Jim Durham's death hits Thunder announcer Matt Pinto hard

Pinto worked with Durham for three seasons on the Dallas Mavericks broadcasting team in the mid-1990s, and their friendship was why the Thunder used Durham to fill in for Pinto for a couple of games in November 2008 when Pinto's wife had a baby.

“He was one of the gold-standard broadcasters,” Pinto said Monday. “I was pretty blessed and felt very honored to cross his path and work with him.

“He was a really quality person that had no airs about who he was or what he did. He always seem to have time for people in the industry to share whatever insights and knowledge he had about the game. His style was very simplistic, very straight forward. He had intonation in his calls that all of us learned from.”

Pinto replaced Durham as the Mavericks TV voice when he moved to ESPN Radio in 1996. His last assignment for ESPN was Tuesday's season opener between Boston and Miami. The cause of his death was not announced.