Mike Breen says he’ll need to scale back his workload

Mike Breen has had quite the year, and he’s starting to feel it.

Asked by Puck’s John Ourand whether he envisions scaling back his workload, Breen acknowledged that the pace, as many as 110 games in a single season between his ESPN national assignments and his role calling Knicks games for MSG, has become difficult to sustain.

“I’ve cut it back a little bit,” Breen said. “But I’m going to have to cut it back a little bit more.”

He wasn’t talking about walking away from either job, though.

“Clearly, I still love it so much, and there’s nothing better than doing the big national games,” he said. “Madison Square Garden is like a second home to me. Calling games there for the local team, it’s a wonderful thing. And if you ask any national broadcaster who’s had a chance to go and do some local telecasts as well, there’s something so wonderful about being around a team and watching how they develop on a day-in and day-out basis. You really get to know the team and the personalities, and that makes you a better broadcaster. So, yes, I might cut back soon, but I still love it too much. As long as the people at ESPN and MSG still want to hear me yapping away, I’m good with that.”

The year he is describing cutting back from was, by any measure, the best of his career. Breen called his 21st consecutive NBA Finals this spring, the most in league history, this time with the added wrinkle of the Knicks being in it. He has been rooting for New York since he was seven years old, has been calling their games since 1992, first on WFAN radio and then on MSG television starting in 1997, and had never had those two worlds overlap until this June.

But the same national prominence that made this year so significant was also, at times, pulling him away from the team that made him. The NBA’s new media rights deal — with games now spread across ESPN, NBC, and Prime — had been quietly squeezing local broadcasts all season, and Breen was not immune to it. In February, he went more than three weeks without calling a single Knicks game, his last local appearance before a 22-day gap coming on Jan. 19.

Breen hadn’t been shy about where he stood on it, having called on Adam Silver directly to do more to safeguard local broadcasts as the new rights landscape continued to erode them. As it turned out, the NBA’s most prominent local broadcaster and its most prominent national one were the same person, and when the Knicks finally made — and won — the Finals, there was nobody else who was going to be on the call.

“Your long, long wait has ended. Go ahead and cry.”

Breen’s wait is over now, too. And as long as ESPN and MSG still want to hear him yapping away, a few fewer games seems like a reasonable price to pay.