With JJ Redick formally introduced as the Lakers’ latest head coach, it’s time to consider the damage at ESPN with regard to its NBA product. Over the past year, the network:
- Blew apart a very successful trio that had worked 15 NBA Finals together;
- Reconstituted its No. 1 announcing team with an historic addition;
- Saw that crew fall apart after a career coach returned to his chosen profession;
- Made what many saw as an inevitable elevation by promoting its most ambitious broadcasting prospect;
- Lost him, too, when Redick sprinted to the head-coach gig in L.A.
No offense, ESPN, but maybe sit out a round?
Better yet: Just roll with what you’ve got.
Under no circumstance is the network better off today than it was when Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy sat courtside as ESPN’s top NBA broadcasting team at last year’s NBA Finals. Breen, Jackson and Van Gundy enjoyed a rapport that took years to develop and hone – “something special,” as Breen put it. They got better, seldom coasted, and conspicuously rose to meet the best moments of the season and the playoffs.
ESPN’s whispered reasoning for the dissolution of that crew always sounded faintly ridiculous, especially the idea that the network was worried Van Gundy would jump to a coaching job at some point. First, ESPN has constantly been used as such a springboard across all its major sports holdings, and with no complaint. Second, you don’t bounce Van Gundy (who actually worked 17 Finals with Breen) out of fear. You keep a winning thing together until you can’t.
Closer to the truth, we suspect, is that financial pressure from parent company Disney factored into almost every decision made — Van Gundy in June of last year, Jackson the following month, many others before and since. It saved the network some dough at a time when Disney was ordering a bloodletting at ESPN, a sad process that we’re still seeing play out.
So that happened to the NBA crew, and after it came the turbulence. Doc Rivers stayed only for as long as it took him to land a choice job in Milwaukee. Redick appreciated his being tapped – “What an honor. I’m so grateful,” he said – but by then he was already in a months-long on-air audition for the coaching job he landed. Say this for ESPN: Their folks often find soft landings elsewhere.
The question now isn’t one of options, because despite whatever diminishment has occurred, this is still ESPN. The network isn’t going to run out of good candidates, and this particular job is going to remain a coveted one.
No, the question is – or at least ought to be – whether ESPN needs to do anything. After a brilliant run in a three-person setup for a decade and a half, the network tried a couple of patch jobs last season, apparently operating on the assumption that three is how many you need to get that NBA game called well. But is it?
What last season should have proved to ESPN is that it matters which people you’ve got, not how many. We could spend the rest of this column and all of the next one on the NBA on TNT, but the short of it is that Ernie, Shaq, Kenny and Charles click on that show not because there are four of them, but because they’re the right four.
Mike Breen is a consummate professional, a term you sometimes hear to describe someone who makes almost any circumstance work out. That’s shorting Breen by half; he’s also just a great game-caller. Doris Burke rose through the ranks one promotion at a time because she, too, is really good at what she does. More Breen, more Burke is a good thing, not a bad one.
They’re good together. They also are two people who happen to want the jobs they already have. These are their destination positions. It is so much easier to excel at something when you know it’s the thing you want to do, as opposed to being the thing you’re doing because you think it’ll set you up for the next move.
ESPN doesn’t need to decide anything for a while. Here’s hoping its executives consider the obvious: After a year of tumult, the answer they’re seeking could be right in front of them – and already doing the work.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
