Even after 'tough' year, Timmy McCarthy's love for basketball shines on RTÉ

Or perhaps Nikola Jokic, the reigning NBA MVP standing between USA and the gold medal game.

Instead the subject was Timmy McCarthy.

Just like Snoop Dogg going around feeding carrots to dressage horses, McCarthy was one of those “strange, communal treasures” that only the Olympics can bring. And all the more precious because the way “he growls, sputters, shrieks so loudly the microphone crackles” is broadcast only to those with access to a station called Raidió Teilifís Éireann.

Thursday’s subsequent semi-finals underlined again the unique style and appeal of McCarthy.

“Yabusele. Give it to Wemby [Victor Wembanyama]. Oh, don’t give it that low down – he’s 7’4!” “Bogdanovic says, ‘You’re not stopping me, LeBron. You might be the King but I’m the prince.’ But now LeBron steps outside the arc and drains the three! The King has announced, ‘I’ve come to my court – this is my court!’” 

In the first quarter when Stephen Curry was single-handedly keeping USA in touch of Serbia, McCarthy was quite restrained. But when Curry hit a go-ahead three-pointer with two minutes to go, his ninth “from DOWNTOWN” on the night, McCarthy couldn’t contain himself. “Steph! Oh my God! Oh my God!! What Steph is doing tonight! Oh yeah baby – count it all day long!” Commentators aren’t meant to go on like that. Or at least they don’t go on like that. Especially the Irish variety. Implying the existence of a higher power and their belief in it. Being potentially corny. Being so unashamedly joyful and joyous.

But there’s a reason he goes on as he does. Basketball to him is such fun. And to him watching – and listening to – it for the viewer should be fun. Especially when the rest of our lives can be so tough.

A year out from the Tokyo Olympics, McCarthy spoke extensively to this paper about how in early 2018 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. On the Gleason scale McCarthy’s was registering as the most aggressive kind possible. The surgery lasted three times longer than the average prostate procedure.

“First my mortality was challenged,” he’d tell us. “Then [after the surgery] my humanity was. I was incontinent. I remember being helped out of the bed by the physiotherapist and I saw I was wearing nappies.” In that interview he outlined his successful recovery. How he called on the resilience of being one of the first athletes in this country to come back from a cruciate ligament injury and be voted Player of the Year. How he continued to work and exercise and even golf a bit before undergoing 18 weeks of chemotherapy. How that treatment was successful.

What he has not spoken about before is that last year the cancer returned. In May 2023 he left a bed in the Galway Clinic to go up to Dun Laoghaire to be inducted into the Basketball Ireland Hall of Fame. The following morning he returned to that bed in Galway. He had been so frail at the banquet, some friends feared that it could be the last time they’d see him.

“I had a tough year last year all right,” says McCarthy now. “I had been doing great, feeling great, and then you had to deal with this hammer-blow that the cancer had returned.

“But I have great faith. In my medical team in the Galway Clinic. Our Lord has been very good to me. And I’ve had great family support from my family. So while I had to have a couple of surgeries and chemo right through the year, that’s all behind me. My health thankfully is very good now and continuing to improve, I’m in good form and working away.” 

The day job is with The McCarthy Consultancy, the executive and communications coaching firms he set up around the time of the Rio Olympics after decades working as a CEO with multiple companies. But this past fortnight, just like he does for a couple of weeks every four years, he has put on a set of headphones and transformed into something of a national and even international cult figure.

He went viral as early as 2012. The Off The Ball team paid homage by putting his distinctly-animated commentary to the light groove of that well-known Petula Clark track. ESPN contributors gushed that his commentary could power the USA for the next hundred years and that he should be calling NBA games for that same network in the same USA.

That didn’t quite transpire but McCarthy does regularly commentate European basketball champions league games on FIBA’s own version of GAAGO. Any fears or accusations back then that he was a novelty act that would soon wear thin have been disproven. London was his third Olympics as RTÉ’s lead basketball commentator. This is his sixth. Still going coast to coast, still making folks shake and bake.

As a former national team coach there could be a temptation for him to dazzle people with his tactical knowledge of the sport, a trap some fellow coaches can fall into whenever they analyse or co-commentate on National Cup finals or international matches covered live by TG4.

But all the time McCarthy is conscious of who is real audience is. It’s not about impressing any fellow coaches. It’s not about impressing anyone. It’s about entertaining this rare mass audience basketball has.

“You have to remember the majority of people watching the Olympics are not basketball people. Basketball is a minority sport in Ireland. But the great thing about RTÉ and the Olympics is it’s a chance to show and see other sports. 

"So what I’m trying to do is to make sure that whether you’re young or old, on a farm, in college, in an office, hospital, wherever, you stay with the game whether it’s close or not by me making it entertaining and informative enough for you. 

“That’s what I always say to myself just before I pick up the mic. Entertain. Inform. Perform. Don’t try and impress.” 

Part of the appeal is that he could say anything. Even the stock catchphrases had their origins in pure spontaneity. In 2004 Luis Scola threw down a dunk on Argentina’s way to a shock semi-final win over USA and before McCarthy knew it he’d gushed the now immortal word “BOOMSHACKALAKA!” 

 It wasn’t just McCarthy that was surprised by his reaction. Anyone who had known and listened to him for years was as well. From 1990 on McCarthy had been co-commentator to Ger Canning in RTÉ’s annual live coverage of the National Cup finals. His style would have been closer to Enda McGinley and Éamonn Fitzmaurice than Brendan Cummins or Michael Duignan: more measured than animated.

But as a lead commentator something came over him. His main job now was less to analyse and inform as engage and entertain. “If I can’t get into it,” he’d once explain, “how can the viewer get into it?” The result is his broadcasting delivery is now more like John Mullane, the same individual he once famously enthused over when briefly covering Gaelic Games the summer following Beijing (“Mullane – he bakes! He shakes! He scores!”) 

If some people had their way he’d be back covering some Gaelic Games. In a chat I had with Ursula Jacob during the week, she mentioned how her husband suggested that RTÉ or whoever could do worse than get McCarthy to commentate on some of those pedestrian football games we had to endure this past summer. “He’d make them more exciting!” Like seemingly almost everyone on social media, they can’t get enough of Timmy.

In the meantime Timmy can’t get enough of hoops. He thoroughly enjoyed covering the 3x3, especially both finals that each finished with buzzer-beaters. (“I’d love to have played it. [Liam] McHale and Tom Sull [O’Sullivan] from my time as well. What’s great about it is you have to want to score and be able to score. You can get away being a defensive specialist in regular five-on-five. Not in 3x3.”) Now in the coming days he’ll commentate on both five-v-five finals, which RTÉ will be showing live.

“I’m excited now as I was 20 years ago doing my first,” he says.

He turned a significant birthday on Friday, at least significant in the eyes of The Beatles. Does he still love it, does he still feed it (into the post) when he’s 64?

Oh yeah, baby! Count it all day long!