A Wilson basketball sits on an NBA basketball court
Photograph by Alex Slitz/Getty
Beau Estes decided to be a sportscaster at age eight. The kid who graduated high school in Norcross got his wish after Atlanta won the 1996 Olympic Games. NBC, which had broadcasting rights to the Games, created an Atlanta Olympic Broadcasting certificate program for area college students, and Estes—then a Kennesaw State University undergrad—got the inside track to his destiny.
By 2008, he was a Turner mainstay working his dream job, creating content for Turner Sports (now TNT Sports) provided to NBA TV, including commentary for an NBA.com “Top 10” highlights reel.
“The Top 10 is the last thing we did every night,” once West Coast games ended, says Estes. “I’m in a sound booth at Turner’s Techwood studio. Everybody’s waiting for me to call that Top 10 thing so they can go home. At 2 a.m. I would drink two or three coffees, so I’m calling it with a ton of energy. It was a basketball fan’s scoop of ice cream at the end of a long hoops night.”
The cherry on top? Estes can make his Top 10 commentary rhyme, off the cuff. It’s a weird skill, Estes concedes, adding that he thinks it’s a mental gear he can engage more than anything else.
“I don’t prepare, really,” he says. “I get the highlights. I look at them once. I call it. There’s not a lick of writing. It’s just an ad-lib call.” Ask him for favorite phrases to describe a three-pointer, and Estes will draw a blank. Show a clip of a 40-year-old LeBron James completing a no-look, behind-the-back assist, and while the clip plays, Estes will call it “a blind dime behind the spine from Father Time to blow your mind.”
After one particularly good and rhythmic Top 10 call, for a Hawks dunk in 2014, YouTube viewers, Turner, and the NBA took notice. Before long, the commentator’s layup lyricism became known as “rhyme-lights,” and Estes was given the nickname “GOATmentator.”
Even being the greatest is no guarantee, however: Estes’s job was in limbo after the 2025 NBA finals. TNT Sports’ multiyear NBA TV contract was not renewed. Estes and his family had relocated to Los Angeles when TNT Sports entered the tail end of its NBA deal. There, Estes despaired, and prepared for, the uncertainties of a post-GOATmentator career.
In September, Estes received a reprieve. The NBA signed Estes and some of the Atlanta-based producers who were losing their positions at TNT Sports. The NBA.com Top 10 lives again. If you’re a basketball fan, consider yourself lucky, and treat yourself to Estes’s doggerel about dunks this season on the league’s YouTube channel.
This article appears in ourDecember 2025 issue.