Former NBA All-Star Reduced To “Random Dude” In TV Mishap

by Glenn Davis | 5:33 pm, February 14th, 2011

Mistakes happen in every walk of life – some are just more visible than others. Like anything that happens on TV, for example. Any onscreen graphic is especially susceptible to such an embarrassing error – you can’t make a typo verbally, after all. What you can do, however, is put in placeholder text to be changed before the broadcast…and then never get around to changing it.

This, it appears, happened a few days ago when former NBA player Wally Szczerbiak stopped by CBS College Sports to do some studio analysis. Szczerbiak, as is plainly evident, has a difficult-to-spell name. The Dagger’s Jeff Eisenberg and Awful Announcing’s Mike Vitiello surmise, and we’d agree, that whoever was responsible for the graphic meant to bear Szczerbiak’s name was unfamiliar with the spelling, and that led to:

It’s too bad for Szczerbiak – Vitiello notes that his name is apparently so difficult it couldn’t even overcome a solid, decade-long NBA career that even included an All-Star appearance. Note to Doug Mientkiewicz: if you’re thinking of doing any MLB commentary, note that you may run the risk of being referred to as a “random dude.”

(And no, we can’t completely ignore the possibility, raised by Eisenberg, that this is a Photoshop con job…but what a Photoshop job if it’s fake. And we don’t think it is.)