Richard Jefferson will be part of the top ESPN/ABC broadcast team alongside Mike Breen and Doris Burke for the rest of the season, including the NBA Finals, as reported by Andrew Marchand of The Athletic and confirmed by ESPN.
Since ESPN parted ways with Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson in 2023, its top broadcast team has featured a rotating cast of analysts next to Breen and Burke. Doc Rivers and J.J. Redick both spent time in the role before leaving for NBA head coaching jobs. While ESPN has also experimented with Jay Bilas and Tim Legler as the third person in the booth, Jefferson has held the role for most of this season and will continue to do so through June.
Still, as Marchand notes, Jefferson’s long-term future in that role – and at ESPN/ABC in general – remains up in the air. He has reportedly received interest from Amazon Prime Video, which will begin broadcasting NBA games next season.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- The University of North Carolina is hiring veteran NBA player agent Jim Tanner as its general manager, reports Michael Scotto of HoopsHype (Twitter link). Desmond Bane, Jarrett Allen, Jeremy Sochan, and Luke Kornet are among Tanner’s NBA clients, per RealGM. Jake Fischer reported last week that Tanner was among the candidates receiving serious consideration for that UNC GM position.
- Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report takes a shot at predicting which current NBA contracts will have the least value to teams two years from now, with a pair of Sixers (Joel Embiid and Paul George) and a pair of Celtics (Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown) on his list. While Tatum and Brown have shown no signs of slowing down, the fact that they’re the two players who most recently signed super-max deals makes them inherently risky long-term investments, Pincus explains.
- Big man Robert Baker Jr., the current president of the G League’s players’ union, is on the verge of signing a contract with German club ALBA Berlin, reports Donatas Urbonas of BasketNews.com. Baker, who has spent this season with the Osceola Magic, helped lead Team USA to a pair of victories in AmeriCup qualifiers within the past week, racking up 11 points, 10 rebounds, and seven blocks in just 17 minutes of action on Sunday vs. the Bahamas.
7 blocks in 17 minutes is wild lmao
The Pincus article on worst contracts is very great. He ranks Anunoby’s as the 3rd worst. IMO, it’s #1 ‘cuz it’s already killing the Knicks.
At his best, OG is a high-end role player, worth $30M/yr. It’s baffling how the Knicks could give him 5 years at ~$45M/yr, especially given his injury history (he’s got 4 seasons remaining after this one, the last at $49M on a player option).
We’re watching a train-wreck: Thibs insists on playing OG a career-high 36 mpg, when we all know from OG’s time in Toronto that his body can’t handle it. It seems like a matter of time until the usual bigger OG injury.
It’s about locking up their core and keeping it together. They’re going to overpay Bridges this summer, too. They’re all in with their current team. Once you’re at that level of the cap, it becomes incredibly difficult to augment the roster with low draft picks and negative cap room, so they have to keep their players, no matter the cost, and occasionally that requires overpaying certain players.
You’re on the money with Thibs and his insane rotation habits. Knicks broke down end of season last year, and will break down again unless they rotate more. Players like Kolek, Pacome, Toppin, Hukporti all need more minutes to keep their starting 5 from dying, and to see if they can be viable contributors as role players. At some point the front office is going to need to intervene. I imagine that will happen this offseason after they lose to the Celtics in round 2.
Tatum and Brown should not be on that list of bad contracts since they are still in their prime. How is Wall not on that list? I would put Gobert on the list cause the T-wolves would be better without him.
Considering fairly recent history, does this mean Jefferson will be hired as a head coach in the NBA soon?