Legendary NBA Announcer In His Final Season At ESPN
11/21/2024 10:46 AM
The 2024-25 NBA season is going to mark the end of an era as one longtime announcer officially heads into his final year on the job.
Appearing on SI Media with Jimmy Traina, ESPN content president Burke Magnus announced that longtime announcer Hubie Brown is going to be leaving the network at the end of this season. Brown has been at ESPN for 21 seasons and part of the NBA for over 50 years. Magnus called it "remarkable" that Brown is still able to call games at the age of 91 and pledged to honor the veteran announcer at some point this coming season.
"We are going to give Hubie one last shot on a game. He deserves that," Magnus said. "We think the world of him. I think it's absolutely remarkable the level he still calls games at age 90-plus… we're going to honor Hubie this year during the regular season at some point to be determined and send him off in style.
"I don't think there's a single human being that's ever had a longer association with professional basketball."
Hubie Brown in final NBA season at ESPN, exec announces https://t.co/X6nu7HoC9m
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 21, 2024
Brown got his start as a coach all the way back in 1955 as the basketball and baseball coach at St. Mary Academy. He would coach high school until the late-1960s, when he joined William & Mary as an assistant and later the Duke Blue Devils. Brown got his first taste of NBA coaching in 1972 as an assistant for the Milwaukee Bucks before becoming head coach of the Kentucky Colonels in the ABA.
His coaching tenure would go on to include runs with the Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks then finally the Memphis Grizzlies.
Brown's accolades include two NBA Coach of the Year awards and induction into three separate Hall of Fames: The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005, the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006 and the National Sports Media Hall of Fame in 2022.
