It’s 90 minutes before tipoff of the New Orleans Pelicans’ home game against the Orlando Magic, and the NBA's best local broadcast team is in its element.
Joel Meyers, the Pelicans’ veteran play-by-play announcer, is chatting up Magic general manager Jeff Weltman, who he’s known since his father was running the ABA’s Spirit of St. Louis decades ago.
A few feet away, Antonio Daniels — the Pelicans’ sartorially dressed color analyst — is visiting with a die-hard fan who he treated to lower-bowl tickets for the game and is known only as @retro_Pels on social media.
Daniels and Meyers work the crowd and the opposing team with equal ardor. And as they do, Pelicans players and coaches randomly drop by their courtside post to exchange greetings or fist-bumps. With five decades of NBA experience between them, the duo seems to know everyone in the arena.
“We love what we do,” Daniels said a few minutes later during a pregame interview in the Smoothie King Center. “This has been the ultimate blessing to be here right now with this fan base, with this community and with this team.”
'Right direction'
If anyone can appreciate the Pelicans’ breakthrough 2023-24 season, it’s Daniels and Meyers, better known locally as Joel and A.D. Teaming with sideline reporter Jen Hale on Pelicans’ regional telecasts for the past five seasons, they’ve been there for every step — and misstep — of the Zion Williamson-Brandon Ingram era.
And now, after all the stops and starts and injury-riddled seasons of unfulfilled potential, it’s finally come together for the Pelicans in Year 5 of Zion's heralded tenure. They have recorded their best record in 15 years (49-33) and have a chance to play their way into the first round of the Western Conference playoffs with a win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night in the play-in tournament.
“The culture on this team is amazing,” Daniels said. “This season is the culmination of everything this team was doing in the previous years. Everything was building toward this. To see it all play out is so fun for me.”
Added Meyers: "We’re headed in the right direction, and it’s only going to get better.”
As the Pelicans have taken flight this season, Daniels and Meyers have seen their profile and popularity soar among the team’s fanbase. If they’re not the most popular local broadcast team in the league, then they certainly rank somewhere near the top.
It’s not uncommon for Pelicans fans to seek autographs or photo ops with the duo before both home and road games. Some give them cards. Others bestow them with free lottery tickets, a nod to a running, on-air joke between the pair. One particularly ardent — and talented — follower even knitted a turtleneck sweater and presented it to Daniels in honor of his trademark game-day outfit.
“They’re like folk heroes,” said Matt Ryan, the Pelicans director of communications, who sees the nightly fan engagement from his seat next to Daniels and Meyers on press row.
The odd couple
On the surface, they might seem like an odd pairing: the dapper 49-year-old Daniels, a generation younger than Meyers and a devout Christian who doesn’t curse; and Meyers, the classic intractable curmudgeon, with the sarcastic wit and a predilection for fine wine, fast horses and postgame fast food.
But when paired together, their old school-new school differences meld into a delectable alchemy, similar to the way Larry David and J.B. Smoove made magic on "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
“It works because we’re so different,” Daniels said. “You have an inner-city, young Black man with an older white Jewish man. He’ll say something about jazz, and I’ll say something about Jay-Z. Some of the things that I say, I know that he has no idea what I’m talking about. But I love it.”
The pair’s relationship dates to 1999, when Daniels was an emerging guard in San Antonio and Meyers served as the voice of the Spurs in the early years of the Gregg Popovich era. Each left the Alamo City a few years later — Daniels to Portland; Meyers to Los Angeles to take the prestigious play-by-play gig with the Lakers — but they kept in touch over the years as their NBA paths inevitably intertwined.
When the Pelicans targeted Daniels to fill the color analyst spot in 2019, Meyers enthusiastically endorsed the move. After landing the job, Daniels even bought a condo in the same Warehouse District building, one floor below Meyers.
“A.D. is a good person; I knew that from the beginning,” said Meyers, a veteran of more than 25 years of NBA broadcast experience now in his 12th season with the Pelicans. “I feel fortunate in that I get to work with a friend.”
Their esprit de corps is evident during Pelicans' telecasts, where their natural camaraderie blends with their expertise and passion for the game to produce a viewing experience that both educates and entertains.
This is exactly the combination Greg Bensel aimed for when he hired the effervescent Daniels to pair with the exactingly professional Meyers five years ago. Meyers and his satiny smooth baritone voice brought instant credibility to the club's broadcast team when he took the play-by-play job in 2012. Bensel, the Pelicans’ longtime vice president of communications, needed a color analyst of equal caliber and loved, among other things, Daniels' enthusiasm and ability to break down the complexities of the NBA game and explain them in layman’s terms, a prerequisite in the club’s mission to attract more casual fans to the team.
The duo developed almost instant chemistry and mastered the delicate and often elusive balance between professionalism and boosterism in their telecasts. Their support of the team is obvious, but they’re also not afraid to call it like they see it, an approach that Bensel encourages.
'Part of the family'
“Both are so professional, they know exactly how to walk the line,” Bensel said. “There's a genuine authenticity to them, and they have great credibility with our team and basketball operations. They’re part of the team. They’re part of the family.”
Added Meyers: "We care, just like they do. They (the players and coaches) know we're on board with them."
A former first-round pick out of Bowling Green, Daniels forged a 13-year career for seven NBA teams, including the Spurs' 1999 NBA championship squad. Along the way, he learned the importance of team dynamics and knowing your role. He's taken the same approach to his broadcast career.
“I never forget that we are a reflection and a brand of the Pelicans organization,” Daniels said. "I'm not just giving my opinion during a game. I'm talking about things that I've actually experienced, things that I've gone through (as a player)."
While Meyers and Daniels have vastly different backgrounds, lifestyles, personalities and fashion senses, their successful partnership is based on a few common pillars: a passion for the job and the exhaustive research and preparation it requires, along with a shared love of the game. When they’re not at an NBA game, they’re usually watching one or talking about the game. In fact, Daniels still hosts a daily three-hour NBA talk show on Sirius radio. Each Pelicans telecast is infused with their vast NBA experience and expertise.
"The difference between A.D. and a lot of other analysts is, they tell you what happened, and A.D. tells you why it happened," Meyers said. "He's exceptional at that."
To the delight of viewers, the duo also shares a similar sense of humor, which manifests itself in a steady stream of witticisms and inside jokes throughout telecasts.
1 minute of Joel Meyers and Antonio Daniels talking about Gradey Dick is everything you need today pic.twitter.com/mW8hgHYVfW
— retroPels (@retro_pels) February 6, 2024
During a game earlier this season against Toronto, Meyers had a field day with his deadpan references to Raptors rookie Gradey Dick.
“Dick couldn’t finish,” Meyers said.
“You know, you got serious issues,” Daniels chortled. “I am not messing with you today.”
When the basketball got stuck in the rim during a game against the Magic three weeks ago, Daniels exclaimed, "We got a wedgie."
"Kinda sums up the first half, doesn’t it?" Meyers replied.
"This," Daniels quickly added, "is a family show, Joel."
“We take the game seriously and we care about the Pels,” Meyers said. “But we don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Their fans eat it up.
Jordan Nettles became such a fan of Daniels and Meyers that he named his Twitter, now referred to as X, handle “Joel-venile” and created a T-shirt to celebrate the popular monicker. The 33-year-old Folsom native sells the shirts along with other Pelicans-inspired merchandise on his Etsy website.
When Pelicans forward Tre Murphy wore one of his “Joel-venile” creations to a game last season it went viral on social media. Nettles later added an NBA Jam-themed T-shirt, featuring the images of Meyers and Daniels on the front.
“I watch a lot of NBA games, and they’re the best broadcast team in the league, hands down,” Nettles said. “They complement each other so well, and you can tell they love what they do. We're lucky to have them here. The fanbase loves them. I don’t think many NBA teams have a broadcast team with their own NBA Jam T-shirt.”
Nick and Sarah Finney Algu took their appreciation to another level. The young Lakeview couple first got Meyers’ attention when she brought a “The wrong Joel got MVP” sign to the Pelicans’ home game against the Philadelphia 76ers and reigning league MVP Joel Embiid.
When Meyers gifted them his lower-bowl tickets to the Pels’ March 15 game against the Los Angeles Clippers, the young Lakeview couple expressed their appreciation in the most “New Orleans” way possible. They attended the game in “Joel and A.D.” costumes, replete with eyeglasses, microphones and Daniels’ trademark turtleneck sweater-and-blazer combination.
“Joel and A.D. together are just electric,” said Finney Algu, a counselor at St. Mary’s Dominican High School. “I wasn’t that big a Pelicans fan at first. I really fell in love with the commentary and back and forth between Joel and A.D. during the game. They feed off each other so well. In a way, that got me excited about the team.”
New Orleans has seen its share of popular sports broadcast teams over the years.
My favorite fan costume so far https://t.co/gf1OcQd1P5 pic.twitter.com/IG9gzcp98c
— 🇬🇹⚜️ (@SaraOdette) March 16, 2024
Former WWL-TV sports director Jim Henderson and Saints legend Archie Manning had their heyday on Saints games in the late 1980s and 1990s. Henderson and former color analyst Hokie Gajan were revered in the WWL radio broadcast booth on Saints games a decade later.
But Meyers and Daniels’ popularity — buoyed, in part, by the ubiquity of social media — has reached unprecedented heights. Neither is from New Orleans, but both have grown to love the city and quickly established themselves as cherished institutions for its burgeoning basketball community.
"The amount of love that Joel and I receive is incredible," Daniels said. "We have an organization and a team and that we love, and a fanbase that we love and loves us back. If you invest in this city and show that you really care, it will love you back."
