Longtime Boston Celtics broadcaster Mike Gorman is in the midst of his final season as the play-by-play man with the team. On Friday, he appeared on The Today Show to reflect on his career and share his incredible story of how he got to this point.
Gorman debuted in the broadcast booth in 1981 for the Celtics, calling games for the team for a total of 43 years, which included some of the best moments in the history of the franchise.
It’s almost inconceivable to picture Celtics basketball without hearing Gorman on NBC Sports Boston. But that will soon be a reality for Celtics fans. And according to Gorman, he almost never even received the opportunity in the first place.
In an interview with NBC News correspondent Harry Smith, Gorman detailed that a security guard got him a phone call with Gill Santos, a legend in the Boston sports media scene, because of their shared experience in the Navy, which helped propel his broadcasting career.
“He said, ‘What is that in the back seat?’ I said, it is a baseball cap,” Gorman told Smith. “He said ‘What is that in the front of the baseball cap?’ I said it’s VP-44, the squadron I used to be in back in Maine. If that guy didn’t see the baseball cap, I would have lived a completely different life.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqrQq81QlAQ
Gorman was then able to talk to Santos, start his broadcasting career in Rhode Island. And the rest is history, becoming perhaps the most iconic voice in all of Boston sports.
Now that the end is near, Gorman detailed to Smith that he feels like calling games is now similar to going to “his own wake” due to everyone acknowledging his incoming retirement.
“I feel like every time I go to the game, I’m at my own wake because they come by and say, ‘Mike, good luck to you.'”
When asked about what he would miss most in retirement about being away from the game, Gorman detailed that the most important thing to him has always been the fans in attendance.
“I’m not gonna miss the games and I’m not gonna miss the players,” said Gorman. “The fans have been wonderful. That has been the nicest experience. It’s always the people. The stories are wonderful but the people are what are important.”
Luckily for Gorman, his final year has been a quite successful one for him to call for the Celtics. The team finds themselves with the best record in the NBA, with most around the NBA expecting them to very much be in the mix to hoist their 18th championship this year.
