I'm presently watching a meaningless Rockets-Lakers game punctuated by the presence of one Bill Walton on color commentary. While I first loathed his absurdly hyperbolic delivery, he has grown to be one of my favorite television personalities. Sports are not necessarily profound, and since you can see what's going on on the TV, you don't need someone taking up air space with trite facts and explanations. Walton's ridiculous exaggerations and bombast are an experience in themselves which augments the relatively self-explanatory transipirings on the court. Like NBA columnist extrordinaire Kelly Dwyer, I believe Walton knows exactly what he's doing. He's attempting to entertain as much as inform. The success of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Bill Simmons' Sports Guy columns suggest that intelligent people enjoy being entertained with "facts", as they are capable of observing them on their own and making up their own damn minds. Further, Walton also deserves mad props for improving himself from an uber-shy kid at UCLA with a stutterring problem who went to great lengths to avoid having to do interviews publicly, to being the NBA's alpha-loudmouth.
Along these lines, I also love Dick Vitale, especially when he's working a Duke game. Like Walton, he brings enthusiasm in spades. However, when he's doing his usual fawning over Duke, he's like one of those professional wrestling announcers who blatantly cheer for the "bad guys", as a means of generating "heat", and adding further tension to the scenario. Paired with a good straight-man, it's as if you're having a struggle between good and evil, or ego and id played out in front of you while you watch top notch D-1 basketball. That's entertainment, bay-bee!
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