Bang! Mike Breen on 18 Years of Calling the NBA Finals

Mike Breen spent Memorial Day weekend strolling the beach with his golden retriever, Holly, and playing golf with two of his closest friends. Don’t get him wrong—he enjoyed himself. It’s just that spending the final days of May at home felt, well, a little strange for the NBA’s premier play-by-play man.

Breen loves basketball, loves the playoffs even more, and loves to call the most important games of the season most of all. But the Western Conference finals ended quickly this year—with the Denver Nuggets sweeping the Los Angeles Lakers—which meant Breen had a rare extended break before calling the 2023 NBA Finals for ABC/ESPN.

“Every series that I’ve ever called, I root for seven games, always,” Breen tells me after coming in from his beach walk last weekend. “I was disappointed—I would have loved to see Denver and L.A. go seven games. It’s the most exciting time, so the adrenaline is always flowing. But it was nice to go home.”

But he was nevertheless itching to get to Denver, to call his 18^th straight NBA Finals, alongside his longtime broadcast partners Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson. Breen was kind enough to interrupt his mini-vacation to chat with me about this wild postseason, the NBA’s new age of parity, and some of his favorite moments on the mic. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

GQ: You called your first Finals in 2006—the Heat vs. the Mavericks—and so much has changed in the NBA since then. What’s the biggest difference for you, whether it’s the game itself or your own role in covering it?

Mike Breen: There’s just so many more people around. When you walk into the arena for Game 1 every year, you can’t believe the magnitude of the event. You can’t believe how many people are there. So that part hasn’t changed. Obviously, the game has changed quite a bit in those years. More offensive game, obviously more three-point shooting, more pace to it, harder to defend today. That to me is one of the enjoyable things about covering the league, and how it’s constantly evolving. 

For me personally, I still get butterflies before Game 1 of every Finals. And I love that, because it constantly reminds me: This is a privilege and an honor to call the Finals. And I should have butterflies, because I want to do right by the players and the teams and the fans. 

What do you remember about that first Finals in 2006? 

I was so nervous. I was not ready for the magnitude of it. I thought, “Oh, it’s just going to be another big playoff game.” No, not even close. Before Game 1, I got a number of calls from an ESPN executive telling me, “You have to call this game differently than other games, because there’s a lot of casual fans who haven’t watched the NBA all season long. So you have to make sure that they know what’s going on.” And that was kind of pounded into my head. And the game started and I felt like I was explaining the most simple things. I’m going to exaggerate here, but I felt like I was saying things like, “Oh, that’s a foul; now he will go to something called the free-throw line, and while the defenders stand along the side, they can’t defend the shot.” So, I know I didn’t do that. But I felt like that, and thankfully Hubie Brown was my partner. And after the first timeout, Hubie sensed my anxiety. And, God bless him, he grabbed me by the arm during the first timeout, and he says to me, “Hey, kid, just call the game the way you always do, and we’ll be great.” And it’s amazing how that completely changed how I felt, because here I am next to one of the most brilliant basketball minds of all time, one of the great analysts of all time, And he just put me at ease. And after that I was fine.