The play-by-play announcer describes “who” and “what.” A general sense of which players are performing acts germane to the goal of winning a game or match, often punctuating or supplementing important or exciting moments with specific words or volume or intonation.
The analyst gives nuance and context to those acts performed. The “how” and “why” coming from a voice of some credibility, usually a former player or coach with experience and understanding of the game and situations being contested.
A decade ago when I began calling play-by-play for NBA games, I had come to know this formula as a psychological baseline in presenting sports. Here are two distinct voices for the human brain to process and absorb: Voice “A” delivering “who and what,” Voice “B” delivering “how and why.” An easy exercise to provide a comfortable experience for a viewer, a tried-and-true formula fostered over a half-century that most fans have an understanding and expectation of when they watch and listen to a sporting event.
Stacey King blew up the formula. He rewired the brains of an entire city. And he did it purely by being himself. An irresistible, infectious and undeniable force of energy, passion and basketball poetry. He was my broadcast partner for eight years and felt like a friend for much, much longer.
He passed away Sunday at 59, a number frustratingly insuffucient for how big his life seemed and wholly inaccurate compared to his vitality.
Stacey King played 344 regular-season games with the Bulls, winning titles in 1991, 1992 and 1993. (Manny Millan / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images / Getty Images)
King was an All-American forward for the powerhouse Oklahoma Sooners in the late 1980s, garnering significant attention from national media. So the journalism student and disciplined son of a career military man needed to project comfort on camera during interviews and off-camera with broadcasters.
He possessed a sharp wit and big personality, so he naturally gravitated to Dick Vitale, a larger-than-life and one-of-a-kind analyst whose personalized touches and catchphrases bucked the trend of play-by-play announcers punctuating moments with their own verbal stylings. Vitale showed that emotion and authentic reaction, plated perhaps with a catchphrase or some humor and garnished with love, were the ultimate way to feed this high-speed, highlight-infused sport to the masses.
This was King’s blueprint for the next 35 years of a basketball life, almost all of it taking place in Chicago, a city that eventually adopted him as one of its sons.Following a 15-year playing and coaching career, highlighted by the first three-peat with the Bulls, where King made some notable contributions (most prominently helping spur a bench-led comeback in the 1992 Finals clincher vs. Portland), he entered television broadcasting.
He had cultivated a strong basketball pedigree, an eye for noticing under-developed talent and an endless barrage of humorous stories culled from his travels and experiences rubbing shoulders with basketball royalty and Hollywood starlets and Turkish mobsters.
His natural charisma made the transition to television easy, but it was his generation-defining partnership with Bulls broadcaster Neil Funk that brought his appeal to the greater basketball audience.
Stacey King, right, made everyone feel welcome in his world. (Photo courtesy of Adam Amin)
Broadcast analysts typically lean on their knowledge and understanding of the game to enhance the viewer’s experience while the play-by-play announcer often adds the turns of phrase in the midst of the call. They would commission a nickname for a favored player to let the hometown fans know that “the player is one of the team.” It was almost always the play-by-play announcers’ catchphrase that became synonymous with the biggest shot of the game. When Mike Breen yells out an emphatic “BANG!” during a finals game, every basketball fan knows they witnessed something important.
King turned the job on its head. He had the same depth of knowledge as his contemporaries, the same appreciation for preparation and the same devotion to the sport. But it was his dynamism, his love of language, and his desire to be exactly who he was that overtook the broadcast. He could not be anyone else, nor would we have wanted him to be.
And it would be very easy for the person next to him, who had built a Hall-of-Fame broadcast career on precision and proficiency, to be dismissive and strictly adhere to every traditional commandment of the profession.
But Funk saw and felt and heard in King what all of us saw and felt and heard when we experienced him. The combination of intense joy and piercing intellect, wrapped in culture and presented in a most digestible way that appealed to everyone from the basketball purist to its most casual viewer.
Funk allowed King’s nicknames and catchphrases and charm to become the centerpieces of the call, giving him the runway to fly as high as Derrick Rose.
Funk eventually retired, and I was selected out of more than a dozen auditioning hopefuls for the dream job of calling games for my hometown team. I had watched King growing up; he felt like a friend talking to me through the television. And he was the reason I was chosen to succeed Neil. Apparently, Stacey had sought out management after our first broadcast together in Dallas (Oct. 22, 2018, Luka Dončić’s third NBA game) and told them, “This is my guy.”
He gave me a career in my city by giving me the seal of approval.
The King had knighted me.
King was made of multitudes. I just wanted to keep up. He would reference Jonathan Swift; I would cite Greek mythology. He would quote “Boyz n the Hood”; I would pivot with “Friday.”
When the Bulls visited France to play the Pistons, we ate escargot in a five-star Paris hotel while he regaled the group with stories about his European travels and the various superstars of sports and entertainment he had encountered.
I remember thinking, “THIS is the height of luxury.”
One night later, Stacey ripped his suit pants from the thigh to the ankle while boarding the bus to the arena. He gently chided our producer for wanting to use gaffer tape to fix a very expensive outfit. But he kept his infectious smile as our producer stapled his pants shut.
When we sat down at our broadcast position, he pointed across the floor at a then-19-year-old Victor Wembanyama and said, “Just watch. That dude is about to change the league.”
Then, in the very next moment, as if it were the most natural occurrence, he introduced me to Magic Johnson. He and I shook hands, and Stacey adjusted his fixed pants and smiled, as if to say “Congrats, you both just met a cool person.”
On the day of King’s passing, he was recognized on social media by Magic. And by U.S. Senate candidates. And entertainment outlets. And by a former senior advisor to the President of the United States. And by a legion of fans who felt personally moved by his life and death.
I believe certain people are touched with a very specific gift that contains a universal power; to make anyone feel comfortable and welcomed and warm right where their feet are. That was Stacey King’s gift, to make anyone feel like they belonged in that moment.
He could do it while debating on social media as if it was Razor Red’s Barbershop, inviting people to come down after the game for a photo, shuttling them onto the court when they didn’t expect it, dapping up and speaking to strangers as though they were friends, in person or through the television. He just made so many people happy. Like a mockingbird singing its song, he had no desire greater than to make others feel good.
.@adamamin recounts the time that he and Stacey King called a White Sox game from in-studio and Stacey had, not one, but two P.F. Chang’s orders cancelled on him. 😅 pic.twitter.com/bq6FIaG9bC
— 104.3 The Score (@thescorechicago) June 9, 2026
Our job as broadcasters is to educate you with accurate information, to punctuate the 5 to 10 moments in a game that matter the most and to be palatable for the remainder of the time we are speaking to you, and to do it in a fashion that could potentially create a memory.
Stacey understood the last element as well as anyone who has ever done the job. Here in Chicago or anywhere. He knew how to hook you with his gift, and he knew how to make it memorable. Great broadcasts allow both voices to shine in their elements, but the best ones can blur those lines, allowing a symbiosis of the voices. When that occurs, along with a strong and creative production team, unique experiences for the viewer are created.
Our broadcast felt like a unique experience every night, even if the reference points or inside jokes were familiar. King made them feel fresh, new and fun. Who wouldn’t want to spend more time with someone who possesses that gift? It is why people watched, whether they were Bulls fans or not. It is why we had so much fun, whether the Bulls won or not.
When we worked together, I never wanted to hinder Stacey’s gift. So when Coby White dunked on a then-21-year-old Wembanyama or Ayo Dosunmu hit a dagger or Matas Buzelis posterized Jalen Suggs or Josh Giddey drained the shot of a lifetime, I wanted to punch the call and then get out of the way and experience, along with everyone else watching and listening, the exuberance of my friend as he maximized the moment and memory.
I never wanted to get in the way of his energy, his poetry or his song (jingle or otherwise). Harper Lee said mockingbirds simply “sing their hearts out for us” and that it was a sin to kill one. I thought it would be a broadcast sin to silence this bird, this sui generis being, this one of one.
There was nobody like him doing the job. There was nobody like him in my life. A big brother, an uncle, a great friend all in one. He knew my partner and her son. He FaceTimed me from my nephew’s high school gym because he and my nephew recognized each other. He made me feel like family just by singing his song.
Right now, “how” and “why” matter very little to me. There is no nuance that soothes the loss. A mockingbird has died, and the song has died with him, and my heart breaks — for us, for his people and for his sons.
But I know exactly who he was. I know what his gift could do. And I know that we were just a little happier, a little better off, for getting to hear the song for as long as we did.
