If NBA fans think they\u2019re seeing (and hearing) double this season, that\u2019s because they are.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked the Patriot-Steeler game this year, and someone came up to me prior to the game and said, \u2018Man, I gotta tell you, your brother is really talented,\u2019\u201d Ian Eagle said. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Thank you so much. I don\u2019t think you know how much that means to me that you just said that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Look-alikes, sound-alikes and job-alikes, Ian Eagle will be calling NBA games for Amazon Prime Video, while his son \u2014 not brother \u2014 Noah Eagle will be announcing games for NBC. Connected at the hip and the headset, they are the first father-son duo to do national play-by-play for competing NBA broadcast partners (Marv and Kenny Albert called games for TNT only).<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is another level for both of us to be calling national games,\u201d Ian said. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty wild.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ian said basketball is Noah\u2019s \u201cfirst true love in sports,\u201d and he should know \u2014 he introduced him to his first NBA player when Noah was about 5. \u201cHe was raised at a time where the team I was covering \u2014 the Nets \u2014 were going to back-to-back Finals,” Ian said. \u201cThat was the Jason Kidd era, and he loved J. Kidd. But when the team acquired Vince Carter, that was his guy. And then he had a chance to work with [Carter] last year on Nets games, and now they\u2019ll be teammates at NBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was young, impressionable back then. He had a huge, framed photo, not small, over his bed of Vince Carter dunking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noah ended up following in his father\u2019s footsteps (or earpieces), and is what Bob Costas called \u201cthe prodigy of the sports broadcasting business right now.\u201d His first NBA job was as the radio voice of the Clippers at age 22, before becoming the radio voice of the Nets two years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told him during those years, I was like, \u2018Dude, this is preparing you for things you\u2019re not even aware of yet,\u2019\u201d Ian said. \u201cThe ability to create conversation, to find narratives, even in blowout games because you have to \u2014 there\u2019s nobody else there. I think that really did help him immensely as he started getting some other opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, at 28, Noah isn\u2019t only working national NBA games opposite his father, but his play-by-play colleague at NBC will be Mike Tirico, who went to Syracuse with his father and later hired his father to be his intern at the CBS affiliate there, WTVH. Noah is a Syracuse alum as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember when Ian\u2019s wife was pregnant,\u201d Tirico said. \u201cI\u2019ve known Noah since he was born. Ian would share pictures.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Ian and Noah share NBA debates at the breakfast table when they\u2019re not out on the road somewhere. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt dominates a lot of our conversation,\u201d Ian said. \u201cWe\u2019re also partners on a fantasy football team, so I\u2019d say that probably is the first topic that comes up on a daily basis, scouring the waiver wire. But then NBA is second and our family is third.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether they actually look like brothers is probably fourth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If NBA fans think they\u2019re seeing (and hearing) double this season, that\u2019s because they are. \u201cI worked the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,10490,590,1832,48702,85],"class_list":["post-209932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-in-depth","tag-nba","tag-nbcuniversal","tag-print","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209932","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=209932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}