Couper Moorhead: The first thing people should probably know about you is that you do have ties to Miami, you played for The University of Miami, and I’m curious as to how you ended up playing there from Niagara Falls.
Amy Audibert: I was recruited. I played on a really good team out of Ontario and my last two schools were Niagara U, which was ten minutes away from my front door right across the border, or University of Miami which was a Top 25 team. It came down to do you want to be the big fish in a little pond or the little fish in a big pond. I knew if I went to Miami I might not play as much and I probably would never have my jersey on the wall, but I wanted to play in the Big East which ended up being the ACC. I’ve never been scared to be part of things that are bigger than me – which is why I love working for a team – so I kind of went out on a whim and at 17 years old I packed my bags and came down to Miami.
I just loved Miami [by the time I left]. My friends were here and it felt like home.
What did you miss the most about living down here?
I think it’s fast paced. I’m not going to lie I love palm trees and I love blue, so the ocean and the sky, there’s something about that that I love. I just think also having the connection here made it much easier. This was such a quick thing. It wasn’t much of a thought. I was just coming back.
It was automatic when the opportunity came about?
It was such a quick thing. It was literally a day of, ‘If this happens, I have to go.’
It’s just different from the rest of the world. I love the culture down here, I love the people. It’s funny, I haven’t heard Spanish in about 15 years and right when I got in, I was on a shopping run and I had completely forgotten [how different it is].
I read a story by Christy Chirinos at the University about you from a few years back and in there she wrote that your original plan after school was to try and play overseas. Then there was a back injury which derailed all that and left you in a space where you didn’t know what to do – which quite a few athletes could probably relate to. What was that time like for you when you were figuring out what you wanted to do and how did you end up on the broadcasting path?
It’s very scary. I just ran into someone who was [previously] on the men’s basketball team at the [UM-FSU] game the other night and he just retired a couple months ago. I said to him, ‘I want to sit down and have a coffee’. To see what he’s feeling, because it’s such a scary time when this is what you’ve been doing your whole life. I was only 23. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. At first, I thought I wanted to coach, but college coaching you don’t do it just to do it. It is a life, it consumes everything. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t leave basketball feeling good about it, when it’s an injury and you didn’t get to do the things that you necessarily wanted to, I was resentful of the sport to be honest with you.
It was taken away from you.
Yeah, pretty much. So when I got back home to Niagara Falls, I took a year and didn’t know what to do. I actually bartended for that year. Before, I lived right beside the arena in one of the big buildings downtown, so I went from this wraparound balcony in downtown Miami back to my parent’s basement. It was like, ‘How did I end up here?’
I bartended and I built the best relationship with my grandma that year. Now that I look back, I’m thankful for it. When I was a Junior at Miami, I did a couple of shows and the cameramen said, ‘You present well on television, have you ever thought about this?’ I didn’t think much of that at the time. But then one of my teammate’s dad was in town and he said, ‘You should try to be a broadcaster’. So that was strike two. But by then I was in my last years in college and it’s not something you can really just dive into.
So I was sitting at home bartending, hanging out with my grandma, twiddling my thumbs and I thought, ‘You know what, I ought to give this a try.’ That’s how I started and sometimes I pinch myself that I’m here now because it hasn’t been easy. I’m one of those people who is very obsessed about goals and naïve to a fault but then again, I’m here.
I don’t think anyone could tell you that it hasn’t worked out, that’s for sure. So you went back to school for a little bit, at Niagara College, and eventually wound up working at the University of Buffalo. What were you learning about the business during that time period and what skills were you developing?
When I first got into it, I wanted to work in the NBA, and I thought my only option would be sideline [reporting]. Just because Doris Burke was just starting to get games as an analyst, and I didn’t have a big playing career. I thought if I was going to get to the NBA it wasn’t going to be as an analyst. I actually put all my time and effort into sideline stuff. I picked up every sideline gig, every spot that I could do. When I started getting these analyst opportunities, you don’t turn anything away and I fell in love with it.
The University of Buffalo was such a career changer for me because their athletic program outsourced [their broadcasts]. I wasn’t sitting beside a student, I was sitting beside someone who was doing the same job for the Buffalo Bills. They brought in producers and directors so I had a professional person in my ear. I [learned] talkback and timing and pacing. I was lucky. That was such an important time for me because I got to work with industry professionals. It was definitely the technical stuff. And then the men’s and women’s teams were all of the sudden Top 25, Sweet 16, so I’m lucky because I’m in the middle of all of it learning on the fly. Having the opportunity to learn from professionals not on the national stage, it was awesome because you get to not be great and still get opportunities
You mentioned Doris, what does she mean to you?
She’s absolutely incredible. I watch the way she works, and I watch her colleagues and I watch how coaches and players respect her and how when she’s talking to them, they listen. She’s someone I’ve always looked up to because she’s approached her career the right way and her credibility is off the charts. That’s something I’ve always hung on to. There’s something to be said for getting jobs because I’ve grinded and developed and learned. There’s luck to it, but I’ve put in the work. I’ve never come into a job thinking I’m not ready for it because I’ve put in the work.
After Buffalo, you did a season with the Atlanta Dream, then the Raptors 905 G-League team and eventually work with the Toronto Raptors, which included the first All-Women’s broadcast in league history – which, at the time everyone thought it was Kyle Lowry’s last game there?
It wound up being Norm [Powell’s]. It was crazy enough, with everything else going on with the buildup to the game. It wasn’t pressure in that we all worked in television in various jobs so we were just happy to get the opportunity to do it but obviously we knew a lot of eyes would be on it. I didn’t realize how many eyes until we started and we were getting tweets from Justin Trudeau. And then on top of all that they told us to be mindful that the trade deadline was coming and none of us knew what was going to happen. That was crazy but we were fortunate to have Kyle for a couple more months.
And Kyle mentioned you all during postgame?
Yeah, he said our names. It was funny because I was driving home and my phone is blowing up. Usually if your phone is blowing up, you’re thinking you’ve done or said something wrong, but it was actually about Kyle talking about us.
Earlier you said this whole process of getting down here happened very quickly. How did the opportunity come about?
When Ruth [Riley] went up to the front office I went away on vacation, to Jamaica, for the first time in 22 years. Everything started happening right around then, and I was actually packing my bags for training camp with the Raptors when I got the call about the opportunity to audition here. It really was just insane.
I had a lot of support up north which in some ways made it a little tougher. It would’ve been nicer if they were mad, you know? But they were so supportive and nice. They knew I wanted to be an NBA analyst, that’s where my heart has always been. I’ve just groomed myself to do whatever job I could get, and my first job wound up being courtside.
The joke was the Raptors [the first week of the season] beat me here by about 12 hours. It was crazy.
Now I have to ask the deep philosophical question. What’s your favorite play in basketball?
The pick-and-roll. I didn’t even have to think about that. I love using your teammate, making a read. There’s an art to it, it’s almost like a chess match. It’s who makes the read better or faster or stronger and it’s either the offense or defense. Obviously talent plays a part too. Stockton and Malone, everyone knew what they were doing and nobody could stop it. It’s so old school and you see it all the time still. Pick-and-roll.
Who did you grow up watching? Who were your favorite players?
Lisa Leslie obviously on the women’s side. My favorite women’s player of all time, and I actually got to call [one of her games], is Diana Taurasi. Her game is off the charts but also her personality. When I played in Miami my freshman year was her senior year. When we were up at UConn I remember she hit this baseline fadeaway right in front of me. They were kicking our tail. And when you lose you run but at that moment I forgot about how much we were running the next day. I was just thinking, ‘This is cool.’
On the men’s side, it was Shaq. There’s just something to me that’s so intriguing about being so big and strong that nobody can stop you. That must be the craziest feeling in the world. And actually that’s probably how I messed my back up because I was a power lifter. I couldn’t run or jump fast, yet I played in the Big East and ACC because I was so strong. There was nothing like being strong, so yeah definitely Shaq.
This is a question you can ask any team public-facing employee and get a different answer, how do you approach the age-old question of how to work for a team and try to provide fair, balanced analysis?
First of all, the Miami HEAT competes for championships. When you go into an organization that’s in a different stage than other organizations, you’re expected to win. The talent is here to win. It turns into, if you’re not winning you can say why but you can also turn to, ‘Well, how do you fix it.’ It’s easier to be in an organization that’s expecting a lot.
I’ve always wanted to work for a team. 82 games to cover a team because you get to know players and coaches and philosophies and trends and systems. You can actually sit there and pick it apart a little bit, too. But I think it’s important to try to, even when not necessarily everyone wants to think of it positively, I’m going to sleep better at night because I’m going to have some kind of hope. We can change this thing or this was great or whatnot, that’s athletics.
I remember during the road game in Sacramento, the team wasn’t playing very well that night, it was a tough game, but your analysis postgame was very on point and fair. You acknowledged where the shortcomings were yet you weren’t hammering the team for playing poorly, and you also seemed to keep a perspective of what the game meant in the context of an NBA season and how things could look moving forward. It seemed very reasonable, but at the time it was one of your first road games and I remember wondering what you were thinking at the time?
The Indiana game was like that, too. I keep saying this, I said it before I got down here and I keep saying it. The teams that were not so good, in terms of record, are good now. There’s so much parity in this league. You look at Indiana and Sacramento and they have young guys that want to compete and play and they’re just going to keep getting better. I know everyone freaks out with losses, but for me we’re not far enough into the season to figure out the quality of each team. Look at Utah, and what people thought coming in.
One other part of your job, there’s the you part of it but you’re also going to be working closely with Jason Jackson. He’s obviously a character, which I mean in the best way possible, he’s very supportive on set and is incredible at his job, but you do have to build an on-air relationship. How do you start doing that, what are the early returns and how important will that chemistry be long term?
Jax has been an incredible mentor to me. I met Jax years ago at Summer League. I always say, you don’t get to sit beside someone who has been so supportive of your career every day, either. Again, I feel lucky. He knows where I’m from, he’s helped me, he’s critiqued my film over the years. He’s not completely oblivious to who I am on air. One of the biggest things I respect about him is he’s the same whether the camera is rolling or not. That is him. There’s something to be said about being who you are and he’s always encouraged that to me. I’m often in uncharted territories at the end of the day. I’m not a high-profile player and I’m a woman and now I’m an NBA analyst. If I tried to be someone else, which would be easy to do, it could come off pretty bad. So just sitting beside him is a constant reminder to just be who you are.
Definitely after wins we turn it up a little bit and after losses we make sure we just do our jobs and we’re still entertaining and getting our message across. I can just follow his lead because he’s a pro’s pro.
Other than just the experience in general, you’re here, you’re living your dream now and I’m sure it’s hard to think about in specifics in this exact moment but what are you most looking forward to now that you’re here?
Just being part of it. I’ve watched the show down here for years, it’s one of the top ones in the league. The production value is incredible, the truck is incredible, the on-air talent is great. I watch a lot of League Pass. Finding my little niche where I can fit in and do my thing as well.
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. I’m kind of just diving right in. I haven’t watched film or anything yet, but yeah just being part of it. I’ve had a lot of calls and texts since this happened and everyone has said, especially people who have worked in the NBA for a while, ‘This is one of the best organizations.’ Since I’ve been here that’s what I’ve seen and felt. And then just reconnecting the with the community. I know the fans are super passionate about this team and the expectations are high. So if I can just be a little tiny part of sharing the stories, because that’s my favorite part of my job. Using a ball and hoop to tell the stories of the men and women who are more than just basketball players.