This year, Mike Breen and Walt “Clyde” Frazier celebrated 25 years calling New York Knicks games. And in a new article profiling the duo at The Ringer, Breen opened up about why his chemistry with the Knicks legend was “immediate.”
Midseason in 1999, Breen stepped in to replace Marv Albert on MSG Network and was very nervous. While he had called Knicks games on the radio alongside Frazier previously, the task was still daunting.
But because of Frazier’s humility and the pair’s obvious passion for the Knicks, the adjustment was seamless, Breen told Donnie Chin of The Ringer.
“Sometimes you can work for a long time and you never really click 100 percent,” Breen explained. “But with Clyde it was immediate. And neither one of us can really explain it.”
But later in the article, Breen did a pretty darn good job putting his finger on why he clicked with Frazier so well, so quickly.
It all came down to mutual respect and eliminating ego.
“I had such respect for him, clearly for who he was as a player and his knowledge of the game, so I gave him a lot of room to do whatever he needed to do on the air,” Breen continues. “But the crazy thing is, right away, he gave me such respect and allowed me to do my thing. It was just a wonderful give-and-take. There was never a fight for airtime, there was zero ego involved. It just clicked from day one.”
It’s a testament to his professional relationship with Frazier that Breen continued to call Knicks games after all these years, despite a cozy job as the No. 1 NBA play-by-play man at ESPN. Just about every night of the season, you can still hear Breen’s authoritative and triumphant voice atop Knicks games.
Breen is not only a fan favorite among hoops junkies and New Yorkers. He also earned the respect of Frazier, one of the only tried and true legends for a Knicks franchise that has been a dumpster fire most of the time the duo has called their games.
As a result, the pair has formed one of the more iconic broadcast booths in all of sports.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.