Years ago, John Andariese and I entered The Garden, where that night he called a Knicks game with Marv Albert.
When we stepped inside the media entrance on 33rd Street, the security guard at the door gave Andariese a big, warm hello. Andariese returned it — calling the man by his first name.
That’s the way it was at Madison Square Garden, not just for Andariese but especially for Andariese, who was what’s known as a mensch, a generous soul as pleased to know you as you were to know him.
He big-timed no one; he was incapable. Newly hired MSG Network production assistants were able to tell their friends that John Andariese “the Knicks announcer” knew them by name; they even swapped basketball talk.
Such is read as unsurprising to those who knew Andariese, and what MSG Network listeners, TV and radio, could sense without having met him.
Then one day Jimmy Dolan’s daddy, enriched by his merciless cable TV monopolies and sold-at-ransom sports programming, bought Madison Square Garden for his son. It all began to change, first slowly, as if perhaps the Garden’s longtime, proud employees were becoming slightly paranoid, then rapidly, as if all the new bosses under Dolan were excessively paranoid.
Certain “restrictions” were placed on MSG Network personnel, including Andariese, who no longer were permitted to speak with those who covered Garden teams or its network without the conversation being “monitored” by a Garden operative.
Andariese and I continued to speak — we held comically clandestine telephone conversations — but we refused to play by such rules. For his protection, I never again quoted him unless it was something he said on the air.
That’s what the Garden, under Dolan, did to and for John Andariese, among many others.
At a Knicks game late in 2012, Andariese, 73, just retired and showing symptoms of growing dementia, was honored with the Dick McGuire Knicks Legacy Award.
As Andariese and his family walked to center court from their seats, close to Dolan’s, Dolan never made a move to congratulate or even acknowledge him. Same after the ceremony. When Andariese returned to his seat, Dolan just sat there.
Andariese’s family was furious with Dolan’s complete disregard for a man who had so well served the Garden, its customers, cable subscribers, radio listeners and employees for over 35 years.
And so, two years later, while that was still infuriating to Andariese’s family, what happened wasn’t surprising.
The Basketball Hall of Fame had selected Andariese as the winner of the Curt Gowdy Award for broadcasting excellence. Andariese, by then forced to use a walker, was in the house for a Knicks game — again seated near Dolan — when he was shown on the big screen as per his Hall of Fame honor. An ovation began, then grew. Andariese was moved. Dolan didn’t move. Again, he couldn’t be bothered.
After all, it wasn’t as if Andariese was worth Dolan’s time and attention; it’s not as if Andariese was misanthropic Latrell Sprewell, whom Dolan last month brought in to sit next to him and share televised laughs in a childish, transparent public-relations response to the Charles Oakley fiasco.
Andariese’s chiseled-in-Garden-granite nickname, “Johnny Hoops,” was bestowed by Albert, who has a knack for making fun ones — Sal “Red Light” Messina, Mike “Czar of the Telestrator” Fratello — stick. The Albert-Andariese team, on radio, then TV, for 20 years was how we best knew and will remember Andariese.
Yet just as the fear of Dolan last year inspired an MSG Network special that tracked the best 21st-century Knicks moments to ignore the run led by Jeremy Lin (the only truly special moments), Albert, dumped by Dolan, was ignored in MSG Network’s memorial for Andariese — as if viewers are too thick to know better — before Tuesday’s home game against the Pacers.
We saw clips of Andariese with MSG Network folks current and past: Mike Breen, Al Trautwig, Greg Gumbel. Albert? Nothing more than a glimpse of him in a group shot. Trautwig, who narrated, eulogized Andariese as “Johnny Hoops,” but didn’t — or couldn’t — say who gave him that name.
In the end Tuesday, no one on MSG Network could say or show that the Marv Albert-John Andariese team, for 20 years, was the best thing The Garden had going for it and for us, Latrell Sprewell included.
Zeke’s idea of ‘fun’ is strange
Unless our eyes are again lying to us, Cowboys star running back Ezekiel Elliott, while attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dallas, twice held a beer can in one hand while trying to pull down a woman’s blouse with his other hand. He succeeded in nearly fully exposing one breast, then both, the woman’s bra barely remaining in place.
Afterward, a spokesperson for Elliott said it was “all in good fun.” Elliott, an Ohio State man, has assault charges pending against him in Ohio, after an alleged second attack against the same woman, last year.
Despite the NFL’s newly toughened policies against such conduct (aka criminal conduct), the NFL, as of Thursday, five days since Elliott’s “good fun,” still had not even publicly stated it considers Elliott’s public conduct to be “inappropriate,” let alone despicable.
But above and beyond the NFL, why hasn’t Elliott been arrested for, at the least, lewd public conduct, and at the worst, sexual assault?
Francesa a No. 1 seed in baffled bracket
It’s not so much that Mike Francesa, with his standard authoritative conviction, declared that Gonzaga would not be a one-seed (it, of course, was), it’s more a question of how someone with such self-professed wisdom — especially come NCAA Tournament time — could insist that the Zags wouldn’t.
Still, my favorite was when “Let’s Be Honest” and Chris Russo hosted a Sunday night selection show, concluding with praise for the tournament selection committee for a great job.
The next day, after newspapers carried detailed accounts of the committee’s glaring mistakes, they ripped the committee for incompetence.
CBS’ first telecast of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday was just 15 game minutes old when CBS conclusively proved it doesn’t care with what statistics it distracts us, as long as it does so a lot.
With play on and Notre Dame up by four over Princeton, a busy graphic gave the modest season stats of Notre Dame’s Rex Pflueger, headlined, “All Career Highs.”
A previous CBS graphic had noted that Pflueger is a sophomore. Collect them all, kids; trade them with your friends!