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Kevin Calabro: Voice of the Sonics, a Broadcasting Life and Seattle’s NBA Future
Description
Kevin Calabro’s voice became inseparable from Seattle SuperSonics basketball - twenty-one seasons of rich baritone, rapid-fire energy and phrases that helped define NBA play-by-play in the 1990s. However, his path to the microphone began in Indiana, where a crystal radio built with his father - a World War II radio operator - sparked a lifelong fascination with broadcasting. Kevin recalls watching Pete Maravich, Spencer Haywood and Jo Jo White at the 1968 Olympic trials, calling minor-league hockey as a one-man operation and landing his first NBA job with the Kansas City Kings at just twenty-six.
The conversation moves through his two decades as the voice of the Sonics: Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, George Karl, the shock of Denver’s 1994 upset and the 1996 Finals against Michael Jordan’s Bulls. He remembers a franchise at the centre of Seattle’s grunge-era culture, the broadcast chemistry he shared with Marques Johnson and the night he called Vince Carter’s legendary dunk over Frédéric Weis at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Kevin also reflects on the Sonics’ departure in 2008, his decision to stay in Seattle rather than move to Oklahoma City, Damian Lillard’s unforgettable series-clinching shot in 2019 and his ongoing hope that the SuperSonics will one day return home.
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