Surely this is rigged. No way Marc Zumoff and Alaa Abdelnaby finished in the bottom half of Awful Announcing’s reader poll ranking NBA broadcast teams.

Their words:

The votes are in, the grades have been tallied, and the rankings have been arranged. After over 10,000 votes (an average of nearly 350 a team, which is far lower than I expected), the readers of Awful Announcing have decided on their favorite and least favorite local NBA broadcast teams.

Alright, so it was a small sample size. I think Marc and Alaa are easily a top-half team, though most of us probably have not watched a lot of the other local broadcasts, so we’re lacking a proper frame of reference.

Here’s how the vote totals wrapped up, with the Sixers near the bottom of this graphic and blocked in yellow:

Looks like most voters had the Sixers crew in that B- or C+ range. I would have easily given them an A- or B+. I think Alaa has come a long way since taking over for Malik Rose a few years ago. He brings a good blend of observation + tactical knowledge without going overboard. Good delivery, good cadence, good everything from these two (and Serena, who wasn’t listed on the poll for whatever reason).

I don’t think they do the homer routine, certainly not like other local broadcasters do. Sometimes you’ll watch broadcasts where the color commentator just fakes outrage at the officials, which gets old pretty quickly. That doesn’t seem to happen too frequently during NBCSP broadcasts.

This #19 overall ranking is too low. We need a re-vote.