Where to start in telling Chris Carrino’s story? He was just named to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as a Curt Gowdy Media Award recipient for making a significant contribution to the game. It’s the highest honor for a basketball broadcaster.
You could begin with the cruel disease that afflicted a perfectly healthy 23-year-old more than three decades ago and has put him in a wheelchair, forcing him to have a game plan for just getting dressed. But if you are trying to understand why he won the award, that’s not the right place.
No, you should start with Carrino’s excellence at his craft. He has called Brooklyn Nets games on the radio for nearly a quarter-century, and his sound is as good as anyone in the sport. His play-by-play has the precision of a marksman and a rhythm that perfectly fits the 48-minute melody of squeaky high-tops, made baskets and the roars of crowds.
“I’m telling you, he’s in the 1 percent club of the best,” said Tim Capstraw, Carrino’s longtime Nets radio partner. “People who are in the business all say it. That’s how high his talent is in terms of smoothness, capturing the moment and his humor.”
When Carrino received the call from the Hall the other day that left him in disbelief, it did creep into his mind that maybe he was joining legends because of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD, a genetic disease that has weakened his muscles and for which there is no cure.
He texted with his TV counterpart on the Nets, Ian Eagle, who told him he shouldn’t feel any of that and emphasized that Carrino is being recognized for his excellence on the air.
Eagle is right. You get into the Hall of Fame because of your ability, not your disability.
The 55-year-old Carrino will be part of the induction ceremony in Springfield, Mass., this August. If you want to know why Carrino has received the honor, just fire up WFAN the next time the Nets play.
“Chris understands painting the word picture on radio as well as anybody that’s ever done it,” said Eagle, who, along with his national gigs, had laid down the same legacy on TV with the Nets as Carrino has on the radio. “His voice perfectly fits basketball play-by-play.”
In 1980, in the New York City suburb of Yonkers, Carrino’s father brought home a tape recorder from his job as a recording engineer for a sound effects and stock music company. Carrino started doing play-by-play, emulating the greats at the time, like Marv Albert, Dick Enberg and Charlie Jones.
“I always tell people that the key to life is to do something that you did for fun when you were 10 years old,” Carrino said.
As a kid, he was a pretty good baseball and basketball player, but his ability to speak led him to be a high school debater, where he went on to become a national finalist for Iona Prep.
Eight years after receiving the tape recorder, Carrino was a freshman at Fordham. While schools like Syracuse and Ithaca College are renowned for their sportscasters, Fordham is something of a feeder school to New York broadcasting stardom, dating back to Vin Scully and including current-day headliners, like Mike Breen, Michael Kay and Ryan Ruocco.
It was legendary sports broadcaster and native New Yorker Marty Glickman, a 1936 Olympian and the first Gowdy Award winner, who basically created sports radio play-by-play as an art form, with terms like “the key” for the paint and “swish” for a perfect shot. From an era without million-dollar contracts, Glickman later taught at Fordham, and in 1988, there Carrino sat in the back of Glickman’s class, inspired.
“I knew two things at that moment,” Carrino said. “I want to call games. And the other thing was: ‘I don’t know anything about it. I have to listen to this guy.’”
Glickman’s mantra was to “consider the listener,” and Carrino quickly developed a good ear for his own words, realizing what he should say, when and how.
Carrino graduated from Fordham in 1992, determined to continue the school’s broadcasting tradition and make his own name.
A year out of school, he didn’t feel right; an unusual weakness was overcoming his body. He would unexpectedly be diagnosed with FSHD, a disease not every doctor even knew about.
Shortly after, he distinctly remembered going for physical therapy without even knowing if it was the right thing to do. The therapist spoke broken English, and so he wasn’t fully sure if she understood his condition. But she said someone from her home country had FSHD. He was tall, like Carrino, and was a good basketball player. Carrino asked if he still played.
“No,” she replied. “He’s in a wheelchair.”
Carrino was taken aback — and had a new goal to go along with his career ones.
“From that moment on, I was trying to outrun the wheelchair, because I always thought, ‘That would be the end,’” Carrino said. “That would be it.”
To win the Gowdy Award and make the Hall of Fame, you start with ability, but basketball, broadcasting and life are team sports for everyone. To completely understand why Carrino won the award, this is where you have to end the story – with his support system.
Carrino has his own version of a triangle offense that made the Gowdy Award possible. It starts with his wife, Laura, his rock. She has supported him in every way and pushed him at the right moments.
It is aided by his broadcast partner, Capstraw, who, on and off the air, is like the player who does all the little things alongside Carrino.
And it is inspired by his son, Chris Carrino Jr., who has the ability to take everything in stride.
Laura grew up in Park Slope in an Irish family that didn’t leave a thought unspoken. She met Chris Carrino on a blind date in 2000. Carrino was 30. He already had FSHD but was doing his best to hide it.
Laura noticed something a little off in his gait when he walked up to her second-floor apartment. Carrino explained what was going on to her early, but there was still one more conversation that had to take place as the two-year courtship moved toward an engagement.
“He said, ‘I just want you to know that there is a 50-50 chance that our offspring could have it,’” Laura said with emotion in her voice a quarter-century later. “That was probably the hardest thing for me. I sat down and said, ‘This is where I have to really decide, do I love this man enough to stay or do I have to go?’”
They were married in 2002.
Carrino began as the Nets’ lead radio play-by-player for the 2001-02 season, when the Jason Kidd-led team made it to the franchise’s first NBA Finals. In Carrino’s second season, Capstraw would join the on-air crew as the Nets again reached the Finals but fell short of a title.
Tim Capstraw joined Chris Carrino on the Nets radio broadcast in 2002. (Courtesy of Laura Carrino)
Carrino’s ability was evident to any listener. The star on the radio is the play-by-play announcer, but Carrino avoided canned catchphrases to draw more attention to himself and not the game. Instead, he immediately considers the listeners’ desire to see the action through his words and adds exclamations to plays with a simple “Good” that he draws out with some extra “O’s” for good measure.
“The lessons he learned from Marty Glickman are on display every time he’s on the air,” Eagle said.
Carrino and Capstraw have become an all-time New York sports radio duo. But their teamwork extended far outside the booth.
Capstraw does all the things that don’t show up in the box score. As Carrino’s condition worsened, Capstraw would help his partner up and down airplane stairs and get ready for games.
With Carrino’s upper-body strength gone, his falls meant trips to the emergency room; Capstraw would be there with him in the ER. The stories of Capstraw’s commitment to his teammate are endless.
“He’s the most selfless person that you could ever meet in terms of humility, in a profession that it’s hard to stay humble, be humble and that doesn’t reward humility,” Carrino said.
In 2004, the Carrinos had their only child, Chris Jr. The father couldn’t pick up his son out of the crib, Laura said, but he gave his son a different gift.
“He’s just the most positive person,” Laura said. “No matter what happens, he’s just like, ‘It’s going to work. It’s going to be fine.’”
Even with that attitude, Chris Sr. needed support as his physical condition worsened. One day in 2010, he took a half-hour to get out of a diner booth and Laura’s family roots took hold.
“In my family, I’m Brooklyn and I’m Irish, we talk about it,” Laura said. “We yell. We scream. We talk about it. We figure it out.”
She told her husband that he had made a name for himself in the media, and he needed to start a foundation around support for FSHD, as there were none in the United States. The Chris Carrino Foundation for FSHD was soon born, and taking his condition and cause more widely public freed Carrino up.
“The longer you try to hide it, it’s just another burden,” Carrino said of his condition. “You had the burden of living with the disease, and now you have the burden of hiding it. Human nature – you’ll hide it as long as you can.”
The foundation has raised $2 million. There have been strides made, and there are clinical trials ongoing for remedies.
But Carrino’s muscle strength further deteriorated. Walking became arduous, making aspects of the job, like boarding the team plane, a complicated event.
By 2017, he and Capstraw were in Toronto at a hotel bar before a Nets-Toronto Raptors game. Carrino told his partner he may have to stop calling games.
“I started thinking, ‘That’s going to end my career,’” Carrino said. “I’m not going to be able to travel. Logistically, it’s going to be hard. I never wanted to be a burden on anybody.
“He just looked at me, and he was like, ‘You are not going to quit. I’m not going to let you.’”
With Capstraw doing the heavy lifting on the road and Laura doing it at home, they made it all work, but by 2019, Carrino knew he needed a wheelchair and chose a Pride Mobility Scooter.
When he got it, Laura put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’m proud of you.”
Chris Carrino’s support system includes his wife, Laura, and son, Chris Jr. (Courtesy of Laura Carrino)
Carrino said that instead of surrendering, the scooter made him feel like he was connecting with the world. The stadiums to see a ballgame with his son were now on-limits because he didn’t have to worry about walking through busy corridors. Laura said they could go to a Broadway show. The world — while not perfect because there are still wider accessibility issues today — was fuller.
When COVID hit, remote broadcasting was born, and while Carrino still does a good amount of the trips, the option of calling some Nets away games from a studio near his home in New Jersey makes life a little easier.
“Everyone has rallied to say, ‘How can we help you do your job the way you do it?’” Carrino said.
While Carrino’s Big 3 in his life are the ones that set the tone, there are so many special stories. Nets travel manager Joe Cuomo is always figuring out logistics. Carrino has done NFL games on the radio for Compass Media for 17 years, and its owner, Peter Kosann, offered Carrino a travel companion to aid him on the road. His neighbor, Ira Brofsky, has filled the role and learned how to become a spotter.
Chris Jr. is now a senior at Fordham, majoring in communications. He is fully healthy and wants to be a play-by-play announcer or a sports talk show host.
On three occasions this year on WFAN, he filled in for Capstraw as the Nets’ radio analyst, alongside his dad. Laura said it was “surreal” to hear them.
Chris Sr. had a similar feeling when he received the Hall call. He is in a spot forever next to Albert, Breen and Glickman. For a guy who got there due to how good he is with words, he was in unfamiliar territory.
“I was speechless,” Carrino said.