Deposed Knicks mouthpiece Marv Albert, heard last night on Westwood One calling the Jets/Dolphins game, spoke to Newsday’s Steve Zipay, responding to comments from meathead MSG chieftian James Dolan.
Marv Albert, responding to Cablevision CEO James Dolan’s remarks on WFAN Friday about the actions that led to the broadcaster’s split with the Garden, took issue yesterday with Dolan’s statement that he never called announcers to tell them what to say on the air.
“Every announcer was called,” Albert said. “I just responded by saying, ‘Don’t call anymore.’ . . . It’s a sad commentary when a team attempts to control what is said on the broadcast.”
Dolan, who runs the Garden, said Albert – the Knicks’ play-by-play voice for four decades – didn’t like last season’s team and repeatedly harped on the negative. Between that and the high salary Albert was commanding, Dolan said he and Garden executives agreed a new contract should not be negotiated.
“It’s not like we were killing them, but you have to be able to say when a team isn’t playing well,” Albert said during a conference call for TNT, for whom he calls NBA games. “Then he tried to masquerade it as if to say that I didn’t like the Knicks, which is kind of a ridiculous statement to make when they won 39 games and they have not been successful recently . . . but when they play well, you can tell from the enthusiasm in my voice and I would always say it. But you lack credibility when you don’t say when things are not going well; fans know . . . you can’t fool them. So [Dolan] tried to do a blanket statement: ‘Oh, he’s negative, he just doesn’t like the Knicks.’ He was telling us, ‘Don’t talk about the opposition; if the team has a bad loss, don’t deal with it at the start of a game. It happened, it’s old news.’ . . . In terms of controversies, ‘don’t deal with things like that.’ ”