But ESPN Radio's courtside trio for the NBA Finals — Jack Ramsay and Hubie Brown as analysts with Mike Tirico on play-by-play — has to set some kind on broadcasting record for experience: Brown is 75 and Ramsay is 84.

Ramsay was the general manager of an NBA champion — Philadelphia 76ers, in 1967 — and coached an NBA title team — Portland Trail Blazers, in 1977 — before Kobe Bryant was born.

And he and Brown really go way back. Brown, who coached for 33 years including 15 in the NBA, recalls being a New Jersey high school coach when Ramsay coached St. Joseph's College: "He was the mentor of so many coaches like (UCLA's) John Wooden was on the West Coast. I've been a fan of Jack Ramsay since the 1950s."

To understand how Ramsay — who called about 50 NBA games this season — keeps going, prepare to feel like a comparative couch potato.

He still has oral chemotherapy five days each month. But a little thing like that doesn't keep him from his daily "room workout" which includes up to 300 stomach crunches, 100 side crunches and 70 push-ups. Which all of us could do. If, uh, we had time.

Ramsay misses his daily swims in the Gulf of Mexico when he's home in Naples, Fla., but he's pumped about covering the "best playoffs" he's seen. Ramsay, who got a doctoral degree in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1963, suggests there's no simple answer about whether today's NBA game is better than yesteryear's: "The players are stronger, more athletic. The defense has become more sophisticated, tougher. But there's probably not as good ball-handling now. You don't have fights like you used to have. And I've heard people say that, say, Jerry West couldn't play now. Jerry West would be as great a player now as he was back then."

Ramsay exemplifies stick-to-it-iveness. But he suggests he's almost been a lifelong slacker: "Except when I was a high school coach working summer jobs to make ends meet, it's like I've lived my life not having to work."