Breen, Wilbon win Gowdy Media Award
Sportscaster Mike Breen and sportswriter/commentator Michael Wilbon were named recipients of the 2020 Curt Gowdy Media Award, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced Friday.
Named after the legendary sportscaster, the Curt Gowdy Media Award is presented annually to print and electronic media members whose efforts have made a significant contribution to basketball.
Breen, a graduate of Fordham University, has broadcast NBA games for 28 seasons. He began with the New York Knicks on radio in 1992 and has become the team's lead announcer on MSG Network with Hall of Famer Walt Frazier. Breen also has been the lead play-by-play announcer on ESPN and ABC.
Wilbon, a Northwestern University product, has covered both college and professional sports through various platforms since 1980. As a Washington Post columnist, he has covered every NBA Finals since 1987 and virtually every Final Four since 1982. He also has co-hosted ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption" show with Tony Kornheiser since 2001.
The Hall of Fame also announced two new Curt Gowdy media awards -- the Transformative Media Award and the Media Insight Award.
TNT's Inside the NBA with Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal and Kenny Smith has won the first Transformative Media Award, which honors an individual or organization that has dramatically changed the format, presentation or enjoyment of the coverage of basketball through the use of traditional and emerging media.
Sportscaster Jim Gray is the inaugural winner of the Insight Media Award, which honors an individual or organization that is courageous in the pursuit of challenging, but imperative, content and offers a distinctive viewpoint.
The late Timothy Nugent, founder of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association in 1949, is the winner of the 2020 John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award.
The Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award was instituted by the Basketball Hall of Fame's Board of Trustees in 1973 and the Hall of Fame calls the award its most prestigious outside of enshrinement.
All the award winners will be honored during the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Weekend Aug. 28-30, 2020.
--Field Level Media
