ALBERT, MARV

ALBERT, MARV (Marv Philip Aufrichtig; 1941– ), U.S. television and radio sportscaster, member of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Albert was born in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, New York, the son of a grocer, and grew up there with his brothers, Al and Steve, both of whom also became professional broadcasters. The three brothers started practicing in their youth, staging a "contest" between the two family hamsters and doing the play-by-play of the Hamster Olympics. Albert worked on howard cosell 's national radio show as a teenager and then with marty glickman at WCBS Radio when he was in college. Albert attended Syracuse University from 1960 to 1962 and graduated from New York University in 1965. Glickman gave Albert his start in broadcasting, allowing him to broadcast his first New York Knicks basketball game on radio on January 27, 1963, at age 22. He broadcast the Knicks full time on radio from the 1967–68 season through the 1985–86 season. He also broadcast the Knicks on television, but was dismissed after he criticized the team's poor play on-air in 2004. Albert was the radio voice of the New York Rangers hockey team, beginning with his first game on March 13, 1963, and full time from 1965–66 to 1996–97. He later broadcast NBA basketball, NFL football, college basketball, boxing, NHL all-star games, and baseball studio and pre-game shows for the NBC network from 1979 to 1998. He also broadcast basketball for the TNT network and was the voice of Monday Night Football on Westwood One Radio/CBS Radio Sports. Prior to joining NBC, Albert was the radio voice of the New York Giants football team from 1973 to 1976, and for 13 years was the sports anchor for Ch. 4/WNBC-TV.   Albert became the focus of a media frenzy in 1997 when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge amid embarrassing allegations about his sex life. As a consequence he was forced to leave broadcasting, but was rehired by the MSG and Turner networks in 1998 and NBC in 1999. He was hired in 2005 to handle play-by-play duties for the New Jersey Nets beginning in the 2005–6 season. Albert, whose iconic catchphrase is an emphatic "Yes\!" punctuating a jump shot in basketball, has won six Cable Ace Awards for Outstanding Play-By-Play Announcer, three New York Emmy awards as Outstanding On-Camera Personality, and was named New York State Sportscaster of the Year an unprecedented 20 times. In 1997 he was awarded the Curt Gowdy Media Award by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Albert played himself in a number of films and is the author of Krazy about the Knicks (1971), Ranger Fever (1973), Marv Albert's Sports Quiz Book (1976), Yesss\!: Marv Albert On Sportscasting (1979), and I'd Love To But I Have a Game (1993). (Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)