Sports are just life, it’s just intertwined. You get to ride the highest of highs with the guys when they make their first All-Star team and everybody’s so excited, and then the next day one of your stars tears their meniscus and everybody’s grieving. It is the emotions of life, and I’m one of those humans who wants to feel as much as I can every day.
On NBA TV this season one of the features we used most during our shows were live look-ins. These are what they sound like: cutting to a broadcast of a game underway and the local crew calling it. We’d linger, at most, for two to three minutes, oftentimes less if we got caught with a dead ball or timeout. What I came to enjoy most was getting familiar with the cadence of the local broadcasters, some better than others.
There are broadcasts that make you pause because you wonder whether they’re watching the same game, or the game at all; there are broadcasts with bias piled on thick. There are crews that thrill because of the way they work so symbiotically, and because they always manage to make the listener feel like they’re on the inside of what’s happening. There are voices that resonate and voices you tire of. I never got tired of listening to Kate Scott.
Kate is the Sixers play-by-play announcer alongside colour analyst, Alaa Abdelnaby. Her steadiness and humour make for one of the best listening experiences a fan, any viewer, can have. She is generous, forgiving, knows when to dial in and pan out. In a word, she’s seamless.
We talked about her start in media as a radio producer for traffic in The Bay, and how asking “Can I fill in for Larry?” one day changed her life. We talked about sports radio as a form of therapy, the intimacy of radio and why it perseveres, and what she’s taken from radio and applied to her jobs on television. We also talked about her move to a single sport, team, and new city with the Sixers, how difficult her start was there.
Plus: Katie’s preparation process, knowing what to tell and what to leave out in a broadcast, still working like it’s your first game, the best things about learning the rhythm of a team when you’re attached to and alongside them all season, how Philly fans are adjusting to feeling hopeful about the future via Tyrese Maxey and V.J. Edgecombe, the frustrations of media as monolith, the relentless lack of routine of the NBA, Kyle Lowry appreciation, and the side of athletes fans don’t see.
