ESPN continues to drop breadcrumbs about who its top NBA broadcast team will eventually consist of.
On Friday, the network revealed that play-by-play announcer Mike Breen will call the NBA Cup Championship Game alongside the analyst duo of Doris Burke and Richard Jefferson.
While ESPN has remained firmly noncommittal about the future of its lead analyst team, Friday’s announcement would be the biggest indication yet that Jefferson is in pole position to assume the third spot. Last year, Doc Rivers filled that role before he left to coach the Milwaukee Bucks. The network then replaced Rivers with JJ Redick, who promptly left to coach the Los Angeles Lakers after calling last season’s NBA Finals.
ESPN has spent much of the young NBA season mixing and matching broadcast teams in an attempt to find their NBA Finals booth. “Really what we’re trying to solve for here is who’s going to call the Finals? Who’s going to call the Conference Finals and the Finals?” ESPN content president Burke Magnus said on SI Media with Jimmy Traina last week. “We have this whole entire regular season in front of us to give people the opportunity to see what kind of chemistry develops and make that decision when we’re ready.”
Along with Jefferson, analysts Tim Legler and Jay Bilas were mentioned in ESPN’s initial press release revealing its NBA broadcast plans this season.
ESPN could see the NBA Cup as a dry run for how a potential Finals booth could sound. Notably, the network will also have the Breen-Burke-Jefferson trio call a semifinal game together.
Interestingly, Breen and Burke will call a quarterfinal game as a two-person team. In his podcast appearance last week, Magnus left open the possibility that the third chair could remain vacant.
Given that the NBA Cup Championship Game is the closest thing that ESPN will have to the NBA Finals until the postseason comes around, it’s safe to say Jefferson is the leader in the clubhouse to join the network’s lead team.
Funnily enough, his stiffest competition may not even be Legler or Bilas, but nobody at all.
[ESPN PR]
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.