LaMelo’s passes or Bridges’ dunks? Hornets’ TV voice Eric Collins on which excites more
Eric Collins was searching for that next step in his career.
Living in Chicago and doing college basketball and football broadcasts for the Big Ten network was cool and all, but he had greater aspirations. Something beyond that gig and the freelance one he had with Fox Sports 1.
“I had been with a team before,” Collins said. “I was with the Los Angeles Dodgers for five years, and I knew that being with a team was what I wanted to do. You get tired of flying commercial flights and you get tired of six-hour car rides through a snowstorm just to try to get to Purdue. And I just knew that the combinations and the way I wanted to be as a professional would be best if I was with a team.
“I would have taken any team job. If it was the Memphis Grizzlies. If it was the Utah Jazz. I would have gone anywhere. If they had an expansion team in Timbuktu, I would have signed up for that.”
Now in his seventh season as the Charlotte Hornets’ television play-by-play voice, it’s hard to imagine listening to anybody other than Collins describing the captivating play of the team with a boisterous, youthful core featuring LaMelo Ball & Co. Since taking the reins from local legend Steve Martin in 2015, Collins has slowly endeared himself in the hearts of Hornets’ fans.
The catchphrases he uses on the Bally Sports Southeast broadcasts are part of their lexicon and even the players — home-quarantined ones, too — get a kick out of the man who coined the “Hum Diddly Dee!” expression seen on a T-shirt or two around town.
“To hear an announcer just excited about his job and about his team is just great,” PJ Washinton said. “I feel like he’s the best announcer in the NBA. Usually if I’m watching another game, I’ll just turn it off because I don’t want to hear the announcers. But Eric, I listen to it. I enjoy what he’s talking about.
“People are starting to realize how good he is around the country as well as around the world. I’ve never heard an announcer be so passionate about what he does like him. So it’s just great to have him here in Charlotte.”
Equally thrilled, Collins still recalls the moment his career changed forever.
“After a week of waiting I got a phone call asking if I’d be interested in taking the job,” Collins said, “and I don’t think I waited more than 10 seconds to think about it.”
Collins spoke with The Observer about a flurry of topics, including what excites him most while behind the mic calling Hornets’ action, how being in the spotlight more has benefited him and the noticeable change in the atmosphere at Spectrum Center now compared with his early days around the team.
Roderick Boone: What was it like replacing a legend such as Steve Martin, who was in that role for such a long time and was synonymous with Hornets TV broadcasts?
Eric Collins: See, that was the great thing that happened to me. Steve was an absolute prince. Steve didn’t go anywhere. What happened was Steve moved from TV to radio, so there was a real kind of soft welcoming for me when I came to town. It wasn’t as harsh. Steve was still there and still smiling and still on the radio. He was still a presence inside the arena. He was able to tell me what was important. He was able to fill me in with Hornets history and who was who. And he introduced me to all the right people. And he kept me away from all the people I didn’t need to know, and it was just great.
I couldn’t have asked for a better welcome to Charlotte than what I got and it was in large part because Steve was such a prince. And the fact we were able to share the airwaves for a couple of years made a huge difference because my agent always says first year in town everyone’s going to hate you. Second year people are like, ‘Ah.’ Third year they’ll tolerate you. And after four years, years four, five and six they just love you and they can’t think of anyone else. You are indispensable. And I was given that three years of grace period because Steve was still in the mix. When people always said, ‘Hey, what do you think about this new kid?’ he always said, ‘He’s doing great and I love it.’ So that helped me quite a bit.
RB: How exciting is it to call the team’s games this year compared to year’s past?
EC: It actually started last season around this time. I remember doing a game from Spectrum Center with Dell (Curry) and I and Ashley (ShahAhmadi) and like 17 other people. And that was it because it was an empty building. And I remember walking in there and saying to myself, ‘Man I get a chance to watch the Hornets play basketball in an NBA environment and there’s no one else here, and people are going to be at home. And people that care about the Hornets, the only way they can physically see what you are doing is the broadcast that I’m in charge of narrating.’ This is a huge responsibility because normally I’m doing a home game and probably (with) the 18,000 most committed fans or at least 18,000 fans that really care about the Hornets.
And now all of the sudden those 18,000 I know for a fact are sitting on their couch and they are watching at home. And I said, ‘Man, this is an enormous responsibility and you can’t screw this up.’ And I think that carries through to this year. This is a team that is easy to like and is easy to digest as well. The Hornets are a highlight-oriented team. Every game there are like six or seven things where you are like, ‘Oh my God!’ with Miles Bridges on the floor. Or some crazy LaMelo (Ball) pass. Or a barrage of threes by Terry Rozier.
So to me it’s my responsibility to get it right. This is a unique moment in Charlotte Hornets’ history, and it’s all kind of unfolding in front of our eyes. And I want to document it the best that I can because this is rare. I’ve been around a lot of teams where you don’t have this excitement and the people getting really jazzed about every single moment and every single game that’s being played. So to me, it’s all just a miracle to be a part of this thing and I’m hoping just to be able to keep it on the tracks.
RB: How much has being in the spotlight more benefited you? You have blown up nationally now that you have done gigs for ESPN and others.
EC: I don’t know about all that. To me, I kind of stepped back a couple of years. I was doing OK in Chicago, I had a good career in Chicago and I was totally fine and had a lot of opportunities. And then I came into Charlotte and it seemed like maybe people kind of lost track of me for a couple of years because I had a hard time getting my footing here in the South. But it’s back where it needs to be. We’re good. But no, I don’t say no to any opportunity. I’m happy for everything that comes my way and, yeah, it’s been good.
RB: What excites you the most when you are calling a game? Is it LaMelo’s passes? Miles’ dunks? What gets you going where you want to let people know this is a moment they should be paying attention to?
EC: I like rallies, man. I like (when) the Hornets are down by 10 points and all of the sudden you get a three. You get a three. You get a stop. And to me when it builds on itself, that’s when I really get jazzed. Dunks are great and passes are phenomenal. But those are just kind of isolated incidents and that’s eight seconds of ecstasy. I like that sustained just, ‘Here we come. Here are your Hornets just battering away!’ And to me that just two minutes of relentless charge just does it for me. And that just kind of bleeds into the broadcast hopefully.
RB: Do you sense the crowd is more juiced up this season?
EC: In the past I used to cringe a little but because I’m from Cleveland, Ohio, and I guess we do things differently. But loyalty is a huge thing. You are born in Cleveland and you are a Cleveland fan and so that’s the frustration my entire life, except for 2016 when the Cavs won the championship. But I’ve had decades worth of misery from the Browns and the Indians, but that’s just the way that it is. I don’t know my first couple of years in Charlotte, it seemed like there were some people who really liked Dwyane Wade. They really like Julius Randle. I’m like, ‘OK.’ But I like it now. It seems like it’s easy to be a Hornets fan. It’s easy to like LaMelo. It’s easy to be associated with Gordon Hayward, Terry Rozier, Miles Bridges and PJ Washington because to me that actually adds up to wins.
At the end of the day, when Spectrum Center is going and people are all pushing all in the right direction, that’s what the Hornets see all the time on the road, man. You play a game in Dallas, there’s a smattering of other fans but for the most part they are Mavericks fans. They make the difference in the third and fourth quarter when it gets to crunch time and they are going crazy and screaming. And I’d love that advantage to be the Hornets’ advantage as well at home.
RB: How do you envision your future in Charlotte? How do you see this playing out? Can this be a lengthy marriage?
EC: Yeah to me there’s 30 NBA jobs, and I wanted one of them. I didn’t care which one I got, and I happened to get one that I really liked because I really like the town and my family really likes Charlotte, and the organization is one that I’m proud to work with. But to me there is not a better NBA job than the one I have. And I would probably be saying the same thing if I was working in whatever. In Brooklyn. Or Denver. Or if I was working in Phoenix. There are 30 gigs and not one is better than the other. The Knicks’ job is not better than my job. The Heat job is not better than my job. The Laker job is not better than my job.
And I’m just happy to have it right now. It’s TV. Things are never set in stone, that’s for sure. The old saying in TV is there’s two types of people: People that have been fired and people who will be fired. So that’s always something that you know. And you just go forward and you hope to keep your nose clean and hang on to what you have. But I don’t know what’s happening in the future. I have no idea what is happening long term. All I know is I’m thrilled with the job I have right now, and I wouldn’t give it up on my own volition.
This story was originally published January 1, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
