There have been quite a few expletives inadvertently dropped on-air by broadcasters over the years, but that doesn’t seem to be what happened to veteran Toronto Raptors’ play-by-play voice Matt Devlin this week. In the team’s game against the Houston Rockets Sunday (broadcast nationally in Canada on TSN), Devlin appeared to call a three-point bucket from Raptors’ guard Jamal Shead as “Add that piece, as Shead knocks it down.” However, something similar-sounding and much more profane was heard by some, leading to a clip days later that spread around social media Wednesday morning:
Raptors announcer:
“And that piece of shit knocks it down”
????? pic.twitter.com/pFicZ8h4lj
— BricksCenter (@BricksCenter) December 25, 2024
It stretches credulity in a lot of ways to think that a long-time broadcaster like Devlin would not only use “piece of s***” on air, but do so about a player on the team he’s broadcasting for. There have been some wild criticisms from local announcers in the past, but they’ve usually been about opposing players (and often in hot mic situations, which this clearly wasn’t).
However, there have been plenty of missteps with the wrong word over the years. So it’s understandable that some might have thought that could happen here. (Thanks to Gradey Dick’s presence on the Raptors’ roster, though, that frequently–dropped word‘s unlikely to be the one misused on these calls, even if some broadcasters refuse to talk about him.)
Still, just taking a look at which player took this shot probably should have indicated there wasn’t a “s***” here, and that Devlin did nothing wrong. But given by how this spread, maybe “piece” isn’t the best word to use in close proximity to Shead’s name.
[@BricksCenter on X; Devlin photo from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television]
