A.J. Clemente cursed and got fired. Susannah Collins said "sex" and got fired. TNT analyst Reggie Miller said "shit" tonight while giving a sappy post-game speech to the victorious Golden State Warriors, and we hope he gets fired—but not because he said "shit."
Reggie Miller actually walked away from his TNT duties—where he's presumably an unbiased observer—and into the Warriors' locker room, where he hugged head coach Mark Jackson and delivered a speech much longer than the clip we've provided above. (It was, as is most everything that spews forth from Miller's mouth, verbal feces.) Alas, we can't see Miller facing any discipline for this obvious breach of impartiality, because if TNT wanted to fire Reggie Miller they'd have done it years ago because Reggie Miller is a fucking terrible broadcaster.
But, still, "shit." That we know it happened at all is because TNT's cameras were live from the Warriors' locker room, and thus we have to assume there was some kind of Turner/Bleacher Report approval for him to be there. NBC wouldn't nod to Cris Collinsworth giving a pep talk to the AFC Championship victors, and I'm pretty sure ABC's Brent Musburger isn't hugging anything postgame that isn't a custom Katherine Webb blow-up doll. It's absurd to even imagine this happening on another network, but there it was, on TNT, tonight.
It's this kind of bullshit unprofessionalism that has driven TNT's NBA coverage from light and free-flowing to (with the addition of human concrete block Shaquille O'Neal) a train wreck. Despite all this, it's still excelsior in its class—especially compared to ESPN's snoozer of an NBA studio show. But by keeping the likes of Reggie Miller employed, Turner/Bleacher Report is blowing right past all the signals anyway.