The Mavs organization has undergone a huge amount of change during the last three decades. Three different men have primarily owned the team, superstars came and went, and there have been plenty of coaches. Maybe the biggest constant throughout the whole thing, though, was the voice of Bob Ortegel on the TV. And for the first time in nearly 30 years, we won’t be hearing it.
The former analyst is stepping out of the studio after four seasons with Fox Sports Southwest and more than 20 in the broadcast booth. While he doesn’t officially consider it a retirement, he said he’ll be taking at least the 2015-16 season off from the game of basketball. The true definition of a lifer, Ortegel has been involved with the game for 66 years — since his first season as a youngster at age 8, then as a coach at nearly all levels of the sport, and, finally, with and around the Mavericks as an analyst, where he’s been since 1988.
“To say I’m not going to miss it, I can’t say that. I will miss it. It’s a part of me,” he said. “It’s who I am.”
Ortegel’s signature style set him apart in the broadcast booth. Between his warm tone and his unique ability to break down the various complexities and finer details of the game in ways not only interesting to the smartest observers but also digestible to the most casual fans, viewers could always glean something new about the game through his analysis. And although things like defense and rebounding might be the less exciting or interesting elements of the game to many fans, Ortegel’s constant reinforcement of the importance of both taught many — including me — just how important it is to block out, talk on defense, and make your free throws.
“Your best coaches are really good teachers, and in the process of teaching, you want to break it down,” he said. “Simplicity becomes very, very important. I think the more sophisticated you get with the analysis of a game, the more confusing it can get to the viewer. My goal was always that I was talking to one person, just like I’m talking to you. When I was on camera and I was looking at the camera and the red light was on, as far as I was concerned I was talking to one person.”
Mark Followill, whose voice we’ve heard from the AAC on TV and radio for more than a decade, said Ortegel’s teaching was paramount as Followill made the transition from radio into television. He even sent Followill a handwritten note congratulating him on getting the job and expressing his excitement about the prospect of working together.
“He wants to help anybody get better, be it a broadcaster or young basketball player, or whatever the case is,” Followill said. “He couldn’t have made it any easier, through being a mentor, through trying to help me relax when I needed to relax or focus when I needed to focus. He had an incredible way with making the entire transition very, very easy for someone who went into the transition with a lot of anxiety about how it might go.
“Bob’s experience and his connection with people may start at basketball, but it just branches out so much farther, and to me that’s a tremendous example of how he connects with his friends and those that are close to him. That maybe basketball is the vehicle that starts the connection, but then it just grows to so much more than that.”
Followill relayed several stories about Ortegel, but one point he said multiple times had to do with the need to stay level-headed as a broadcaster. Although the play-by-play team grows very close to the players and, in many ways, live and breathe the game the way athletes do, Followill said Ortegel always stressed that, as broadcasters, there’s nothing they can do about what happens on the floor. If the Mavs lost, they lost. If they won, they won. It’s a long season, and if he lived and died with the result of each game, Followill would go crazy.
Interestingly enough, Ortegel said he learned that lesson from one of Followill’s predecessors, the late Jim Durham, who called Mavs games in the 1990s after spending some years in Chicago with Michael Jordan’s Bulls. Ortegel was upset on the team plane after a tough loss, and he said Durham taught him that lesson then and there.
Durham might have been a mentor figure to Ortegel, and Ortegel is certainly one to Followill. So it goes in the industry.
“My relationship with Followill is about as good as it can get,” Ortegel said. “I don’t know how I could be any closer to anybody that I’ve worked with. I can give you some names, and they’re pretty impressive, but Mark is right in that group.”
Ortegel considers Followill and radio voice Chuck Cooperstein to the best, most prepared pair of play-by-play guys in the game. That’s lofty praise, to be sure, but the pair would be just two people in an impressive line of broadcasters and basketball minds eager to thank Ortegel for what he taught them. And it’s not just TV and radio guys who can thank him. Some of my earliest memories in life are watching Mavs games with my dad, and we were both anxious to hear what Ortegel would say after a tough moment — he was always honest, but never incessantly degrading the way many in the media can sometimes be today.
There are ways to point out areas of weakness without making them seem like weaknesses, and the opposite holds true as well. These are lessons every fan should learn, and in many ways I try putting his own philosophy into my own work. Be critical, but be fair.
It’s no question that Ortegel still has the itch to teach — “Once a coach, always a coach,” he said — and he’s clearly done a lot of it throughout his career. After taking Drake University to its most recent NIT in 1981 and calling games at the highest level for decades, it’s fair to say that he’s seen and done just about everything there is to do, right?
“I haven’t seen it all. I’ve experienced it all,” he said. “The troubled times, the great times. The disappointment in 2006, the disappointments of 2007 and ’08, and of course 50-win seasons, 60-win seasons, and a championship. And I’ve got a ring to prove it, and I wear it, and I’m very proud of it.”
Ortegel still lives in the Dallas area and said he and his wife will still come to Mavs games, as they own season tickets. So while he might not be in the booth, on the sidelines, or behind the desk, he’ll still be around the game. And he’ll stay around it. After all, it’s a part of him.
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