Big Brawley Calls LeBron’s Return
The best streetball announcer on earth calls LeBron James’s first game back with his hometown team, accompanied by Patrick Truby’s illustrations.
Video by Margaret Cheatham Williams, Abe Sater, Catherine Spangler, Graham Roberts, Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Ben Laffin and Sam Manchester on Publish Date October 30, 2014.If you are a New York basketball player good enough to compete in the city’s legendary street ball games, chances are you know Brawley Chisholm.
More important, Big Brawley knows you — and has taken great delight in describing, at full sonic boom, your funny haircut, your missed free throws, and that woman in the stands wearing the red dress.
Chisholm has long provided the one-man soundtrack for elite street ball tournaments, a nonstop riff that features as much standup comedy as color commentary. He has watched countless New York ballers compete, and he has had his own off-the-wall nicknames for all of them. (Al the Housewife’s Pal was a star over the summer.)
Chisholm has called plenty of street games featuring cameos from N.B.A. players over the years, but he has never called an N.B.A. game.
Until now.
The New York Times invited Chisholm to call LeBron James’s first game back in Cleveland in his own inimitable style, offering a playground-level perspective on the biggest show in sports.
Then The Times invited the artist Patrick Truby to illustrate the game’s highlights.
Chisholm, Truby and LeBron — think of it as a new Big 3.
Watch the results for yourself.