Dick Vitale and Hubie Brown have been on TV calling basketball on TV dating back to the late 1970’s. Vitale has mostly been focused on college basketball while Brown has been calling the NBA. Their trains really haven’t crossed paths, although the men have been friends more than 50 years and grew up near each other in New Jersey.
The two men will finally call their first game together tonight on ESPN (7 p.m. Eastern) when Boston College takes on No. 2 Duke. It’s all part of ESPN’s NBA/College Basketball crossover event which mashes up play-by-play teams on games they normally don’t cover. And it’s another opportunity for Brown to call Duke, as he joined Mark Jones and Jay Bilas last year when the Blue Devils met Virginia Tech.
The two men, both long eligible for Social Security with Vitale at 79 and Brown at 85, will have the opportunity to tell stories about their times together in the basketball community:
“It is going to be fun,” Vitale said. “We’ll get to share some stories. We both have different styles but we have an incredible passion for the game.”
Brown and Vitale have known each other for a long while, and they coached against each other at the high school level, in college, and in the NBA when Dickie V. coached the Detroit Pistons and Brown the Atlanta Hawks.
Brown and Vitale will be joined by Dan Shulman, who has called both college basketball and the NBA for ESPN.
Bilas will be on the NBA on Wednesday, joining Ryan Ruocco and Doris Burke on the Washington Wizards-Milwaukee Bucks game.
Now if ESPN decided to team Vitale, Hubie and Bill Walton on a game, that might be truly Must-See TV.
