Chuck Swirsky
Swirsky
Ever wonder what it's like to work in the NBA? NBA.com/Canada's monthly Career Corner gives you the lowdown on the jobs of NBA personalities. This month, Chuck Swirsky speaks about his role as the radio and TV voice of the Toronto Raptors.

Swirsky on becoming a sports announcer:

I started when I was just five years old. I broke my mother's broomstick and used it as a microphone, and did play-by-play with baseball cards, off the TV screen – the whole bit. In the sixth grade I worked at a radio station in Bellevue, Washington called KFKF. In high school, I did a halftime high school football and basketball report because I wasn't very big and I didn't play high school athletics.

I went to school at Ohio U. in Athens and did play-by-play for high school and college sports. I got an internship with NBC Radio in Cleveland and met a number of people through my internship. I went back home to Seattle where I was a glorified gofer for KIRO radio in Seattle, and worked there for a year and a half in sports. I realized I was the fourth man on a three man staff, so I went to Columbus, Ohio for seven months because I just wanted to work 24 hours, seven days a week.

Vince Carter
Calling Vince Carter's spectacular dunks is part of Swirsky's job as the Raptors' play-by-play announcer. (Ron Turenne/NBAE/Getty Images)
I got a job in Chicago and I was there for 15 years. While there, I did the public announcements for the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Cubs, and did play-by-play for soccer, play-by-play for Northwestern University football on television, morning drive sports and play-by-play for DePaul University basketball on radio. Mark Aguirre, Terry Cummings, Rod Strickland, Kevin Edwards, Dallas Comegys and Stanley Brundy all played for DePaul University during this time.

I left in 1994 and covered the University of Michigan basketball team. We had half of the Fab Five (Ray Jackson and Jimmy King). A new wave was coming in (Maurice Taylor and Robert Traylor). That was a great group of people as well. When the job opened here in Toronto, people suggested that I apply for it. One thing led to the next and here I am today.

Swirsky's advice to aspiring sports announcers:

1) Be true to your convictions. Be true to yourself. Don't change – no one can rewrite their personality or beliefs and what they stand for. So often now people are trying to copy other people. You can instill someone with the basic values, work ethic, focus and determination, but you can't be someone that you're not. And that's true whether you're doing play-by-play or another profession.

2) It comes down to being comfortable with public speaking, with drama, with the arts and with history. I'm very big into discipline of the mind, because you learn to remember dates and events through repetition. The more you can study and become well rounded, the more you develop a vocabulary that will assist you as you move on with the latter.

3) I read a lot and I'm an Internet freak. I'm on the Internet all the time. I want to go into a broadcast with notes knowing that I've got everything covered.

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