C'mon, Snapper!

Maybe NBC should start paying its international basketball color commentators to travel to game sites instead of calling them from their New York studios.

Some of Steve "Snapper" Jones' less-than-enlightened comments during the Lithuania-Spain Olympic semifinal (I had DVR'ed it), left me shaking my head.

3-time ABA all-star "Snapper" is an amiable enough guy, with merriment dancing in his eyes and all that good stuff, but he has a thing or two to learn about the role of language in international basketball. Par example -

1) In the first quarter, "Snapper" discussed how Juan Carlos Navarro wasn't playing because of a minor injury. He decided to impersonate Navarro - who'd just finished playing an NBA season - discussing the issue with his Spanish coach. İn halting English, he said "Coach... I... play... in... NBA... now. I play."

C'mon, Steve "Snapper!" Snap out of it!
As a pro player, did you speak broken-ass Spanish with your English-speaking coaches, just for fun? I'm sure Navarro does the same with English with his Spanish coach.

2) Later, the "Snapper" exposited on how quickly the Olympic officials were calling "unsportsmanlike" fouls. He said: "The good thing about international refs is that most aren't multilingual. So the player can complain to him all he wants in his native language and the ref will just shrug his shoulders and call the foul."

Most international refs aren't multilingual? These are European professionals. They eat multilingualism flakes for breakfast every morning. Most of the refs are native, Spanish, Greek or a Slavic-language speaking but they all have to know English to call games.. It's the lingua franca of the basketball world.


I don't want to spill too much Haterade down the Snapper's gullet, though.

He did make a good observation: The older players on the Spanish team have their last names on the back of their jerseys, which is traditional, while the young players have their first names on the backs.

I wonder if it's all the rage on Spanish youth teams?