I wasn’t planning to write this about the Warriors’ TV broadcasts so early in the season, but it became clear this week that some constructive criticism is probably warranted. During just about every Warriors game this season on NBC Sports Bay Area, the Twitter complaints have been plentiful. In the comments section of last week’s media column, which didn’t even mention either announcer (there was an update on Garry St. Jean, who is no longer a part of NBCSBA’s studio shows), readers took multiple shots at Bob Fitzgerald and his partner since last season, Kelenna Azubuike.

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It’d be easy to pile on because they’ve given us a lot of material already this season. I already questioned the way the broadcast handled the in-game interview with Joe Lacob during the preseason, although part of what made that problematic was how long Lacob was shown on half of the screen while the action was taking place. Fitzgerald and Azubuike weren’t on the call during the Warriors’ first two nationally televised blowout defeats of the regular season. But they poured it on a little too thick at the end of a loss last week against the Trail Blazers, crowing about positive Warriors plays during garbage time as if the team were ahead by double-digits. Fitzgerald’s reputation from the Warriors’ lottery seasons of yesteryear precedes him, which makes his excuses for poor play a little too easy to predict for longtime viewers.

3:53 left in the first quarter:

— Bay Area Sports Guy (@BASportsGuy) January 2, 2021

Many have called for the Warriors to bring back Jim Barnett, and not only because he’s always been widely popular among Warriors fans. It’s also because Barnett would push back whenever Fitzgerald criticized the officials too harshly or complained about the opposing team’s good fortune instead of giving credit. In contrast, Azubuike can seem a little too agreeable.

This is actually unfair to Azubuike, who has been placed in a difficult spot. First, he took over the color analyst role during a season in which the Warriors were the worst team in the league. The perception of a team’s broadcast quality almost always correlates to winning percentage; this is something Hall of Fame broadcaster Jon Miller mentions frequently. Second, Azubuike is a relative newbie who joined a play-by-play man who’s been in the same chair for over two decades. If any of us were in Azubuike’s position, we’d probably be reluctant to question Fitzgerald, too. Attempting to build chemistry with an established voice is difficult enough for any new partner.

But improvements could certainly be made by both broadcasters. That’s one of the frustrating things for Warriors fans, because it’s not like the pairing of Fitzgerald and Azubuike is a lost cause.

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Fitzgerald gets a lot of grief in this market for a couple of reasons. He replaced Greg Papa in a way that seemed distasteful back in 1997, and his tone rubs some the wrong way. In fairness, he’s actually a very skilled broadcaster. He knows the game and the league, although perhaps not at the expert level he sometimes tries to portray. Mainly, though, he handles the play-by-play tasks quite well. He describes what’s taking place in real-time in vivid detail, something that would be next to impossible for most of us (as proof, press the mute button the next time you watch an NBA game and attempt to call the game in your living room). But Fitzgerald’s strength is that he rises to the moment when things get dramatic. For instance, he nailed the call on the Steph Curry 3 that gave him a career-high 62 points on Sunday.

STEPHEN CURRY

HOW

62 POINTS

— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) January 4, 2021

When Fitzgerald really lets his talent shine through is when he plays it straight, though. That’s why he’s called so many NFL games for Westwood One, as well as Olympic basketball for NBC. And there were no complaints about his work during the NBA bubble for TNT. In fact, many Warriors fans wondered why they couldn’t get that guy for the home broadcasts.

Why? Because this market doesn’t like homers. OK, that probably needs clarification. Otherwise, the A’s fans reading this will immediately scroll down to the comments section to write something about Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow. Fans around here don’t mind a little partisanship, but they don’t want to feel like they’re being sold in a way that’s inauthentic. If the team or a certain player is excelling, it’s fine to go a little over the top to enhance the audience’s viewing enjoyment. But when the home team is down by a lot, no one wants to hear screaming and chuckling after a meaningless dunk or blocked shot. Or that the Warriors are getting a raw deal on every block/charge call or whenever the opposing team shoots a higher-than-expected percentage from long distance.

Azubuike has been guilty of some of this as well, which is a little surprising because that wasn’t the vibe he gave off as a studio analyst. If anything, he was the calm, measured one who served as more of a straight man to St. Jean’s beardless Santa Claus shtick. That’s why even though Warriors fans complained a bit when Barnett was moved off of the TV side, the consensus was that Azubuike would do a fine job and his promotion was deserved.

But even though — as I mentioned earlier — Azubuike is in a bit of a tough spot, there are some valid criticisms of his broadcasting style after a season-plus. Adam Lauridsen, who authored the outstanding “Fast Break” blog for Bay Area News Group for several years, summarized one of his shortcomings here:

Always tough to follow a legend, but my biggest complaint about Azubuike's calls is there's lots of "what," almost no "why." Often just repeating play-by-play. I saw the hesitation move. Fitz called the hesitation move. It adds nothing to have someone yelling "hesi!" after it.

— Fast Break (@GSWFastBreak) January 2, 2021

As a tandem, Fitzgerald and Azubuike have gone for frills and fun over substance a little too early in their partnership. People like personality, but not if it’s forced. And certainly not at the expense of information we can’t get from watching the game ourselves on mute. Luckily for the Warriors and NBCSBA, we know Azubuike can explain basketball concepts in interesting ways because we heard him do it as a popular studio analyst for multiple seasons.

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I also understand the temptation to try to get laughs. It’s something I’ve battled my entire life, often to the dismay of family and friends. But when Fitzgerald and Azubuike try to force nicknames or fixate on non-basketball tangents (they went on and on about golf scores the other night, which for most hoops fans was rather tedious), it’s rarely all that humorous or interesting. That’s not to say they can’t build a rapport that leads to humor in the future. But at this point, for both broadcasters, the best recommendation would be to focus on their respective strengths. This has always been a sophisticated basketball market. The audience wants more substance than style, more insight and information than chuckles, cheerleading or performative grunts.

In other words, it takes several seasons to become “Kruk and Kuip.” The “Fitz and ‘Buike” days aren’t here yet, so they’d be better off calling games as “Fitzgerald and Azubuike” for now. If they tone things down for a bit, the “personality” aspects of the broadcast should come about naturally over time. They’ll get the benefit of the doubt more often when the Warriors start winning more frequently, too.

Sharks going all-digital for radio broadcasts this season

The Sharks announced Thursday that their partnership with KFOX, which has spanned the last two decades, has ended. That’s because on Tuesday they’re planning to launch the Sharks Audio Network, a 24/7 streaming platform that will carry every single game. Dan Rusanowsky will continue as the team’s play-by-play voice, and he’ll be joined by Scott Hannan and Mark Smith (Hannan will serve as the color analyst the majority of the time).

If this idea sounds familiar, it’s exactly what the A’s said they’d do before the 2020 season. Then, as the truncated MLB season drew near, the A’s had second thoughts and partnered with KNEW (Bloomberg Radio).

The Sharks streamed a few games last season during what they called a “digital weekend,” so this wasn’t a total surprise. But unlike the A’s, who couldn’t find a terrestrial station that made sense and have bounced around the dial ever since coming to Oakland, the Sharks have seemed happy with KFOX for quite some time. So why make the jump to a completely different kind of audio platform?

“It’s not so much about KFOX specific(ally),” Sharks vice president of communications Scott Emmert said on a Thursday conference call. “They’ve been a great partner for us for over 20 years. This is really more about our ability with the technology that exists to be able to bring some quality, unique and consistent coverage of Sharks hockey, our players, our personalities, to our fans.”

That’s all well and good, but begs the question: Why not just air the games on both KFOX and this new digital channel, just to make it easier for fans?

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There are a few reasons why they wouldn’t do that, even though that’s what some of the team’s older fans — particularly ones who reside in the South Bay — might prefer. The main reason is financial, of course.

“It does make it tough,” Emmert said of doing a traditional/digital simulcast. “Particularly when ratings come into play, when there’s market demographics, when you’re trying to entice advertisers to support. There is a little bit of a need to centralize a lot of this content.”

If the Sharks are going to sink some resources into a 24/7 station, they want to make sure they’re getting as much of the ad revenue as possible. They also want to lure as many fans as possible to the Sharks Audio Network, and the best way to do that is to make it the only location to catch the games. (In the Bay Area, at least — no word yet on whether they will continue to maintain relationships with terrestrial affiliates throughout the rest of Northern California.)

The Sharks Audio Network will also air games played by the San Jose Barracuda, the team’s AHL affiliate, as long as their games don’t conflict with the Sharks.

Also, KFOX is a classic rock station. As such, their on-air personalities don’t talk about the Sharks, which means no one on terrestrial radio is talking about the Sharks that much, if at all. That’s the same reality with which the A’s have struggled, and that’s why they started A’s Cast a couple of years ago. It’s also probably why the Los Angeles Kings left terrestrial radio and started streaming all of their games online during the 2018-19 season.

“We’re in an extremely competitive media market here with the number of pro and college teams,” Emmert said. “The media landscape is changing, seemingly by the day, if not sooner. One of the things we hear the most is, ‘Gee, there’s not enough Sharks coverage. Where can we get more Sharks coverage?’ And we obviously try to push as much coverage through the traditional media outlets as we can, and we certainly want to continue to do that. But at the same point, we feel we really have an opportunity here to really bring some consistency to the type of programming that people can get and have access to.”

Another factor was KFOX’s reach, which doesn’t travel far outside San Jose.

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“There’s only so many 50,000-watt flamethrowers out there,” Emmert said. “We did have a very good partner on the terrestrial side, but there certainly is a much wider breadth of areas where you can get cell service and even these days Wi-Fi, versus being limited to one terrestrial radio signal. There’s just no argument about that. So, while it will be a little bit of a change for some folks, we’re really, with this move, expanding the amount of people that we can reach. It’s just going to be a matter of getting people comfortable with a new platform.”

The programming slate will be light when the station launches next week, with plans to expand what they’ll provide over time. The Sharks Audio Network will air Ted Ramey’s “Morning Tide” podcast, which will increase in frequency from once a week to a half-hour show the morning after each Sharks game. While a lot of the content will air as repeats, especially in the beginning, the hope is to offer classic games, player profiles and specialty shows that focus on ranking the top players in Sharks history at each position.

(Photo: Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)