When the New York Knicks reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2000, Monica McNutt was an 11-year-old student at From the Heart Christian School in Camp Springs, Maryland.
Twenty-five years later, McNutt is the Madison Square Garden Network’s radio analyst for the Knicks, the only Black woman to hold such a position with an NBA team. At 35, she is a rising star and a refreshing voice in the highly competitive sports broadcast industry.
One of the more enjoyable aspects of New York’s success this season has been listening to McNutt and her first-year broadcast partner, Tyler Murray, documenting the Knicks’ run. Murray, a lifelong Knicks fans, describes the play-by-play action and leaves ample room for McNutt to execute the delicate balancing act between candor and restraint that has defined her young career.
“She’s authentic,” Murray said during a recent phone interview. “That’s what I was told about her before I started working with her. What you see is what you get.”
Sometimes more. When Knicks forward Karl-Anthony Towns and Detroit Pistons forward Tobias Harris seemed headed for an altercation, McNutt quipped, “This is very light-skinned. Nothing’s going to happen here.”
McNutt’s hilarious, culturally nuanced insight went over the heads of most listeners — Murray’s included. “I didn’t know what to do with that comment,” said Murray, who is white.
In retrospect, McNutt said she knew that authenticity has its boundaries.
“If I’m honest with you, I said, ‘Oh, I might be sliding a little too close to the sun on that one,’ she said. “I was like, ‘that’s letting too many folks in on the joke.’ I did not get reprimanded, to be fair.
“And I have people that love me that are in my inner circle who are like, ‘Hey, you get too comfortable, so just be mindful.’ I do take so much pride in being able to show up as myself and do this job that I love, but I do have a moment like that when a friend will be like, ‘Hey, this is not the room. Button it up.’ I have very much felt like, who else am I supposed to show up and be? I did not wake up and say, ‘I’m going to be authentic.’ I woke up and was like, ‘this is me.’ You can still remain true to who you are and continue to polish.”
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McNutt doesn’t eviscerate the Knicks, but she won’t sugar-coat deficiencies and is critical, as she was in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals when she pointed out how the Knicks were repeatedly being beaten in transition by the Boston Celtics.
“She’s not going to sugarcoat things for New York fans. [They’re] not looking to be spoon-fed homerism about how great everything is,” Murray said. “They want the facts.”
“I may not be everybody’s cup of tea, and that’s OK,” McNutt said. “But the one thing that I can do when I finish up a broadcast is look in the mirror and evaluate the things I like, the things that I didn’t like, where I need to improve. But I always feel good about having the opportunity to be myself.”
McNutt’s early trajectory was sports, not journalism, although her mother predicted that while she didn’t know exactly what Monica would do, “she knew I was going to do something to use my voice.”
McNutt began playing basketball in the third grade and steadily progressed in various church leagues, AAU competition and eventually high school. For college, McNutt chose to attend Georgetown, though her mother wanted her to attend Princeton.
“I was like, ‘Mom, I’m not doing that. I want to go somewhere and actually have a shot at the NCAA tournament, be a part of the fabric of what we were building,’ ” McNutt said.
She became a two-year team captain and led Georgetown to a Sweet 16 appearance as a senior in 2011. After a successful college career, McNutt, who was not drafted by a WNBA team, did not pursue a professional basketball career.
McNutt admits there is a small part of her that regrets not giving the WNBA a shot.
“I don’t have a lot of regrets in life, but not at least exploring that process is one of my regrets,” she said. “I don’t know that I would have actually made a roster. If I had poured my heart and soul into that, eventually maybe I could have. But by the time I finished with school, I was like, ‘All right, I’ve given the game so much, every Saturday for 10 years — half of my life.’ I was ready to begin to explore something new.”
She decided to embark on a journalism career and the early career path was tough. She secured a position at Prince George’s Community Television at NewsChannel 8, but her position was eliminated. She then joined the American Sports Network in Florida. She was eventually laid off there as well. McNutt moved back to the D.C. area and took a number of jobs in order to pay the bills, including working as a cycling instructor at L.A. Fitness.
With the help of a sisterhood of broadcast journalists that included LaChina Robinson, Maria Taylor and Jemele Hill, McNutt secured a position as a basketball analyst at FS1. She joined the ESPN-owned ACC Network, which launched in 2019, the same year she joined MSG Network.
The rest is evolving history. McNutt regularly appears on various ESPN shows and is an analyst on ESPN’s WNBA and Women’s College Basketball studio coverage.
Since joining MSG Network in 2019, McNutt has made appearances on a variety of MSG and ESPN shows and has built a reputation for unflinching honesty, even when it meant pushing back on Stephen A. Smith and the lack of coverage of women’s basketball on “First Take.” In one notable exchange, she argued that Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark alone was not the savior of the WNBA.
There was a robust back and forth that made for good TV, but McNutt, without raising her voice, was thoughtful, measured and principled. A few days later during an appearance on the “Jon Stewart Show,” McNutt doubled down, saying that she had nothing against Clark but wanted to acknowledge the shoulders on whom the league stood.
“While Caitlin is fantastic — and I think she’s going to have an incredible career in the WNBA — there are women that were worthy of coverage prior to her arriving, and I just will not be silenced when it comes to that,” she said.
Earlier this week, McNutt weighed in on Clark again after she committed an intentional foul on Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese in the season-opening game in which Indiana won 93-58. Clark was assessed a flagrant 1 foul, and Reese was handed a technical foul for her reaction.
Given the history of the Clark and Reese rivalry, which goes back to college, the aftermath of the incident once again sparked ugly, racist reaction — mostly against Reese.
McNutt, appearing on ESPN’s “Get Up,” attempted to put the incident in perspective.
“The fact that the WNBA has to put out a statement because of racist comments and unsafe conditions toward Angel Reese, I just want people to be mindful that whether you like it or not, any time something happens with the two of them, one is automatically put as a victim and one is automatically put as someone who needs to be saved,” McNutt said.
What set Clark’s fans off was when McNutt suggested a double standard. “Now let’s be honest,” she said, “If this was the other way around, oh Lord, you can only imagine how the conversation would have gone.”
On Tuesday, I asked McNutt if she thought the Clark-Reese attention was good for the WNBA.
“I find it to be very annoying. It reduces these women, both of them. Caitlin is a competitor; she doesn’t need to be protected. Angel is a competitor; there is nothing villainous about her. But as we’ve seen through history, Black women are rarely protected. Both women deserve respect as athletes and for their basic humanity.”
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The Knicks open their seven-game series against the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday evening at Madison Square Garden. On Wednesday morning, McNutt will deliver the commencement address to the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. McNutt received her master’s degree in journalism from Merrill in 2013 after earning her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University in 2011.
The theme of her address will be learning to be comfortable with “no.”
“It helps to develop a healthy relationship with the word ‘no,’ she said. “You have to develop a healthy relationship with the word ‘no,’ that is, use it to protect your dreams and receive it without decimating your dreams.
“That season of my life taught me what’s really important,” she said, referring to the layoffs. “And I take nothing for granted. I am so fortunate that I get to make a career out of doing what I love.”
But the back-to-back layoffs also showed McNutt that a career can be derailed at the drop of a hat. Building a life is what matters. “That season forced me to begin my relationship with ‘No,’ and to be mindful to build a life and not just a career.”
In terms of her career path, McNutt said she has much in common with these Knicks.
“The idea that I have the same sort of mettle and approach and diligence of a Jalen Brunson, sign me up, I would love that,” she said. “When I look at this team, one of the things that I admire about them is they are authentic. Good, bad, or ugly. They are authentic, they are true to who they are, and they’re making the most of the moment. I think if I could look at similarities, that would be at the top of the list because how many opportunities do you get to knock it out of the park?”
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McNutt has a voice that needs to be amplified, though when I suggested that she might eventually become the Black woman equivalent of Smith, McNutt said she wasn’t sure that’s what she wants at this point in her life. She was married last year, and she and her husband are looking forward to beginning a family.
“In this season of my life, if I’m honest with you, I don’t have any interest in being on television five days a week,” she said. “Again, for me, it’s building a life and not just a career. In a space that is so saturated with opinion, my hesitation to take on something like that is I’m going to speak from a place of what I know, and in order to know, or at least for me to comfortably discuss as much as Stephen A. does, I would spend a lot of my life preparing. And that, for me, is not a life.”
For the time being, McNutt is content with wearing the multiple hats she currently wears, beginning with telling the story of the Knicks playoff run.
Last year, the Knicks lost to the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The team suffered key injuries to Bojan Bogdanovic, Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson and Brunson.
“You need to be whole to be able to compete with the speed and the depth of Indiana,” she said. “And much of this year’s success, so far, I would attribute to the fact that the team is whole in the postseason for the first time in a long time. So, it’s exciting.”
The McNutt prediction: “Knicks in 7.”
She says it, I believe it.