Greg Badovinac Does the Numbers for Football, Basketball Games

LOS ANGELES – Sitting at almost the center court line, Greg Badovinac has what arguably may be one of the best seats in the house at the Staples Center for Los Angeles Lakers basketball games. But despite the vantage point, Badovinac isn’t into the game like the thousands of screaming fans around him. He’s too busy keeping track of each players important “stats” and passing along that information to the game’s announcers. “You just watch the game,” said Badovinac, who moonlights as a media statistician for radio and television stations when he’s not working as the federal regulatory analyst with the California Credit Union League. “You don’t watch if for the beauty of game. You watch it for the numbers.” Badovinac, who has been with the league nearly 11 years and who previously worked as a sports publicist, has been collecting the statistics at college and professional basketball and football games – and an occasional baseball game – on and off for more than 20 years. His work has taken him to the Rose Bowl, to Olympic basketball competitions and to the 1987 Super Bowl. He spent 11 seasons on the stat crew with the LA Clippers. He typically will cover 45 games a year. This basketball season he expects to cover 17 games for LA Lakers radio. “I keep track of the important statistics that the announcers can use during a broadcast,” Badovinac explained. In addition to carefully watching the game, Badovinac has to pay close attention to what the announcers are saying. “One of things I have to do is listen to the announcers and hopefully pick up on what they’re talking about,” he said. By quickly feeding them information, Badovinac is making the announcers sound more knowledgeable. If the announcers are talking about Shaquille O’Neal, for example, by the time they get to the end of their comment they’ll be able to report how many points he’s scored, how many rebounds he’s grabbed and how many fouls he has – without listeners any the wiser that the information had just been fed to the announcers. [email protected]