Is ESPN allergic to compelling, interesting content? Despite being one of the few things interesting to the NBA Finals, the announcing crew of Mike Breen, Stan Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson has been broken up for no real reason.
What a stupid decision this is.
After nearly 20 years of working NBA Finals series and becoming one of the most famous broadcasting trios in the world, the ESPN A-team announcing core of Mike Breen, Stan Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson has been completely dismantled with no sendoff, appreciative gesture, or well-known successor plan in place for a reason that can only be financially motivated. And, to be honest, I think this is an awful idea.
I guess any sense of loyalty or appreciation is lost upon Disney and ESPN when their bottom lines are seriously threatened as unceremoniously axing 2/3rds of the best NBA broadcasting team in the world (though, I’m sure Kevin Harlan, Reggie Miller, and Stan Van Gundy would disagree) for no other reason than cutting salary costs at ESPN.
Seriously, I can’t figure out why ESPN first decided to lay off Stan Van Gundy in the “Great Layoff Purge” of a few months ago, and then today make it official that they were also releasing Mark Jackson from his contract with the company. Along with being two of the most entertaining color commentators in the NBA sphere with their general repour for one another, both men have the basketball knowledge and passion to back up their passionate rants against the NBA officials, teams on the court underperforming, or introducing utterly wacky ideas to spice up the game.
Yeah, most of those rants and ideas come from Stan Van Gundy, but Mark Jackson’s ability to riff off whatever crazy thing Van Gundy said was both a talent and very entertaining. And when you add in Mike Breen, who’s probably one of the Top-5 greatest play-by-play announcers of all-time, into the mix, you get a legendary NBA announcing duo like the Breen-S. Van Gundy-Jackson combination was.
I mean, if fans didn’t like them, then they would not have been around since 2007 calling NBA Finals games.
Yet, as I said, with ESPN facing a severe existential crisis of the younger generations paying more attention to online and independent forms of content than their rigid, crony corporate, and plain boring talking heads (of course, there’s a few exceptions like Steven A. Smith) that make their shows almost unbearable to watch and their parent company Disney failing on all cinder, the sports media was forced to part ways with a lot of talent a few weeks ago.
But you already know that tale.
The tale you might not know is that in replacing Stan Van Gundy and Mark Jackson on color commentary, ESPN has decided to promote secret Philadelphia 76ers superfan Doris Burke and now fired 76ers head coach Doc Rivers to commentate beside Mike Breen. And, instead of moving Jackson down to the B-team to replace corporate stooge Richard Jefferson or player-supremacist J.J. Reddick, they just fired Jackson outright.
Do these decisions make any sense to you? I know they don’t for me.
In what world is a color commentary duo of Doris Burke and Doc Rivers of all people more entertaining and exciting than Mark Jackson and Stan Van Gundy. Burke never says anything funny or even remotely controversial about the teams on the court…unless it’s the Celtics, Knicks, Nets, and any other rival of the 76ers at the time, while Doc Rivers spent a single season in the booth with Mike Breen after getting fired from Orlando…all the way back in 2004.
So, in recapping, ESPN replaced a tried-and-true, beloved broadcasting crew of nearly 20 years with one person who is an undercover 76ers superfan and another one who hasn’t commentated an NBA game in 20 years.
And the executives of ESPN wonder why people are tuning out of their programming.
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