Ohm Youngmisuk is leaving ESPN after 16 years to become the Clippers’ sideline reporter.
The Clippers unveiled their television team for the 2026-27 season on Monday, bringing back Brian Sieman on play-by-play, Jim Jackson as lead game analyst, and Mike Fratello and Brent Barry as additional analysts. Youngmisuk is the lone newcomer, stepping in as sideline reporter and host.
Our TV broadcast team for the 26-27 NBA season 📺
Brian Sieman returns as our play-by-play announcer along with lead game analyst Jim Jackson. Mike Fratello and Brent Barry also return as analysts, while veteran NBA reporter Ohm Youngmisuk joins as sideline reporter/host. pic.twitter.com/TNzyV8c4hF
— LA Clippers (@LAClippers) September 28, 2026
“Excited and honored to join the Clippers broadcast and work with incredible talent like Brian Sieman, Jim Jackson, The Czar Mike Fratello and Brent Barry,” Youngmisuk wrote on X. “And I’m so thankful for 16 of the best years of my life at ESPN alongside all the amazing writers, editors, producers there.”
Youngmisuk is the Clippers’ third different courtside reporter in as many seasons. After Kristina Pink left to join Prime Video for its inaugural season of NBA coverage, the Clippers turned to Jaime Maggio and Lauren Rosen, with Maggio contributing to several local and national outlets and Rosen, who has covered the NBA on both coasts, also landing a new hosting role on NBA TV.
He’ll also join one of the league’s better-liked local crews, which ranked ninth in Awful Announcing’s 2025-26 local NBA announcer rankings, slipping from sixth the year before but still edging out the crosstown Lakers, with one reader calling Sieman a “novelist with a headset” and others crediting his pairing with Jackson as an elite booth.
Before ESPN, Youngmisuk spent more than a decade at the New York Daily News covering the Knicks and Nets. His ESPN tenure took him from the Giants beat and ESPN New York to columns and coverage of the Lakers, Clippers, Nuggets, Warriors and Wizards, and most recently to the Southeast, where he covered the Hawks, Magic, Heat and Hornets while contributing to ESPN’s national NBA coverage.
Less than a month ago, the NBA handed the Clippers the harshest penalty in league history after a yearlong investigation, sparked by Pablo Torre’s reporting on Kawhi Leonard’s $28 million no-show endorsement deal with Aspiration, found that the team had circumvented the salary cap. The league stripped the Clippers of five first-round picks, fined the team $30 million, and suspended owner Steve Ballmer, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, and president of business operations Gillian Zucker.
The Clippers have not said when Youngmisuk will make his debut, but with the preseason opening next month, fans won’t have to wait long to see him in the new role.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.