ESPN had severe, unpleasant audio issues during NBA playoff game

If you’ve ever watched a sporting event and been upset with the announcers, we can promise you one thing — what happened during ESPN’s broadcast of Game 1 of the first round series of the NBA playoffs between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Memphis Grizzlies was worse.

With 4:55 left in the first quarter, Memphis’ Dillon Brooks put up a shot. His shot went in. Before that happened, however, the audio feed on the ESPN broadcast went out. Normally, that might mean silence. And while silence in a broadcast can be awkward, it would have been much preferable to the sound that we got. What came over ESPN’s broadcast was highly irritating and anything but silent.

ESPN has gone several minutes having the studio crew calling the Grizzlies Timberwolves game after things went VERY wrong with the normal audio feed. pic.twitter.com/OKfXI6srBZ

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 16, 2022

The issue persisted for about a minute. At that point, ESPN went to commercial. When the broadcast returned, the studio crew was calling the game. The studio crew continued to call the game until the beginning of the second quarter. At that point, the audio issues were fixed and the regular crew resumed calling the game. All told, the audio was out for more than 20 minutes of real time.

Whatever the issue was, we can only hope that it doesn’t come back at any point during this game, for the rest of the postseason or during any other broadcast or television show that ever airs. It was only one minute but it’s a minute that nobody wants to relive.

[Photo Credit: ESPN]