ESPN2 offers a four-decade retro-look broadcast of Knicks vs. Nets 

It is 2022, after all, so why shouldn’t Knicks and Nets fans have options for watching Wednesday night’s game at Madison Square Garden? MSG? YES? ESPN? As you wish.

But for those with nostalgia for and/or curiosity about an earlier sports TV millennium, ESPN2 will offer a fourth way to watch, part of its celebration of the NBA’s 75th anniversary season.

“You only turn 75 once,” said Tim Corrigan, ESPN vice president for production. “Why wouldn’t we wrap our arms around it?”

ESPN did so by planning an alternate telecast in which each quarter will mimic the look of an NBA telecast from a bygone decade, starting with the 1960s and going through the 1990s, from ABC to CBS to NBC.

Mike Breen, Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and Lisa Salters, ESPN’s lead NBA team, will call the alternate telecast, joined by guest announcers and players from those eras (mostly via remote video).

Ryan Ruocco, Hubie Brown and Cassidy Hubbarth will work a conventional telecast on ESPN. Brown also will visit the alternate telecast.

Corrigan, 59, grew up in Virginia as a fan of the early 1970s Bullets. The throwback telecast idea grew into a labor of love for him and many others involved.

“It just became kind of a passion project for people who loved it and loved reliving it,” he said.

ESPN is calling it the “NBA75 Celebration Game,” which fit neatly in the schedule between the end of the NCAA Tournament and the start of the NBA play-in tournament.

It is an important game for the Nets, not so much for the Knicks. Corrigan said ESPN does not want to disrespect the game by making the alternate telecast too gimmicky.

For example, when asked whether Breen might call the game in the announcing styles of the different eras, Corrigan laughed. He said that while Breen might “have a little fun with that,” he added, “We would never do anything to disrespect the game, and we have zero intention of ever doing anything like that with this.”

Corrigan said the announcers would wear period-appropriate outfits at the start of the telecast, which at that point will be in black-and-white, but that they will not change clothes each quarter.

While Corrigan is slightly too young to recall the ‘60s era of NBA television, he said, “I love the look and feel of the ‘60s, of how bare everything was.”

For most fans, it figures to be the graphic look and even more so the theme music from their early fandom that will resonate most.

“CBS and NBC had great ones,” Corrigan said. “On ABC, they used the ‘Wide World of Sports’ music sometimes. So we’re going to use a little bit of that, too.”

Corrigan said the homage to NBA television history is a perfect fit for an announcing team that relishes that sort of thing.

“At dinners, we argue for hours about old guys and current guys and everybody in between,” Corrigan said. “So it’s going to be a really fun night.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.