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Remembering Al McCoy, Part 1: Legendary broadcaster and Voice of the Suns
On April 9, 2023, at his final regular-season home game after 51 years of broadcasting Phoenix Suns games, Al McCoy stood at center-court with a microphone in his hand, in front of a Footprint Center packed with Suns fans, co-workers and fellow Ring of Honor members.
He couldn’t remember when, exactly, but at some point over the years, McCoy had seen a few words written on a wall somewhere in the Philadelphia 76ers’ arena, and he felt compelled to jot them down. Now, he chose to recite them to the crowd as something of a personal sendoff:
To play the game is great. To win the game is greater. But to love the game is the greatest of all.
“And my 51 years,” he concluded, “Have been the greatest of all.”
On Saturday, the team announced that the Hall-of-Fame broadcaster who loved the game and his Phoenix Suns had passed away at the age of 91.
In a statement, owner Mat Ishbia recognized McCoy’s legendary career as the longest-tenured team broadcaster in NBA history.
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“From his first call in 1972 to his last in 2023, Al McCoy was there for every defining moment in our history,” Ishbia said. “He was the heartbeat of our organization, a cherished friend, a mentor to many and a legend whose voice brought countless unforgettable moments to life for generations of Suns fans. We are heartbroken by the passing of our beloved Al, the voice of the Phoenix Suns for over five decades. Our thoughts go out to Al’s family, friends and to our entire Suns community.”
McCoy’s family released a statement as well, honoring the man they knew beyond the confines of the court.
“As a father, he taught us the value of respect, loyalty, hard work, and love – both on and off the court. His passion, dedication and kindness touched countless lives, and while he may be gone, the impact he made will be felt for generations to come.”
It is impossible to honor the legacy of one of the greatest Suns of all time with any one statement, story or perspective. There is no way to properly recount a half-century of memorable Suns calls, lifelong friendships, or the immeasurable impact that Al McCoy had on the players, coaches, broadcasters, fans and entire Suns community he served for over five decades.
So in the wake of trying, and in acknowledgment of the Sisyphean nature of such a task, what follows is a collection of stories about Al McCoy — broadcaster, mentor, friend, jazz pianist and Voice of the Suns — as told by the people in the organization who knew him best. In Part 1 today, we’ll focus on McCoy the broadcaster, the rare friend to players, and the enduring Voice of the Suns.
Al McCoy the broadcaster
As an Iowan native, Al McCoy was a small-town kid from the Midwest who had no electricity, but a battery-powered radio and dreams of becoming a sports broadcaster. A play-by-play job with the Triple-A Phoenix Giants baseball team brought McCoy out to Phoenix in 1956, and 16 years later, Jerry Colangelo gave him his shot as a Suns broadcaster.
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McCoy called his first Suns game on Sept. 27, 1972, and 18,488 days later, he would call his final one in the 2023 NBA Playoffs. Over five decades on the mic, McCoy separated himself from his peers in a number of ways, but there was one that immediately stood out to anyone tuning in to his radio broadcasts.
“Just that voice,” said Ann Meyers Drysdale, who’s been a Suns and Mercury broadcaster since 2012. “That voice says it all. ‘Shazam!’”
Despite his smaller stature, McCoy’s booming voice became iconic in the Valley. Former broadcaster Steve Albert, who called Suns games from 2012-17, compared his voice to another all-time great in how distinguishable it was.
“He had one of those Vin Scully-type voices,” Albert said. “I always used to say to him, ‘I wish I had a voice like yours.’ But then he’d always say, ‘You got a great voice, what are you talking about?’ But it was not even close.”
Albert wasn’t alone in comparing McCoy to the all-timers. Another longtime broadcasting partner, Eddie Johnson, called his voice “second to none” and likened it to legends like Marv Albert, Ian Eagle and Kevin Harlan in how immediately identifiable it was.
“Deep, even though not a big person, but his voice was like that of a 7-footer, to where, when he opened his mouth, his words came out extremely strong,” Johnson said. “He was meant for broadcasting. He was meant for being on a microphone. And he used it, obviously, at the highest regard.”
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EJ isn’t the only one who heard McCoy’s strong, dulcet tones and assumed he was much larger in person. Former Suns coach Monty Williams laughed when recalling the first time he heard Al’s voice.
“I used to do radio with him when the building was different in the office, and his voice was — it was just this booming voice,” Williams said. “I thought somebody was gonna come into the office that was about 6’10”.”
Having a unique voice set him apart, but it wouldn’t have mattered without McCoy’s ability to vividly describe what he was seeing for his listeners. For years, NBA games were on tape delay or not available on TV at all, so Al McCoy’s voice was the only source of information for Suns fans hoping to tune in live.
Being a team broadcaster afforded McCoy opportunities to develop his own signature calls, and he made the most of every “Shazam,” “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Wham, Bam, Slam.”
“I can close my eyes and think of, if you’re in the kitchen, let’s say, listening to the game as a fan,” said current Suns play-by-play announcer Kevin Ray. “And you hear that, what’s that gonna do? You’re gonna rush back in, because you know something big happened if you hear a ‘Shazam’ or a ‘Wham, Bam, Slam.'”
That line of thinking extended deeper than one might think, even when games started being televised. Tom Ambrose, who spent 37 years with the Suns as PR director, vice president of public relations and then executive director of Suns Charities, recalled how one interaction with a group of blind Suns fans left a lasting impression.
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“They were telling him how much they appreciated his play-by-play and what he did, ’cause he painted such a beautiful word picture of the action, and that, I think, really moved him,” Ambrose said. “He really wanted to always be descriptive enough and be detailed enough in his play-by-play descriptions that people like that, that really depended upon his voice, could depend on him.”
No matter his audience, McCoy helped people see the game. His calls also stoked the imagination of aspiring broadcasters like K-Ray, who began to explore the possibilities of finding the right catchphrase.
“It took a few years because I wanted it to kind of come organically, but in a lot of ways, that’s where ‘Boom’ and ‘Brings The Boom’ came from for me on my TV calls the last three years,” Ray said.
Ray wasn’t alone in drawing inspiration from some of those famous McCoy-isms. Like K-Ray, Tom Leander — who has hosted pregame and postgame show for decades and became the Suns’ TV play-by-play announcer once the team made the switch from their simulcasts in 2003 — wanted to craft his own on-air personality.
But he was still inspired by Al McCoy’s signature catchphrases and ability to describe dribbling, passing, shooting and defense in 30-40 different ways. In college, Leander started brainstorming and writing down different ways to describe the various actions on the court.
“Al had so many beautiful ways to describe it, and I think that’s what makes a broadcaster different and special is that they’re not saying the same thing over and over again,” Leander explained. “When you listened to Al, you never knew which one was coming and which description, which ‘Shazam!’ or ‘Zing Go The Strings!’ would be coming up next, but you always just knew that you were gonna leave that broadcast feeling the exhilaration of the game.”
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From his cadence to his refusal to disrespect his radio audience by relying on video replays, McCoy was a consummate professional until the very end of his tenure. Former vice president of basketball communications Julie Fie, who was with the organization from 1992 until 2022, said McCoy’s level of sharpness in his 80s and even into his 90s was something people routinely marveled at.
“I can’t tell you how many people that would still listen at home would call me after and say, ‘It is amazing, that man is 90 years old and he is calling the game!’ or ‘He’s in his 80s and he’s calling a game. I can barely keep track and I’m watching it!'” she said. “And how he could just whip off names and all the colloquialisms, all the special things that he would say, his special sayings, and that he was on top of everything.”
In order to stay on top of it all, McCoy remained dedicated to a high level of preparation and professionalism. He was never late in getting to his seat. His demeanor and mood never wavered. And he was always well-prepared — even, for example, in Game 5 of the 1976 NBA Finals, when an inebriated Boston Celtics fan fell into his lap while he was calling the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World.”
Tom Ambrose was right beside Al McCoy that night, and he remembers it vividly. It was a 9 p.m. local start time on a Friday night, which gave an entire arena full of screaming Celtics fans plenty of time to pregame. Ambrose had asked security at Boston Garden to remove two drunk Celtics fans from where they were sitting on the steps leading into the press box, which was right next to where McCoy was calling the game. The security guard waved him off.
“I have never experienced a building that was more buzzed than that building was that night,” Ambrose recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is gonna be a problem,’ because they were both smoked.”
As the game went on, the two fans continued to drink. When Gar Heard hit the infamous shot that sent the game into triple-overtime, one of the fans collapsed into Al McCoy’s lap.
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“He just went, ‘OH, NO!’ and I don’t know if he really fainted or he was just pretending to faint, but he wound up in Al McCoy’s lap as Al is calling the most exciting play in Phoenix Suns history at that point,” Ambrose said. “And here’s this guy moaning and screaming that the game had been tied.”
But McCoy took the contact like a player getting an and-1, removed the fan from his lap, and powered through one of the most iconic calls in Suns history. Anyone listening to his broadcast wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Preparation and professionalism helped McCoy handle life’s curveballs, and even leading up to his final years on the job, he never ceased to impress with his knowledge of the game and the people playing it.
“I have had the privilege of doing pregame with him, and he would hit me with questions, and I wouldn’t be like, ‘Holy smokes, he is on it,'” Monty Williams said. “I knew he was going to come up with something that made me think, and I just had great respect for him working with him the first year.”
“He still did a lot of homework, he was always prepared,” Julie Fie added. “He never shied away from all the things that he needed to do every [day]. Whether it was 20 years ago or five years ago, he prepped and knew what he was doing and always had a routine and a preparation because he was so professional.”
Maintaining that level of competence over a full season would be impressive. Doing it for 51 seasons is otherworldly. It’s something that stood out to many of his broadcasting partners, including McCoy’s successor as the Suns’ full-time radio announcer, Jon Bloom.
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“What do they say, ‘The best ability is availability’ in sports?” Bloom asked. “Well, look how available Al McCoy was for 50-plus years as the Voice of the Phoenix Suns!”
“He never got laryngitis, you know?” Steve Albert added. “And I was so enamored with that.”
Eddie Johnson still marvels at how McCoy was able to power through broadcasts even when he was dealing with a cold or even the flu. On one such occasion, McCoy told EJ that he might have to fill in for him on the broadcast on the bus ride to the arena. It was an exciting opportunity, but Johnson said he was still “scared to death.”
Once the game started, though, the “dean of NBA broadcasters” lived up to his nickname.
“When the game started, this dude did the game, and it was flawless,” Johnson said. “I was like, ‘What?’ It just blew me away. It truly did, because I just had no idea that he was gonna be able to make it through.”
Perhaps most of all, Al McCoy the broadcaster was a constant in the lives of multiple generations of Suns fans. He wasn’t unbiased by any means, but he wasn’t afraid to call it like he saw it. When the team struggled or failed, fans felt that misery with him. And when the exciting playoff runs and unforgettable shots happened, fans reveled in those moments with him too.
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“You can hear the passion in his voice,” Shawn Marion said. “I think that speaks in volumes. I think as you sit here and you just recall some of the moments, the great and exciting moments during the games, playoffs or whatever, you just feel it with him. He just brings the energy and everything to you.”
The medium has obviously changed over the decades, and basketball fans can consume games in so many different ways now. But for an extended period of time, Al McCoy was the medium through which fans digested Suns games, and that fostered a unique connection that’s persisted through multiple generations of fandom in the Valley.
“If you were a Suns fan, you were absolutely an Al McCoy fan, and you felt like he was part of your family,” Jon Bloom said. “And you still probably do. That’s just unbelievable, to have that kind of an effect on that amount of people and do so through a media like radio, which now, a lot of people might even forget that they’ve got one in their car. It’s just a different situation, but yet at the same time, he was a big part of why that media still exists even today.”
“People grew up with Al, and then they would have kids, and they would tell the stories about Al,” Kevin Ray added. “His ability to have this cross-section of generational basketball fans, Suns basketball fans, was so unique and so powerful.”
Al McCoy the players’ favorite broadcaster
One of the rarest things about Al McCoy is how the players themselves connected with their longtime broadcaster. McCoy was from a different era, where broadcasters were included in that tight-knit community traveling on the road with the team. Even as things changed over the years, he didn’t know any other way than being exceptionally kind to any player who wore a purple and orange jersey.
“The new players had such great respect for him,” Julie Fie said. “They saw his generosity with his time and experiences that he was the kind of person that I think everybody just wanted to be around, ’cause he was a very fun-loving kind of person. He didn’t know it any other way, and unless somebody told him ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ he certainly was gonna have the kind of relationship that he’d always known.”
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EJ, who had the privilege of getting to know McCoy first as a player and then deeper as a broadcaster, noticed right away how different it was with him.
“He was very personable,” Johnson said. “I mean, he knew all about you as a player. He would go a little bit past just knowing you, where he’d ask about your family and got to know your family as time went along. So it was a close-knit relationship that Al had with any player that was a part of the Phoenix Suns organization.”
As Tom Ambrose relayed, McCoy was actually one of the first journalists to conduct an in-depth interview with Bill Walton during his UCLA days. At the time, coach John Wooden wouldn’t let him talk to the media, and Walton had a speech impediment he worked hard to correct once he reached the NBA.
“But Al did one of the first extended interviews with Bill Walton, and Bill felt very, very comfortable with Al,” Ambrose said. “And I think they were friends right till the end.”
When the Suns inducted Walter Davis into the Ring of Honor, McCoy MC’d the ceremony. The two shared a genuine hug afterward, and someone captured a picture of it.
“Al had that picture up in his office for years and years and years,” Tom Leander said. “That was so powerful to me. It’s one thing to be the voice of the team, it’s another thing to develop true relationships with the players….Al had this magnetic personality, and everybody wanted a piece of that.”
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Even in the modern era, McCoy persisted as a face of the organization that younger players respected. When the Suns won their franchise-record 64th game back in 2022, Devin Booker honored Al McCoy by giving him his signed jersey after the game.
For Al McCoy’s final regular-season game, Suns legends like Booker, Steve Nash and Charles Barkley all showed him love in the team’s tribute video. And when the Suns announced McCoy’s passing on Saturday, it was accompanied by statements from those three faces of the franchise.
“I had the privilege of Al McCoy narrating the first eight years of my career,” Devin Booker said. “He was inducted into the Ring of Honor my second season, and it was then I really understood what a special talent he was. And over the course of my career, I’ve learned what an even more special person he was. We will miss Al, and I am so glad our legacies in Phoenix are forever connected.”
“I got to work with the great Al McCoy for 10 incredible years,” Steve Nash wrote. “His energy and spirit were unmatched and I’ll never forget all the conversations and laughs we shared. He was the teammate that never wore a jersey. He loved his Phoenix Suns as much as anyone and his legacy will endure the generations of Suns fans to come. Lots of love to the one and only Al McCoy.”
At the Jerry Colangelo Basketball Hall of Fame Golf Classic in Phoenix last week, Shawn Marion gave his thoughts on what a special person McCoy was.
“Some of the best conversations I had with Al were when he’s off the mic,” Marion said. “Just him telling all the stories about some of the first games in Suns history and just the people he’d come across and been able to watch, man. He was a true, true Phoenix Suns fan, and a basketball admirer as well. What more can you say, man? Al’s a special guy.”
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When he was still in Phoenix, Deandre Ayton admitted he tried to put up better performances just so he could talk to McCoy postgame. Local Phoenician Saben Lee said he grew up listening to McCoy call Suns games. And when another Arizona native, Mike Budenholzer, was introduced as the next Suns head coach, it was Al McCoy’s introduction that got coach Bud emotional:
“We lost one of my heroes,” Budenholzer said in a statement. “I can still hear Al’s voice in our living room and backyard calling the plays of Sweet D, Westy and Double A….SHAZAM!!! He brought the Suns into my life, like he did for generations of kids across Arizona. Al was an icon and he will be missed.”
Al McCoy the Voice of the Suns
From the very beginning, the task of summarizing Al McCoy’s legacy has been a fool’s errand. Even 4,000 words in this Part 1 feel insufficient, to the point that their inadequacy required a Part 2 tomorrow.
But that shouldn’t stop anyone from trying, and those who knew him, loved him, respected him and revered him can help us paint the picture.
“There’s no way to overstate the impact Al McCoy had on Phoenix sports fans of multiple generations,” said Paul Coro, who was on the Suns beat from 2004-16. “I don’t know that there’s a person outside of Jerry Colangelo who has affected as many generations of sports fans as Al. He’s the constant voice that connects people throughout the city and brings back memories of joy and brings a whole lexicon of language that didn’t exist before with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and ‘Shazam’ and what have you. But I don’t know that there’s many people in Phoenix that are as widely beloved as Al McCoy.”
Greg Schulte, who served as the Arizona Diamondbacks’ radio play-by-play announcer from 1998 until 2023, told PHNX Sports’ Jesse Friedman last year that there would never be another.
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“Al’s been here from day one,” Schulte explained. “And I have said all along: There will never be another broadcaster — and I mean, news, sports, whatever — there will never be another broadcaster as great as Al McCoy and what he has meant here to Phoenix. I mean, 51 years with one team, as many years as he’s been here in the Valley, nobody can top that.”
For Eddie Johnson, it all came down to loyalty for “Mr. Phoenix Sun,” saying McCoy will go down as “one of the most revered and popular individuals in Arizona history in regards to sports.”
For Jerry Colangelo, who addressed McCoy during his final game, “The organization will forever be indebted to you for what your contributions have been.” And as Devin Booker said in his video tribute, “You’re still the Voice of the Suns forever for me.”
Booker is not alone in that assessment, nor is anyone alone in labeling Al McCoy as the greatest Sun of all time.
“He’s everything to this franchise,” Tom Leander said. “He really is. I mean, even though he was not here the very first year and Jerry Colangelo — as everybody likes to describe — birthed the Phoenix Suns franchise, Al McCoy basically reared the franchise. And we all grew up and this franchise grew up with Al describing all of the great players and the great moments, and there’s no greater compliment than that — that when you think of a Phoenix Suns, you think of Al McCoy.
“Anybody that’s been around this team, that has been in the city of Phoenix, it’s almost synonymous. And you can talk about all the great players that have been here, but nobody was here longer than Al McCoy, and in my mind, no one contributed more than what Al did to this franchise.”
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Not bad for a man of small stature who commanded every room, restaurant or arena he walked into.
“For the people who listened to him, especially back in the early days, I think the first time that they saw Al in person or saw pictures of Al, they were just blown away because of the power that came from this man and his voice,” Kevin Ray said. “And it was like the voice of a broadcast god, and you look at this man, you think, ‘How is that coming out of this man?’ But it spoke to his makeup. And I think it is part of what made him so iconic and so legendary with fans, because in many ways, he was every man’s man.”
During that halftime speech of his final regular-season Suns game, McCoy told the crowd, “If you will continue to accept me, and if God keeps smiling on me, I’m just gonna keep going.”
God smiled on Al McCoy for 91 years before calling him home on Saturday, and although the man who loved the game for 51 years is gone, that booming, larger-than-life Voice of the Suns will never fade.
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