Watchdog

Usually I TiVo "SportsCenter" and blow through it in 15 minutes, except on Sunday night / Monday mornings, of course, when the NFL highlights dominate.

But whenever John Buccigross and (former SNYer) Steve Berthiaume appear, I end up watching even the most irrelevant of NBA highlights, listening for their Patrick / Olbermann-esque wisecracks.

Friday night, for example, one of the duo's themes was the show's notorious fixation with dunks.

During a Celtics-Sixers highlight:

Buccigross: "Ray Allen scored 15 points in the third, but he didn't dunk the ball, so we feature Kevin Garnett."

Berthiaume: "What are you implying?"

Buccigross: "I'm implying that, kids, go up and dunk. There's KG again, 16 points in the game!"

Later, the two make a series of jokes about a check list of dunk types they would show from LeBron James:

Buccigross: "Let's check out LeBron. We have our dunk checklist. Again, it's all about the dunk."

At one point Berthiaume joked ,"That's going to look great in New York."

When the dunk-a-thon was over, he added sarcastically, "No one in the game, by the way, hit a mid-range jump shot."

Sure enough, when it was time for the Top 10 plays, every one of the six basketball highlights shown - including three of LeBron - were . . . dunks!