Joe Favorito welcomes Mike Breen, ESPN’s voice of the NBA and longtime play-by-play announcer for the New York Knicks, for a special episode recorded live at Columbia University. Breen traces his career from calling women’s basketball games at Fordham radio station WFUV alongside future legends like Bob Papa, Charlie Slowes, and Michael Kay, to parking cars at Winged Foot, reffing fifth-grade basketball games, and eventually landing the Knicks radio job after narrowly missing two positions he desperately wanted. Breen shares what it was like working with Don Imus at WNBC, how calling ski jumping at the 2002 Winter Olympics with zero skiing knowledge made him a better broadcaster, and the unlikely ways his refereeing background shaped his understanding of officiating on the air. He also breaks down the craft of building chemistry with analysts, from Clyde Frazier to Jeff Van Gundy to Doris Burke, explaining why every analyst requires a different approach and why communication before tip-off matters as much as anything that happens during the game. Breen closes with a candid look at the only real downside of his career, the road, and how he and his family found a way to make it work over four decades.

Learn more about Mike: https://espnpressroom.com/bio/breen_mike/

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The CUSP Show is hosted by Joe Favorito (@Joefav) and Tom Richardson (@ConvergenceTR) and produced by Sam Henry (@s_henry11), LJ Holmgren (@LJ_Holmgren), and Danny Hagenlocher (@DhColumbiaSPS), with social media efforts led by Lissa Ruiz and Sydney Cristall.

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