WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Not many Whitman College graduates have gone
straight from Sherwood Center to the
National Basketball Association. In all likelihood, in fact, only one Missionary has made that
monumental leap. Any good guesses?No, it wasn't Washington, D.C., attorney Don Woodworth, who scored more than 2,000 points before graduating in 1968. And it wasn't Dave Mastin, an outstanding player from the mid-1980s who currently serves in the Washington state legislature.
No, the only Whitman alum to ever elbow his way into the NBA is from the class of 1993 -- none other than Neil McDonald, a name that most if not all professional roundball fans might fail to recognize.
"This really does seem like a dream come true," the 5-foot-11 McDonald admitted in a mid-February telephone interview from the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, two days prior to the 1996 NBA All-Star Game.
"I was still at Whitman when I started thinking about the NBA," McDonald said. "It was just a dream then. It's reality now, even though I'm at the bottom of the ladder in terms of experience and seniority and every other category you can mention."
Finding your niche in the NBA is impressive enough. But the All-Star Game? As McDonald prepared for his big weekend, he had good reason to thank his lucky stars he was there. His season stats? Three games, no points, no rebounds, no assists.
What's that? Is this story, this tall tale, just a little tough to swallow? Okay, okay. So you're right. McDonald isn't on the roster of any NBA team.
But that didn't stop him from feeling extremely fortunate as he prepared for what the high-flying NBA calls its All-Star Weekend. McDonald wasn't on the court -- he wasn't part of the show -- but he played an important role in bringing the festivities to millions of television viewers. McDonald, 25, landed a job with NBA Radio six months after graduating from Whitman in 1993, and has been working for NBA Entertainment since last summer.
McDonald, who sharpened his radio broadcast skills on the campus radio station as the voice of the Fighting Missionary basketball teams, now spends a good deal of his time traveling from one NBA game to the next. That explains why he's had so little time to play for the company basketball team at NBA Entertainment's offices in Secaucus, New Jersey.
McDonald's new job title is broadcast assistant, which means he works with the NBA's broadcast partners on a variety of scheduling and logistical details. He was in Chicago on the morning of Superbowl Sunday, working the network TV broadcast of a Bulls game. "Because it was Superbowl Sunday, there was even more pressure for the game to go off smoothly," McDonald said.
Whitman's representative to the NBA also was courtside at the Forum in Los Angeles when the Lakers hosted Michael Jordan and the Bulls shortly after Magic Johnson ended his retirement. "The atmosphere for that game was amazing," McDonald said. "It was Michael and Magic, two of the players who helped make the NBA what it is today. They didn't call Magic's era Showtime for nothing. He's such a happy guy and an incredibly positive person. He loves the game of basketball as much as anyone in the world, and it shows in what he brings to the game."
McDonald got his start in the broadcast business as a sophomore at Bellevue (Wash.) High School, where he took a radio/TV class and began calling football and basketball games for KASB, the school radio station. At Whitman, he worked as Sports Information Director and did play-by-play broadcasts of several Missionary basketball games each year. He even made occasional road trips with the basketball teams. One such trip stands out for two reasons. When the courtside phone lines failed at Pacific Lutheran, McDonald and broadcast partner Mike Sheehan moved to one of the baselines and called the game via a phone line that stretched down a hallway. McDonald, a politics major, remembers that game for another reason -- it was the day the United States launched its Gulf War offensive.
Following his sophomore year at Whitman, McDonald took a summer job with Seattle's KJR radio station, which was moving to an all-sports format. One of his first tasks was producing a talk show hosted by one of sports radio's rising stars, a boisterous personality who has since moved to ESPN Radio and is known simply as The Fabulous Sports Babe. "With her first show at KJR, we fielded over 200 calls in two hours, which made my job in the control room very interesting, to say the least."
McDonald continued to work for KJR during summers and breaks from Whitman. The summer prior to his senior year, he sent a letter of inquiry to the NBA, asking for an informational job interview. "The letter was a complete shot in the dark," he said. "I didn't know anyone at the NBA, and I didn't really expect anything to happen. Yet I didn't let that stop me from pursuing it aggressively."
His initiative paid off quickly. He was invited to interview with an NBA vice president that summer while he was in New York attending a month-long sports marketing and special events seminar. There was a second interview the summer after his Whitman graduation, and he was told the NBA would be in touch. "I think they recognized that I loved what I was doing in sports marketing and broadcasting, that I had started at a very young age, that I had developed a certain aptitude for it."
McDonald was hired by NBA Radio that fall as a clearance assistant, which "means I was negotiating broadcast agreements with radio stations from New York to Ephrata, Washington." During his two years, the number of stations carrying NBA radio broadcasts jumped from 109 to 144, boosting the league's radio coverage from 69 to 77 percent of the national audience.
He met David Stern, the NBA Commissioner, at a company picnic. Stern's friendly greeting, as McDonald recalls, was something to the effect that, `So, you're the young man who talked his way into the NBA.'
McDonald's play-by-play broadcast skills came in handy last spring when Commissioner Stern phoned in a request. McDonald was in the NBA Broadcast Center for game five of the Boston-Orlando NBA Playoff series at Boston Garden. It turned out to be the last game played in that legendary facility. With five seconds left in the contest and the outcome not yet settled, the commissioner phoned from a party to check on the game.
"Mr. Stern said, `Neil, you broadcast play-by-play in college, didn't you? Why don't you call the last play over the phone for me?'
"You could say I was a little nervous," McDonald admitted with a chuckle. "I was calling the historic final moments from Boston Garden over the phone to the commissioner of the NBA. I guess you could call that pressure."
When it was over, McDonald was rewarded with a compliment. "That was a very nice job you did," the commissioner said. "You can tell your boss to keep you around."
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Editor's Note (April 10, 1996): The NBA promoted Neil McDonald from broadcast assistant to broadcast coordinator in early April. In addition to his existing responsibilities with NBA television programming and scheduling in the United States, McDonald will be handling similar duties in other countries. The NBA also broadcasts TV programming in 175 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Australia.
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