Longtime TNT NBA play-by-play voice Kevin Harlan is taking on a reduced schedule as he moves with the league to Amazon.
Appearing on Monday’s edition of the Sports Media Watch Podcast, Harlan said Thursday that he has “purposefully constructed” his three-year Amazon deal “on a reduced schedule.” Specifically, Harlan said he will call one game in October, one in November and one in December before taking on a fuller slate of games in January.
The first of those games will be Timberwolves-Lakers on the Friday of Opening Week (October 24), as previously announced by Amazon.
Harlan: “Quite frankly, at the end of the TNT run, I was pretty satisfied with where I was in terms of filling that great desire to be with the league. I thought this might be a good place to rest … I had been doing Sunday, Monday [NFL games] and Tuesday for Turner — and on some weeks, multiple games — and then a schedule that lasted into June, and I was just ready to kind of pull back a little bit.”
Harlan said Amazon has been “great” about his reduced schedule and that he will “still be fully involved with the NBA.” His NFL schedule for CBS and Westwood One radio will also remain “as robust as ever.”
As has been widely reported, Ian Eagle will be the lead play-by-play voice for Prime Video, calling conference final games in years when the streamer has rights. Harlan had been the conference final voice for TNT since Marv Albert’s retirement, calling four-straight from 2022 through this year.
In addition to the reduced role, Harlan this season will no longer be calling games with his longtime partner Reggie Miller, who joined NBC Sports in the offseason. “It’s like you’re losing a family member,” Harlan said of Miller. “Because Reggie and I had been together for so long, I was around him when his kids were born, he’s been around me as our kids have grown up. … In this business, you know nothing is forever. So the older you get, the more you’ve been around it, the more you begin to appreciate — because every year and every partner is not quite like that — but when you have that relationship, you embrace it even tighter, because it probably won’t last forever. I didn’t have Boomer Esiason forever. Didn’t have Doug Collins forever. I don’t have Reggie now, but I love the guys that I’m with, and enjoy that thoroughly. But Reggie will always have a very special place in my heart.”
Harlan discussed several other topics on the podcast, including the time he turned down a chance to become the voice of the Michael Jordan-era Bulls, the craft of radio play-by-play and how it differs from television, and much more.