For people who don't know, Knicks legend Walt Frazier is color commentator on MSG Network and has been for many years. One of his main things as a commentator is his colorful vocabulary, filled with all sorts of fun rhymes (in an interview, he discussed how he does a lot of research finding new words, hoping it helps children who watch learn to speak well. I will copy and paste this interview into the comments.).
In 2016 and 2017 it was a dull time for the Knicks, so to keep myself watching the games I wrote down every rhyme I heard. Some likely are outdated, I was super stoned and mostly doing it in the background while I cooked or wrote essays so there's likely some repeats, etc. Hope people enjoy.
Regular Rhymes:
Outrageous and contagious
Styling and profiling
Spinning and winning
Razzling and Dazzling
Dishing and Swishing
Shaking and Baking
Wheeling and dealing
Astounding rebounding
Resounding rebounding
Astounding, resounding
Bounding and astounding
Hustling and muscling
Inexplicable and despicable
Dancing and prancing
Posting and toasting
Slicing and dicing
Using and abusing
Zest and finesse
Weaving and achieving
Exhilarating and debilitating
Flashing and dashing
Diving and striving
Feared and revered
Looping and hooping
Casting and blasting
Dramatic and emphatic
Drain(ing) and pain(ing)
Stumbling and bumbling
Agile and hostile
Wit and grit
Swooping and hooping
Erratic, dramatic, and acrobatic
Acrobatic and erratic
Dramatic and emphatic
Mauling and appalling
Running and stunning
Tough and rough
“Showing incredible clarity and dexterity with his left hand”
Looking and cooking
“Playing with heart, but not with smart”
Huffing and stuffing
Moving and grooving
Fire and desire
“And look at the pep in his step”
Gyrating and devastating
Penetrating and devastating
Acrobatic and gymnastic
Agility and mobility
Frustrated and devastated
Isolating and devastating
Percolating and devastating
Agile and mobile
“His first three of the quarter, from the corner”
Howling and fouling
“He zigged, when he should’ve zagged”
Looking and cooking
Master Blaster
Bouncing and announcing
Pouncing and bouncing
Intense defense
Exciting and igniting
“The Knicks showed attrition by not getting back in transition”
Moaning and groaning
“Both teams wishing they were swishing right now”
Large and in charge
Hounding and pounding
“Clever and slick, coming off the rolling pick”
“Relentless pursuit – so now he’s at the line to shoot”
Slamming and jamming
Ben Stiller described Clyde’s restaurant to Clyde one time: “He said it was delicious and nutritious.”
Mauling and hauling
‘Good penetration to create for his teammate’
Faking it and making it
Baking and making
Special shout for Mike Breen saying “Shaking and baking”, and saying Clyde’s dry cleaning bill must be huge
“And he was able to manipulate in the paint”
Shaking and making
Rising and surprising
“Adhesion on the defense, cohesion on the offense”
“Tenuous play by the Knicks all the way”
Stopping and popping
Banking and thanking
Hanging and banging
Tantalizing and mesmerizing
Speculating and percolating
"The Garden once was their Waterloo, now it's their Xanadu"
Soaring and scoring
Tenacity and sagacity
He taketh and he giveth.
[Otto] Porter duping and hooping from 19 feet away.
"We know that he's is erratic, dramatic, acrobatic, charismatic."
"They were in disarray, doom, gloom, loom."
"All the Knicks with the knack"
"Pressure has him hurrying and worrying"
"Good hustle in transition, the Knicks were out of position"
"Hang time: hanging and banging"
"Gymnastic acrobatics by Rose continue. That time souping and hooping along the baseline. “Rose catapulting to the hoop with the scoop."
"Melo mauling and appalling without reason now. Hosting and toasting along the baseline."
"Stumbling and bumbling and the Knicks have it."
"Rockets and their forte: running and gunning"
"A defiant Rose would not be denied as he swooped to the hoop."
"The Kings are looking and the Knicks are booking."
Energy and synergy
“Parsimonious defense and harmonious offense for the Knicks.” (Mike Breen noted he’d never heard this one)
“The Suns looking frustrated and discombobulated”
“The Garden erupting with jubilation and admiration for KP”
“Look at the grandeur, the splendor of KP”
Agility and hostility
“Early dramatic theatrics tonight at the Garden”
“Look at Oladipo guarding KP – hugging him, mugging him…”
“Look at Young, the rousing wreck from Georgia Tech”
“Surrounded by Pacers, but in vain and in pain as KP makes the layup”
“The neophyte, straight on from the 3 line – what a delight”
“KP’s ubiquity astounding the Pacers now…”
“Dextility and mobility from Howard”
“Sauteing and erading (I think was either this or “carraying”, neither of which seems to actually be a word?) them now”
“We were lucky – we had a lot of guys who could step up… Galvanizers and energizers” (referring to 1972 Knicks, which Clyde was of course a starter on)
“But he’s been elusive, abusive off the dribble”
“He’s gotta be an intimidator and penetrator”
“An offensive juggernaut is Beasley now – ambidextrous, perfectness”
“Playing very inferior defense on the interior”
“It’s one of the most asinine calls in the NBA – coming in from behind” (kinda a stretch but close enough if you say it out loud)
“It got the crowd aroused though…”
“Payton balling, the Knicks defense appalling now”
“Both of them ramblin wrecks from Georgia Tech”
“Sabonis with the vexing, perplexing D”
“Previously the steal, now the wheel and deal into the basket”
“The Knicks only a short run away from the lead, in spite of the lackluster play”
“The neophyte has been a delight tonight”
“What he lacked in elevation, he made up for in determination”
“Telegraphic passes from the neophyte” (it rhymed the way he said it)
“Jack with the 3-point play, the old fashioned way.”
“Strenuous D by OKC”
“Watch the mesmerizing, improvising layup by Beasley”
“And now the 3 point ball starting to fall”
“A shot so nice he take it twice”
“Gay with the gratuitous ball, Gasol with the fortuitous fall”
Rhymes Which Game With People’s Names:
Embiid indeed (1000% the author of this list’s favourite, you could tell Clyde was smiling ear to ear while he said it)
Lee for Three
KP for three
Kawhi the Guy
“As Rose K-O’s”
“And Randle has really improved his handle”
"And Gobert was there"
“Great transition D from KP”
"Six-nine, from the baseline" (referring to Kuzminskas shooting a 3)
"Rising on Pachulia, and with the left hand – ain't that peculiar?"
"He was lured in by O'Quinn"
"Morrow causing their sorrow now."
"Ron Baker, the shot-maker that time."
"Beal is the real deal."
"Kristaps causing all kinds of mishaps for the defense right now”
“Playing some great interior D is KP right now”
“He has a new nickname, Mike – Enes the Menace.” (this was the 3rd or so game of the season, Clyde says it 2+ times a game reliably if Kanter is in there)
“And it’s Jarrett Jack on the attack”
“So now it’s up to Hardaway – guarded by JR, but Tim hasn’t been hitting the rim”
“Serendipity for Beasley in the first seven minutes”
“And Jack brings it to the rack”
“Excellent ESP between Lee and Beasley”
“Wolves taking the lead as Towns resounds”
by kikikza
16 Comments
Article:
More than half a century ago, a high-school basketballer with a sagacious mind needed inspiration. A fellow point guard was outplaying him. So, the coach approached to ease the tension.
“Son, he puts his pants on the same way you do,” the coach advised. A young Walt Frazier didn’t skip a beat. “Are you sure, coach?” Frazier replied. “I think this guy is jumping into them with both feet.”
Frazier’s love of language, his passion for pithy plays on words existed long before he became a broadcaster.
On Friday, Frazier, 77, will receive the Curt Gowdy Award for Electronic Media at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He is the first person already in the Hall of Fame as a player to receive the award individually.
For all the coolness of Frazier’s off-the-cuff wit — the rhymes and the $10 words that have laced the Knicks’ broadcast for more than three decades — people closest to him attribute his success in the booth not just to his intellectual dexterity or his curiosity, but also to his preparation.
His enthusiasm for language ramped up once he joined the Knicks’ broadcast in the late 1980s, jumping on with Greg Gumble for segments on the pregame, halftime and postgame show. He studied the thesaurus as if there were some upcoming, life-altering test on synonyms. He would read The New York Times’ arts and leisure section and write down words or phrases that he enjoyed.
Today, he has a collection of notebooks in his home that are scribbled with his favorite words and audacious rhymes. He says he’s used only 30 or 40 percent of what’s in them on the air. He will occasionally scan through the older notebooks hoping to rediscover a long, lost gem.
When he first got into broadcasting, his at-the-time girlfriend would mail him tapes of his recent commentaries that he would listen to on the plane, as if he were still an athlete studying the previous night’s game film. She was a former English major, so she would tour him through the dictionary or help him with pronunciations of the especially obscure.
“I became so obsessed,” Frazier told The Athletic recently. “She would see me come and run into the other room and lock the door. ‘Leave me alone! I showed you!’ And then you ride around the city, and you see culinary and right away, you know what that means.”
And now, so does an entire fan base, thanks to any time a Knick shows off his culinary skills, slicing and dicing to the hoop.
When Frazier first started in radio, his voice was too quaint, so he would go to loud bars and talk to strangers to practice projecting.
He watches games in his home on mute and calls them as if they’re live, rehearsing what he’s going to say before he releases it into a microphone.
“Whatever you’ve heard me say on the air, I’ve said hundreds of times in my living room by myself,” Frazier said. “When people say they thought I had stuff written down, because of the spontaneity with which it comes out of my mouth, I go, ‘I don’t choreograph the game.’ ”
The catchy phrases started with his mother, who would teach him life lessons with sayings he still quotes today.
She would tell him that “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” After he got famous and would come home to see her, her greeting words would be: “Don’t gain the world and lose your soul.”
After more than 30 years on television and radio, his love for language has defined his career. Frazier is not just a basketball analyst, able to break down a pick-and-roll or critique the Knicks when necessary, a realm into which many team broadcasters do not venture. He’s a poet.
Every once in a while, when he drops a term like lilliputian, a word he is surely the only NBA broadcaster ever to use on air, his longtime producers, Howie Singer and Spencer Julien, start cheering from the production truck. Singer or Julien will turn on the mic to encourage, “Yeah, Clyde!”
Frazier will laugh at the talkback in response.
“If you get a lilliputian and a precocious neophyte in the same game, you’ve won,” Singer said.
Frazier always plays the hits. His biggest ones, of course, are the rhymes: posting and toasting, swishing and dishing, bounding and astounding. But the true diehards fawn over zingers like precocious neophyte, a descriptor only a handful of rookies fit when Frazier is particularly impressed with them. It’s possibly the most-popular Clyde-ism at Madison Square Garden — Singer’s and Julien’s favorite, as well as play-by-play broadcaster Mike Breen’s.
“The first time I heard that, I couldn’t keep myself composed on the air,” Breen said.
It’s a double-whammy. Dropping precocious on an NBA broadcast? OK, that’s probably been done before. But neophyte, which Frazier almost exclusively uses to describe rookies, is unique to one person. Pairing them together, if he were anyone else, would appear overzealous.
Frazier explaining the difference between a precocious neophyte and “your regular neophyte,” as he puts it, is as tremendous as the modifier itself.
“Well, a neophyte is young and dumb. He gets schooled. He’s a neophyte. He doesn’t know the ropes,” Frazier said. “Precocious neophyte is, he’s a little more advanced than that. He’s not going for the okey-doke, as we say. He’s not going for the backdoor play — showing them the ball, getting them up in the air, drawing a foul. So, a precocious neophyte is ahead of just your regular neophyte, who’s in awe just playing in Madison Square Garden.”
This is who Frazier is; it’s how he talks when there is no microphone near him.
For example, back in the spring, just after New York City mayor Eric Adams removed the vaccine mandate so that Kyrie Irving could return to the Brooklyn Nets full time, Breen mentioned the news to Frazier.
“Kyrie is back,” Breen said.
Frazier felt the urge to edit him.
“Yeah,” Frazier responded. “Kyrie had a good emancipating.”
Why did he respond that way?
“Emancipating is just better,” Frazier said.
He has an inside joke with his friends when he starts rhyming during a casual convo: “They go, ‘Hey Clyde, save it for radio,’ ” he said.
“If you and I were having a conversation, I don’t think we’d be talking about your sagacity, but he does,” Breen said. “These are words that he really uses.”
The persona percolates into each part of his personality.
Jill Martin, a former on-air personality for Madison Square Garden and a close friend of Frazier’s, remembers a time when the two were shopping for the broadcaster’s sparkling suits. Martin noticed a swatch that looked completely out of whack: polka dots and stripes in different colors.
“Clyde,” she said. “How do these two patterns go together?”
Martin is now the fashion correspondent for “The Today Show.” She knows what she’s talking about. But Frazier always retorts with the winning one-liner.
“Jill, everything goes together,” he responded.
The Clyde-isms didn’t have a 100 percent approval rate when Frazier started using them on the radio years ago.
After playing 13 seasons for the Knicks and Cavaliers from 1967-80, Frazier joined the Knicks’ broadcast in the late ’80s. His segments on the pregame, halftime and postgame show did not run longer than three to four minutes.
“I was very uncomfortable that I would start talking and I couldn’t finish,” he said.
An inauspicious start meant an inevitable adjustment. He had to limit words. That’s when the thesaurus and arts and leisure section came into play. It’s when he created this language that’s specific to the MSG broadcast. He says one of the reasons he’s continued to use SAT words is to educate kids who are watching.
The method works. Is there a 12-year-old Knicks fan who doesn’t know what omnipotence means?
But Mike McCarthy, a producer on the Knicks’ broadcast from 1982 to 2005, recalls a time when New York was not yet fluent in Clyde.
Broadcast 101 says people on TV or radio should use the simplest, shortest words so they don’t turn off their viewers. You don’t want a listener to feel dumb or get distracted because you communicated in an inaccessible way. Frazier was breaking those basic rules with his riveting vocabulary. He sprinkled in the rhyming, too.
“I remember fighting on his behalf many times with people from upper management, Knicks management, because there was this impression that it was gimmicky,” McCarthy said. “Like in a lot of cases in the broadcast world, things have to gel and people have to be given time to become familiar with the listeners and/or the TV audience.”
There is ingenuity to Frazier’s on-air cadence. Sure, if any other broadcaster referenced a “precocious neophyte” on TV, those might be the last two words that person spoke on air.
“He’s the only one I think in sports broadcasting that can use some of these words,” Breen said. “But they’re perfect when he uses them.”
Now, Frazier’s voice and, more importantly, his unmatched brain are an essential part of the Knicks experience.
“What was once intentionally criticized for being shtick is now a commonplace,” McCarthy said. “And I don’t think Knicks fans could even fathom doing without it.”
OP posting and toasting
I keep a note on my phone of Clyde rhymes too, and yours is easily 5x as long as mine. Awesome work, and thanks for sharing! Long live Clyde!!
[“Charismatic, Acrobatic, Dramatic, Emphatic. Slice and dice”](https://youtube.com/watch?v=4z-5OVjHEY8)
I read every single one in Walt’s voice
This dude is like Little John in the animated Robin Hood
Pretty funny liners there
Get back to me when he organically rhymes something with orange in a broadcast.
wheeeee
I’ve always been a fan of Master Blaster
Rhyming accidentally
This reminds me of the NFL off season post about all the possible dictionary combinations of Mr. Big Chest lol
“Barrett, the former Knick, this time with the old foot trick” – Clyde, probably
I am definitely getting some pussy this weekend
Clyde is an American treasure. I’m currently in the middle of his book “A Guide to Basketball & Cool”. It is a great read. He’s my second favorite announcer (behind Kevin Calabro) but I do have to admit he is probably better.
with the fits to match, master blaster!