Vitale Calling Another NBA Game on Jan. 20

Last season, ESPN made a big deal of their announcer swap with Dick Vitale and Dan Shulman calling a Heat-Nuggets game last season. On the same night, the three-man team of Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and Mike Tirico called the Duke-Davidson game. There was ongoing hyping of the event for a few weeks. It went off reasonably well, but wasn’t anything thrilling. Everyone was reasonably competent. Perhaps realizing it wasn’t such a big deal, the network has yet to promote the swap, which will happen again this season on Jan. 20↵

↵↵I reached out to ESPN publicist Nate Smeltz to confirm a note on Sports Media Watch, and the news is correct.↵

↵↵Vitale and Shulman will call Jazz-Spurs on Jan. 20. The ESPN NBA trio will head back to college to call Wake Forest-North Carolina.↵

↵↵I’ll ask the same question I did last season: Does this matter to you at all? Does it enhance/take away from the experience in any way? All I remember about last season was the NBA guys complaining about Duke players taking charges and the lack of a restricted area under the rim. I’m sure it bugged Duke fans, but I’m betting the rest of the country nodded and applauded.↵

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