Kevin Harlan has been everywhere for the better part of three decades.<\/p>\n
NFL Sundays and Mondays for CBS and Westwood One. Tuesday nights for TNT\u2019s NBA coverage. March Madness marathons that stretched deep into the tournament. The 65-year-old broadcaster was basketball and football\u2019s iron man, calling games almost year-round without a break.<\/p>\n
Not anymore.<\/p>\n
Harlan is intentionally scaling back his NBA workload as he transitions from TNT to Amazon Prime Video, choosing a reduced schedule after 29 years of non-stop action, according to Sports Media Watch<\/a>. His three-year Amazon deal includes just one game each in October, November, and December before picking up a fuller slate in January.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite frankly, at the end of the TNT run, I was pretty satisfied with where I was in terms of filling that great desire to be with the league,\u201d Harlan told Sports Media Watch<\/a>. \u201cI thought this might be a good place to rest.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision represents a significant shift for someone who built his reputation on being everywhere at once. Harlan had been pulling double and sometimes triple duty, calling Sunday and Monday NFL games while maintaining a Tuesday NBA schedule that lasted into June. The grind finally caught up with him.<\/p>\n Amazon has been understanding about the reduced role, Harlan noted, and he\u2019ll still remain fully involved with the NBA alongside his continued robust NFL schedule for CBS and Westwood One radio.<\/p>\n The move to Amazon marks the end of an era that began in 1996 when Harlan joined TNT. He became the network\u2019s lead NBA voice after Marv Albert\u2019s retirement, calling four straight conference finals from 2022 through this year. Now, Ian Eagle takes over as Amazon\u2019s primary play-by-play announcer,<\/a> with Harlan settling into a supporting role.<\/p>\n For NBA fans, losing Harlan as a regular presence represents something far more than just another broadcaster changing networks. As The Ringer\u2019s Bryan Curtis pointed out on The Press Box<\/a> podcast, Harlan\u2019s departure might be what fans miss most about TNT\u2019s NBA coverage<\/a>, even more than the much-discussed future of Inside the NBA.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that guy doing that job would have happened at any other network,\u201d Curtis said, noting that Harlan became TNT\u2019s lead NBA voice at 61 years old. \u201cThere aren\u2019t too many announcers whose sound is that big and that different that get number one jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n His first Amazon assignment comes Oct. 24 when he calls Timberwolves-Lakers during opening week. After that, it\u2019s a much lighter schedule than what basketball fans have come to expect from one of the sport\u2019s most recognizable voices.<\/p>\n For someone whose broadcasting career started when the Kansas City Kings left a message at his college fraternity house, stepping back after nearly five decades behind the microphone makes perfect sense. The only question is whether NBA fans are ready for a basketball world with a lot less Kevin Harlan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Harlan has been everywhere for the better part of three decades. NFL Sundays and Mondays for CBS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,43220,590,107198,85,107199],"class_list":["post-162108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kevin-harlan","tag-nba","tag-nba-on-prime","tag-sports","tag-sports-media-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}