Voices of the game getting older, better

Please don’t tell Al McCoy and Ralph Lawler they’re a dying breed. It offends their sensibilities. And reminds them of how old they are.

“I’m not too fond of the word dying,” Lawler said with a laugh. “I just turned 68. That’s getting a little personal.”

The two men are members of a shrinking fraternity in the NBA, though — play-by-play radio broadcasters who have become synonymous with the franchises they cover.

McCoy has been broadcasting Suns games for 34 years, the longest continuous service with one team in the league. Lawler has been doing Los Angeles Clippers games for 27 years.

Together, they’ve called more than 4,700 games. Neither man, however, has had the pleasure of narrating the voice-over to his team’s championship.

After Game 7 tonight, one of them will continue to pursue that dream. The other will rest his vocal cords for the summer.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” McCoy said.

There are few voices left like McCoy, Lawler and Cleveland’s Joe Tait, broadcasters so associated with one team. The money and prestige is in network or cable TV. Younger broadcasters want to branch out and do other sports as well.

“There’s only five or six of us that have been around for 20-something years,” Lawler said. “There’s a special sense of brotherhood among us, that’s for sure.”

When Lawler became the voice of the Clippers in 1978, he knew it would be his last job. He didn’t know he would have to describe so many meaningless games and pitiful teams.

The Clippers have had a losing record 25 of Lawler’s 27 seasons. They were 12-70 in 1986-87 and 17-65 in 1987-88.

You’d think a man would grow tired of describing the same train wreck game in, game out, year in, year out, but Lawler insists he’s never lost his zeal for the job.

“I think I can say in 2,000-some games, there’s never been a game I haven’t looked forward to coming to the gym,” he said. “I’d like to think that it didn’t affect the quality of my work; it may have even inspired me to work harder to find a way to make things interesting.”

McCoy thinks Lawler deserves broadcasting’s equivalent of the Purple Heart.

“It has to be difficult. It has to be very difficult,” McCoy said. “You have to have a great love for the game. We’ve had our losing seasons too but nothing like that.”

Lawler admits the losing has been painful. But he also knows how lucky he is. He’s working his dream job, and even after 27 years, he sounds like a man on his honeymoon.

“I love the craft of broadcasting,” he said. “And I’m a big basketball fan. I just love coming to the game. I want to get to the gym as early as I can, and I always go to the practices and the shootarounds. I love watching how hard coaches work and how deep they think trying to get an edge. It’s still fascinating to me.”

And how does it feel, after 27 mostly miserable seasons, to finally have something good to talk about?

“It’s like finding a new toy,” Lawler said.

McCoy isn’t quite as enthused as Lawler. Broadcasting big games is nothing new for him. But even now, at the age of 73 — who knew he was that old? — McCoy still looks forward to that jump ball every night.

“The travel and stuff, the hotels, that gets old,” McCoy said, “but when they throw the ball up to start the game it’s still fun.”

The job has changed since McCoy started calling Suns games in 1972. Back then, Phoenix had seven employees, and McCoy helped Jerry Colangelo sell sponsorships and advertising time on the radio.

Today, there are so many people involved in the broadcast McCoy’s not sure who does what.

“We had a meeting before this season and there were probably 35 people in the room,” McCoy said. “Jerry got up in the meeting and said, ‘I just want you guys to know Al and I did all of this for years.’ ”

McCoy is, for all of his signature catchphrases, an oldschool broadcaster. The best compliment he gets is from blind people who tell him he makes them feel as if they’re at the game.

“A lot of the younger guys are so TV-oriented, you hear them doing radio and it sounds like they’re doing television,” McCoy said. “I think you still have to describe the game. I pride myself on knowing where the ball is, where the shot was taken from, it comes across the time stripe, left of the key; a lot of guys don’t do that.”

McCoy and Lawler are senior citizens in a profession that skews ever younger — and noisier — but retirement is the last thing on their minds. As long as their voice and enthusiasm holds out, why give up doing something they love?

“On the bus ride over here (before Game 5), my wife and I saw a homeless man sleeping in a park,” Lawler said. “I looked over at her and said, ‘Do you realize how lucky we are?’

“This is what Al and I always wanted to do and we’re doing it.”

Al McCoy’s catchphrases

‘Heartbreak hotel’

Meaning: Something bad happens to the Suns

Origin: “During a game in our early years, one of our guys had a layup to win the game. It rolled around and fell out and all I could think of was the old Elvis Presley song, ‘the guy was down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel.’ ”

‘Shazam’

Meaning: One of the Suns hits a 3-point shot

Origin: “When I was a kid I used to read Captain Marvel comic books. There was a kid named Billy Batson who was a radio reporter and when he became Captain Marvel, he said, ‘Shazam,’ which was Socrates, Hercules, Atlas and Zeus. When he said that lightning and thunder and everything went on. When they put the 3-point shot in, I looked at it like a home run call. I thought, ‘let’s try Shazam.’ That caught on more than anything.”

Ralph Lawler’s catchphrases

‘Bingo’

Meaning: A Clipper hits a 3-pointer.

Origin: “We had a guy named

Bobby ‘Bingo’ Smith in 1979, the year the 3-point shot started. That got the bingo thing going.”

‘Oh me, oh my’

Meaning: Could describe something great or something awful

Origin: “It just popped out of my mouth one game. A guy I worked with said, ‘I just love it when you say, “Oh me, oh my.” ’ I said, ‘Really?’ ”