Remembering March 21, 2024

By Daniel Taylor

Inside the television truck at American Airlines Center for the Dallas Mavericks vs. Utah Jazz game

Although there have been many memorable sports moments in my life, some of which include the 2011 Dallas Mavericks NBA Championship, the 2021 Baylor National Championship, 2014 Baylor vs. TCU football game, or even the 2023 Rangers World Series Championship, there was one moment that stood out amongst them all, and this moment came during a regular-season NBA basketball game.

On March 21, 2024, the Utah Jazz traveled to Dallas to face the Mavericks in a Western Conference matchup. One thing that was special about this game was that I got to go as part of a field trip with my sports broadcasting class at Baylor.

Before the game, we got a tour of the American Airlines Center and got to see how an NBA game is televised and produced, as well as watch the pregame show live on the set. During the game, half of our class went to the room where the Jumbotron is run, and the other half went out to the TV production truck to see how a live game is televised, and then we switched about halfway through the game.

When it was my turn to go into the television truck, I spent most of my time watching the guy who ran the robo-cams above the baskets because he was running two cameras at once. I thought it was really cool how he was able to manage two at once during a fast-paced game. During one play in particular, however, Utah Jazz player and former Baylor Bear Keyonte George had the ball taken by Luka Dončić, who then threw the ball ahead to Mavericks teammate Kyrie Irving, who made one more alley-oop pass to Derrick Jones Jr for the dunk.  

In the truck, as the ball got stolen, I pointed out how George was from Baylor and that our class was a group of Baylor students on a field trip. After the camera operator heard this, he looked at me and asked if I wanted to run the camera for the Utah Jazz broadcast and focus in on George as he went to the bench.

I happily and eagerly agreed and zoomed in on George, who walked to the Utah Jazz bench right after this play because it was the Jazz who called a timeout. After a few moments of messing with the camera and looking at George and zooming in and out, the camera simply stopped responding to my directions.

At this point, I looked at the camera operator and showed him what was going on, and he yelled at me many different times and accused me of breaking his camera. As I was freaking out, because I thought I had just broken a camera that cost thousands of dollars and ruined an NBA broadcast for the Utah Jazz, the operator realized his joke wasn’t taken as a joke and quickly told me he was kidding and that it wasn’t my fault. The truck had been experiencing issues with that camera all day.

As I was relieved that I hadn’t actually broken the camera, he asked for my help to see if it would work, because what they were doing wasn’t resolving the issue. I then messed with it once more and, to everyone’s surprise, it worked again. So, for the rest of the night, the running joke was that I broke, yet also fixed the Utah Jazz’s camera.

Normally, this would just be a funny story from a game, and I wouldn’t remember when in the game it happened. But it turns out that the play it happened on would become the most-viewed video ever across NBA social media platforms.