couple of games this season, there’s a good-natured rapport between Carter and Scalabrine that became smoother, albeit with fits and stops because of the inconsistent schedule, over the course of last season.
“I feel a lot more comfortable,” said Carter. “I would say I feel more confident. I feel like I know what I’m doing compared to how I felt going into it last year. We’re going to be in a rhythm right away as opposed to last year where we would do five games in a row and then not see each other for 2½ weeks.”
Scalabrine said the long season, and the quirks and beats of the broadcasters that become more familiar to fans over time, should allow for some recurring jokes and topics this year.
“The only thing I think we could add is some running jokes that the fans are in on,” said Scalabrine, “since we’ll be calling every game together and that stuff can come into play more.”
During the Celtics’ win over the Wizards Thursday night, Carter got off a funny line along those lines, asking his broadcast partner whether Cooper Flagg, the Maine-born freshman phenom at Duke, with whom Scalabrine has closely worked, might be an eventual fit with the Wizards, “since you’re his legal guardian.”
“Our ages seem to come up a lot,” said Scalabrine. “Drew is 27 and I’m 46, I was closer to Mike in the way that I was raised, because the generation gap is way different now.
“Drew doesn’t feel like a little brother to me. Not at all. It feels like he’s my oldest nephew or something, where you’re like, ‘Oh, this guy’s great.’ You go to his sporting events and you razz him. He razzes you, you tell him he doesn’t know anything, he tells you you’re old. It’s very much like that.”
Carter said one of the things he learned last year is to appreciate the broad scope of the season, and not to make a moment seem more important than it is.
“Not everything needs to feel like the biggest deal in the world,” he said. “When you’re doing 82 games, you need to measure what’s extremely significant and what’s extremely exciting and what is more run of the mill.
“I think last year being my first year in the NBA, I didn’t do a great job of that. I have obviously watched a ton of NBA and been to a lot of NBA games, but it was my first time being up close and personal on a consistent basis, and what these guys can do is jaw-dropping. It took me a little bit to get used to that last year and settle in and chill out, for lack of a better term.
“People are flipping their TV on, it’s a Tuesday night, and it’s cold outside and they want to hang out with people who feel like their friend. It is just different from a national telecast where you probably use more of your prep. You’re probably trying to introduce these teams and these characters to a fan, to an audience that doesn’t really know. Whereas with the Celtics, it’s useless for me to say that Jayson Tatum went to Duke. Everybody knows that, you know?”
“I’ll call him out in a second if he does something like that,” said Scalabrine with a laugh. “That’s just that’s the kind of relationship we have.”
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