Spero Dedes was ‘overwhelmed’ calling Kobe Bryant’s 81-point game

Just as Eric Reid’s voice will be synonymous with Bam Adebayo’s 83-point game, Spero Dedes will always be one of the voices connected to Kobe Bryant’s 81-point performance.

But as Reid has been with the Heat since their inaugural season, Dedes was just 26 years old and trying to ingratiate himself with the Lakers fanbase during his first season as their radio voice when Bryant went off for 81 points. Dedes joined the latest episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast this week, where he discussed an array of topics, including his roles at CBS and TNT Sports, March Madness, calling four games in one day, landing the Lakers job by “an act of God,” and calling Bryant’s 81-point game.

“This was my first year on the job with the Lakers. I’m 25, 26 years old. And at that point of my career, I was still intimidated with the job,” Dedes admitted. “Here I come to L.A., a place that I had been to once in my entire life, I get this dream job, and I’m early in my first year, so I was still finding my bearings. This was pre-Twitter, so I would go on to message boards after Laker games and read what the Laker fans are saying about me, and they were just crushing me because Chick Hearn, anyone who knows West Coast basketball and Lakers history knows Chick was the Marv Albert of the NBA before Marv Albert. Chick had been their guy for so many years, here comes this young kid that no one’s ever heard of with a weird name from the East Coast. I was still getting comfortable, I was still trying to endear myself to the fanbase, and here comes Kobe doing all this craziness.”

Asked about meeting the moment and continuing to raise the excitement level, with every bucket representing a new career high for Bryant, Dedes acknowledged it was a challenge early in his broadcasting career.

“I just remember that night being completely overwhelmed trying to get my arms around this performance I was seeing,” Dedes said. “I’m not ashamed to admit, I had a little pocket thesaurus in my bag, and once we got to the third quarter, I was literally running out of superlatives to use to describe what I was seeing that night. You can talk to any broadcaster, and they’ll talk about games where they wish they could go back and perform at a bit of a higher level. But at 25, 26, at that stage of my career, I did the best I could, and you just hope it was good enough.

Dedes ultimately ingratiated himself enough to the Lakers and their fanbase to be offered the full-time TV announcer job several years later, an opportunity he turned down to become the radio voice of the Knicks and expand his national platform through CBS. But getting the Lakers job at a young age with minimal sportscasting experience, and getting to call some of Bryant’s biggest moments, including a run to three straight NBA Finals, remains a career highlight for Dedes.

Listen to the full episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast featuring Spero Dedes by subscribing to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. For more content, subscribe to AA’s YouTube page.