“Caaaashh!”

When Michael Grady pours his 90-proof bourbon-and-honey voice over the rocks of that word, the splash of it provides verbal alliance with the visual of a Minnesota Timberwolf burying a long-range jumper at a crucial point in the game. 

In the moment a fan of the Minnesota Timberwolves sees that jumper happen on the screen, he or she bonds to accompany the revelry, the intoxication of collective ecstasy. Like the best play-by-play announcers in team sports, Grady, who is in his third season with the Timberwolves, has already established what is essentially the opposite of a “safe” word, a word that cues the faithful that it is indeed time to react as if your finger is in the light socket and a one-armed bandit is spilling coinage into your evening. 

Grady has wanted to be that bonding agent since he was a little kid. His father was in the military and the family moved around some until his parents were divorced when he was four. Growing up in Indianapolis, his mother used to drop him off at the bus stop on her way to work as a correctional officer, but when it was really cold in the winter, they’d sit and listen to the local morning show on WIBC-AM.

“Hearing the banter, the humor, the rhythm of the show, it was clear the hosts were very close. It was like listening to friends or family just having a good time every morning,” Grady remembered, adding that, “broadcasting has this nostalgic feeling for me.”

Sitting in the Wolves media room at Target Center before a game earlier this month, he said being on the radio intrigued him for nearly as long as he can remember. “But I knew at 11 years old that this is what I wanted to do.”

That was 1994, in the sixth grade, when he took a workshop class, put on headphones and was able to hear himself on the microphone. It was also 1994 when Reggie Miller of the hometown Indiana Pacers dropped 25 fourth quarter points on the Knicks, trash-talking Spike Lee during a come-from-behind win at Madison Square Garden.

It was a “caaaashh!” moment and little Michael put hoops alongside hip-hop, and sports broadcasting next to radio DJ, in his precocious plans to live his best life over the airwaves. 

Then Allen Iverson and Michael Jordan broke the tie with Jay-Z and Biggie Smalls, with A.I. fearlessly blazing through defenders off the bounce at Georgetown in 1996 and Jordan thwarting Reggie and everyone else in the NBA, racking up his sixth championship with the Bulls in June 1998. Fully down the rabbit hole by now, Grady was mesmerized by the way announcer Bob Costas paid tribute on the fly to what was to be Jordan’s last game with Chicago. 

“It was the way he put these massive, massive moments so eloquently into historical perspective,” Grady said, the memory still tinged with awe. “I thought, ‘That’s where I want to go.’” 

Just three months later, because he was entering his junior year at Warren Central high school, Grady was eligible to join the radio program. Although he was a “pretty good” receiver in football and a quicksilver guard in basketball, he immediately quit playing sports and began “living in the studio” at the school, to fast-track his ascendance as Warren Central’s play-by-play announcer. 

It so happened that the basketball team made the hallowed Indiana high school basketball tournament, with a day game scheduled at Hinkle Fieldhouse, known to all Hoosiers as “the Cathedral,” and the largest basketball arena in the entire country from its christening in 1928 until 1950. Grady was beyond pumped for the occasion — his equipment was not. Technical difficulties prevented him from even getting on the air until the second half. 

No matter. “The sun was coming through the windows and kissing off the floor,” Grady said. “It was the moment I fell in love.”

Listening to Grady calling Timberwolves games alongside Jim Petersen more than a quarter-century later, the inevitable conclusion one draws is that he is a stone-cold natural at this art-and-craft endeavor. 

You hear the erudite scholarship of Costas, mixed with the amiable passion of Costas’ partner back in the day, Ahmad Rashad. But what you mostly hear is Grady deepening his relationship with his listening public with each passing sentence, layering future nostalgia into our brain pans with buttery panache. 

You don’t need a secret decoder ring, but steady listening enhances the melody of the cadences and the catch-phrases. It has become semi-commonplace for three-point shooters to avoid onrushing defenders via a single dribble while sidling two steps to the side: Grady dubs it the “Electric Slide.” Righties trying to finish at the hoop with their off-hand are executing the “lefty lay.” 

Then there are player-specific shout-outs. A rare dunk by Nickeil Alexander-Walker transforms him into “Nickeil Alexander Skywalker!” When Naz Reid plays with a finesse that belies his size while scoring in the paint he’s “Big Jelly!” in honor of his playground roots in New Jersey. And other special times he is simply, “Two Words.” (The glorifications for Anthony Edwards, like Ant’s game, are ever evolving.)

Asked how much he plans and stores these phrases, Grady provides an example for which he is obviously proud. Walking through the airport, he heard the opening lyrics to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” which starts with “Dearly beloved,” set to a gospel background. For all kinds of reasons, it seemed like an ideal way to set the nail on a highlight moment from Taurean Prince, who was a Wolves forward at the time.

“When I heard it in the airport, I wrote it down. For the right opportunity. You don’t want to waste it,” Grady said. 

On March 20, 2023, Prince had a career night, making eight straight three-pointers in a game against the Knicks in Madison Square Garden. 

“I could have thrown it out on the fifth one,” Grady said, retrospectively stoked that he waited. “I could have thrown it out on the sixth one.” Or the seventh one. 

But with less than two minutes to play and the Wolves up by a single point, Prince received a skip pass and splashed his eighth one. “Oh! Dearly Beloved!” Grady hollered. 

“It was the perfect time,” he said with satisfaction nearly two years later. And then, to undercut the braggadocio, he added with understatement, “The call meeting the moment adds a nice element.” 

Michael Grady may be a “natural,” but it took, and still takes, a ton of work and preparation to make it feel that way. 

One of his favorite stories about his mother, Mavis, who died just before he got the Wolves job in the fall of 2022, is about them going to the local park together when he was in fifth grade, and “thought I was a pretty good little basketball player.” But they played H-O-R-S-E “and she whupped my ass. I started to cry and she said, ‘Why are you crying? What’s wrong with you!’

“It was the first time I witnessed up close how competitive she was; how she was going to knock any obstacle in her way out of the park,” Grady said. “She started off as a correctional officer and worked her way up to where she was a state investigator for gang violence in Indiana. She took up golf later in life and would brag about how she crushed all of her co-workers. And that (competitive streak) absolutely brushed off on me. I carry a lot of that with me.”

If that’s so, you hide it really well, I said. 

“That’s another thing I got from her,” he replied good-naturedly.

After earning his broadcasting degree at tiny Vincennes University two hours southeast of Indianapolis, Grady returned home and flung himself at every opportunity.

The first notch in his belt was fulfilling that childhood fantasy by getting a job as a producer, and then also talk show host on WIBC, which aired the “Grady and Big Joe Show.” Next up, blessed by his mellifluous pipes, he became the emcee and then the PA announcer at games played by the Indiana Fever of the WNBA and then also his beloved Pacers. Oh, and after that, when the local ABC television affiliate needed a temp sportscaster, he filled in and eventually turned it into a sports anchor position, on the job from Friday to Tuesday.  

All at the same time. 

Here’s how Grady describes his final three years, from 2014-17, in Indianapolis. 

“On a day when there was a home Pacers game, I’d wake up, have my radio show from 10 to noon. I might go home real quick and get lunch, then go to the (television) station and do a five o’clock sportscast, go the Fieldhouse and do a six o’clock sportscast from the arena, then call the game (as a PA announcer), then drive back to the TV station and do the eleven o’clock sportscast and go home.”

Just when it began to wear on him, he got an offer to become a sideline reporter for the Brooklyn Nets on the vaunted YES network. It was New York City, working alongside nationally renowned broadcasting pros like Ryan Ruocco, Ian Eagle, Sarah Kustok and former NBA player Richard Jefferson. Grady would also host the pregame and postgame shows. 

It was the most intimidating work situation Grady has faced thus far. The kid raised and employed all his life in Indiana was now 34, walking around neighborhoods he’d previously only seen on rap videos, living above the Nets’ arena. 

“Leaving the comfort of home for a place that will chew you up and spit you out was pressure, but also exciting,” he said. “You feel it when Ian Eagle tosses it to you for a live hit in New York. You better have good material and not screw it up. You have to hit it out of the park.” 

He did. When he arrived in Brooklyn in 2017, the Nets were a 20-win team. Nevertheless, he was floored by the prevailing professionalism, and the help he received, and absorbed their lessons. By 2020, the Nets had added Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, and in the chaos caused by COVID, he got a chance to do some television play-by-play, for both YES and NBA-TV, the latter run by Turner Broadcasting. 

His high-profile colleagues raved about his work. And although primarily still working the sideline, fortune provided him with some memorable games to broadcast. 

“My final year with the Nets, I did maybe six or seven games. But one of them was a 60-point Kyrie (Irving) game, one of them was a 50-point Kevin Durant game and another one was a 28-point comeback at the Garden,” Grady said with a smile. 

Meanwhile, new minority owners of the Timberwolves, Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez were shaking up the moribund culture of the team. The pair went after Tim Connelly to become their new president of basketball operations and Connelly promptly shook up the league with the Rudy Gobert trade. Lore and A-Rod were likewise looking for an upgrade over Dave Benz, the broadcast voice of the Wolves for the past 10 years. From his time playing for the Yankees and working in the New York media, A-Rod was familiar with the folks at YES. 

Long story short, Grady was hired in August 2022, a month after the Gobert deal. At age 39, it was his first full-time play-by-play gig, but the fit has been seamless. 

“The first night we met, we went to dinner,” said Petersen, the highly-regarded color analyst for Wolves television since 2003. “The brass at Bally (now FanDuel Sports) wanted us to do a mock broadcast. It didn’t take us very long together to realize we didn’t need that.

“We had chemistry immediately. Because Michael is the personification of everything you want in a broadcaster. He’s got a great voice. He is super professional. He’s got a deep knowledge base. He is very open and giving, always making room for me (on the air). I knew it would work because he is a warm, funny, intelligent guy who has worked hard and paid his dues.” 

Others have noticed. Last season, Grady called some games for the national broadcasts on TNT, and he also worked play-by-play on national games for the WNBA, including more extensive work for the league’s champion New York Liberty. And before the 2024-25 season started this fall, ESPN announced Grady would be the only new play-by-play hire to its broadcast team, working a variety of games around the country and one in Paris.

The schedule produced minimal conflicts with Grady’s Timberwolves slate of telecasts, but it is not hard to see where this is headed. At best, Wolves fans can hope Grady works out a package similar to what Mike Breen has with the New York Knicks and ESPN, or what Ian Eagle does with the Nets and TNT – a timeshare in which the national outlet inexorably has the upper hand. 

“Yeah it is an exciting time and I know there is stuff to weigh,” Grady said frankly. “But no matter what happens, Minnesota has been and continues to be a place – well, it has changed my life.” 

Minnesota does have its upside too, and one of them is Anthony Edwards. 

“The guys I grew up with, Reggie (Miller) and Mike (Jordan), with that hypercompetitive energy, I see a lot of that fire in Ant,” Grady said. “I have enjoyed covering him – who wouldn’t?”

Petersen puts it in perspective. 

“Obviously Kevin Harlan fans would have loved to see Kevin Harlan stay here forever. But obviously Kevin Harlan had bigger broadcast dreams, and he has lived them. I think Michael is of that same talent level. I think he’s going to go down as one of the great broadcasters in sports history. I mean, the quality of his voice mixed with his depth of knowledge, his likeability, his sense of humor and his willingness to work; he’s got all the components.” 

A final piece of praise that Petersen lays on Grady is that he is “a student of excellence.” And it is true; you see it in his mien, his attire, his discipline – even his compassion. 

“When Michael took me over to Paris to do the Pacers game on ESPN, all the people he worked with in Indiana just swarmed him with love, congratulating him and wishing him well,” said Mike Greenbaum, the Wolves statistician who feeds Grady and Petersen relevant, more nuanced numbers pertaining to game flow, and, at Grady’s behest, does the same when Grady is on ESPN.

Back when Grady was daydreaming about announcing sports, someone told him to dress like the person you aspire to be. Consequently, he is impeccably attired, favoring the clean look of Ralph Lauren in high school (copping a Polo shirt when he could afford it). When I asked him about interests aside from sports, photography and fashion came to fore. He warms to the latter subject.

“I collected GQ magazine for a 10-year stretch beginning in ’07. I couldn’t afford what I saw, but it gave me inspiration to mimic the look within my budget. I was a big ‘Mad Men’ fan and wear white shirts because I appreciated Don Draper/Jon Hamm’s clean look on the show.”

More recently, he added, “On off days, I have a smart casual approach and mix things up. But for game days, I wanted to buy local, and work with Ivan Martinez for all of my custom suits.” 

To fit into them, he runs six miles per day, his frame lean and tapered. In cold weather, he’s on the treadmill, with a book (usually autobiographies) in his ears or, more likely, a basketball game before his eyes. 

“I joke with Jim about this all the time: I’ll watch active games to keep up on who we’re playing, but I watch a lot of old games too,” he said. “I’ll go on the NBA app and they’ve got Finals dating back to the ‘90s and beyond. All the top games from every franchise. And I just like going back and watching the old school games with the announcers, to pick up things. If I hear a phrase or a word used to describe something that I think I can use, I’ll write it down and try to incorporate it into a broadcast. I definitely still feel like a student, still inspired by what I see and hear.” 

Meanwhile, the “caaaashh!” will continue to enrich, in more ways than one.

Britt Robson

Britt Robson has covered the Timberwolves since 1990 for City Pages, The Rake, SportsIllustrated.com and The Athletic. He also has written about all forms and styles of music for over 30 years.

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