Malika Andrews Spared as ESPN Show Embarrasses NBA Community in Nuggets vs OKC Game 6

Run the world (money)! No, it’s not us saying this, but several disgruntled fans who’ve, for years on end, complained again and again and again (and again!) about one single thing: ESPN’s lackluster commitment toward its halftime show. We all saw it last year during the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks’ NBA Finals Game 2 matchup, where the studio crew was given approximately a minute and 20 seconds to get the first-half analysis covered, prompting Malika Andrews to even skip crew introductions to get the job done. What’s more?

What unfolded a few days before that. As per eagle-eyed—and must we say observant—social media users, “ESPN/ABC’s Game 1 halftime coverage [last year] was 72.9% ads, the most in three years”. Notably, this included 11 minutes, 32 seconds of advertisements, 1:36 (8.9%) of highlights, 1:17 (8.1%) of halftime crew coverage, and 1:24 (10.1%) of play-by-play crew coverage. No wonder fans were ticked off with some even demanding ‘Inside the NBA’ back, amid uncertainty about the show’s future at the time. While the loved show is finally seeing a new dawn, complaints have largely remained the same, or even intensified as ESPN turned up for tonight’s game 6 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets, that the latter ultimately won 119-107.

The latest controversy arose when Lakers insider and ClutchPoints’ Anthony F Irwin posted on X on May 15, “I genuinely don’t understand the point of ESPN’s halftime show. It’s honestly the dumbest content in all of sports and that’s obviously saying something.” Clearly, even someone who’s as involved with the league as Irwin couldn’t help but voice his frustration. A few hours later, he chimed in again with another damning take.

“So I had the NHL and NBA playoffs games side-by-side tonight and one thing that really struck me was how many more commercials run during the NBA game than the NHL one. I understand commercials pay the bills but I also think they’re getting in the way of what the game could be,” Irwin wrote.

The journalist even went as far as to retweet a reply to his first tweet, where another social media user had detailed the nature of commercial breaks the game saw. 

“commercial — 15 second segment showing one highlight then saying the real halftime show starts after the next commercial — commercial 2 minutes of kendrick perkins thoughts on the half — commercial —15 second segment saying the games coming up after next commercial —commercial,” read the tweet.

And let’s just say others didn’t take long before chiming in…

Malika Andrews is not out of favor after ESPN’s lackluster halftime show

A lot of people simply didn’t like the format of ESPN’s halftime show tonight. “espn comes back from a 7 minute commercial break with 45 seconds of analysis then back to commercial. Their halftime show is pure s–t,” wrote an X user. And no one wants to sit through commercials when all you want to do is watch the ball game in peace. In fact, the lack of commercials was why streaming services like ESPN+ took off in the first place.

Fortunately, not all of it was bad, which another user pointed out. Making a call supporting Malika Andrews, who joined ESPN in October 2018, someone wrote, “ESPN needs to replace everyone on their halftime show outside of Malika. Zero entertainment, zero analysis, zero value.”

And it’s not just about ESPN’s show being bad in isolation. Fans found that they could simply be watching a much better product on another network. “The ESPN NBA halftime is so much worse than the TNT show it’s actually embarrassing,” wrote a fan. But another felt it was important to give ESPN some credit for how bad their show was. “Agree. But ESPN is just bad, not merely bad by comparison to TNT,” they wrote. And wow, if it’s that bad, not even Malika’s best efforts tonight could have saved ESPN from this disaster.

What’s your take on the matter?