While making this video, I happened to notice that the commentary for most of Semi Ojeleye’s buckets is very bland to the point of being generic. It’s like I’m watching an NBA 2K MyPlayer Let’s Play. At no point are any interesting anecdotes told about Ojeleye. They can’t even bring up what position he plays or what his season averages look like for the benefit of the casual home viewer. You could seriously reconstruct this commentary out of lines that Marv Albert recorded for the 2K series, other than the parts where Chris Webber goes off on tangents.
I don’t suppose I can blame the TNT commentators too much. Semi Ojeleye doesn’t play much and he doesn’t do much even when he does play. It’s hard to comment intelligently on a player that you’ve maybe only seen score a bucket once or twice in your whole life. Even if somebody prepared notes for those guys to read off of, containing fun bits of trivia on Ojeleye’s playstyle and backstory, it would be hard to come up with an exciting list. The most interesting thing about him is his real first name is Jesusemilore and that he’s Nigerian by way of Kansas.
Still, as Ojeleye is racking up the points, that can be the topic of discussion during the broadcast. After all, this is his career-high in scoring. After he broke the thirteen-point barrier (his previous career high), that would have been a perfect opportunity to say “Ojeleye with a new career high – great game for him, Stevens has to like what he’s saying from the second-year man.” Maybe I could record myself saying that and splice it into the game audio to make this a more complete viewing experience.