ESPN True Hoop’s Kyle Weidie has an excellent profile of NBA super fan, and self-appointed Voice of NBA Summer League, Brett Salap. I’m glad he ran the piece, because it reminds me of my lone encounter with Mr. Salap:
I was sitting in the first row in Thomas & Mack Center for a high-scoring game between the Phoenix Suns and Memphis Grizzlies last week, when a gentleman in a DeAndre Jordan jersey sat down next to our group and immediately launched into his own personal play-by-play. It would have been a bizarre scene, but we’d at least had some warning: a couple of guys sitting next to us told us some guy had been doing play-by-play earlier. So, when it became a reality, we were more amazed than anything.
We had no idea who it was (my buddy had been to five Summer Leagues, and even he had never seen the guy). Obviously, it was Brett Salap.
The crowd was actively rooting for Phoenix to hit the 100-point mark, a goal Salap was quick to point out hadn’t happened yet in four days of game action. As Memphis attempted a furious comeback, Salap was going nuts on every missed tip-in attempt (there were a lot of them). At one point, Memphis’ Quincy Pondexter, sitting court side about ten feet in front of us, turned around and just watched Salap instead of the game.
While the crowd was chanting “Big Macs! Big Macs!” (it’s Summer League, the crowd wasn’t getting any Big Macs, obviously) as Phoenix approached triple digits, Salap was going nuts. I wish my phone hadn’t died moments earlier, or I would have captured video for posterity. Thankfully, ESPN did the job for me.
[ESPN]
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