ABC's 'A-team' NBA Finals announcers

I must not watch enough because I am not feeling Van Gundy at all. Just another coach doing the coach-speak thing, IMO.

 

Yeah, you aren't watching enough. He does less coach-speak than any coach become analyst I've ever seen. He isn't afraid to point out when official makes a call, when a player makes a bad play or when a coach makes a bad decision. There are no sacred cows -- he questioned Kobe being named a first-team defensive player the other night. And like someone else said he points out stuff that is seemingly obvious but for some reason you don't really think of -- stuff that only a coach thinks to look for. Plus, he's funny.

 

I love Jeff Van Gundy this series. He has come off as funny and willing to criticize some people, though as someone mentioned above he backed way off his stance about Yao Ming.

Here is another commercial with Van Gundy-

 

He did and he didn't back off. It was a very politician-esque way to handle the situation. If you read between the lines of what he was saying he really didn't back off his point about Yao, he was just sure to make it clear that he didn't want to endorse what Donaghy he has said. It was a pretty awkward position to be put in and a difficult one to manage.

 

This group hasn't been together that long, and it shows. Van Gundy has some spark, but it's a bit forced. Breen is medium-level network guy, and Jackson offers very little: Voice isn't great, comments aren't great, persona isn't great. Marv and Doug Collins are a solid pair.

 

Difference between Collins and Van Gundy IMO is that Van Gundy doesn't pull punches. I feel like Collins is a little more vanilla in his commentary.

 

Amazing how much turnover ABC has had in its top NBA announcing crew since taking over broadcasting the games in 2002-03 (which featured Brad Nessler with Bill Walton and Tom Tolbert ... whatever happened to that guy, by the way?)

Three-man booths tend to be bad far more often than good, but Van Gundy and Jackson seem to have the ability to not step on each other too much. I used to think Mike Breen was solid, but he's really become grating in this postseason for reasons I mentioned in the playoffs thread.

I would really, really like to see what would happen by replacing Breen with Marv, who seems to have the personality to play straight man to Van Gundy and Jackson without being a total stiff.

 

It was me who mentioned him saying the obvious, and I finally remembered what led me to that conclusion.

Two playoff teams were going at it with a 3 or 4-point difference and Van Gundy was talking about how to execute the foul properly. He spoke about fouling when the guy was running, and or, when he wasn't ready to set up for the shot. Again, these are really simple things, yet when I was watching, even as a sports guy, I didn't think about it at all. It was good insight to have.