FanNation - The Republic of Sport

In a word, yes, they did.

I mean, why in the world would they have Jeff Van Gundy announcing games. He's terrible. Not only is he focused on the most irrelevant minutiae that he frequently brings up (Who can forget his idiotic plea that there should be a seventh foul?), but he is clearly rooting against the Jazz. And for good reason. The Jazz got him fired. Just three weeks ago, Van Gundy was the Rockets head coach until the Jazz beat the Rockets out of the playoffs.

It was the end of the Rockets' season, and the end of Van Gundy's time in Houston.

Please let me note this: Van Gundy is a highly-overrated coach. He should have done much, much more with the talent he's had. Houston was right to fire him.

But, of course, Van Gundy doesn't see it that way. He is clearly bitter against the Jazz. After all, he knows if he would have beaten them, he'd still have a job. And a playoff series builds a lot of frustration and bad feelings between the two sides even when no one's job is on the line.

 So what knucklehead decided to have Van Gundy, who has a definite reason to be biased, be an announcer? And what was this idiot thinking hiring him? Shouldn't they have at least given him a test run?

Joining Van Gundy on the ESPN JV team are Mike Breen and Marc Jackson. This leads to an important question: Who the hell is Mike Breen? He's the guy who called the ski jumping in the 2002 Olympics! Remember? Oh, yeah .. that ... was ... awesome ... let's put him on the air, five years later.

Obviously, that's not the only thing he's done. For nearly 12 years, he did the sports segment on the Don Imus show. Wow! Don Imus? Mr. Rutgers basketball himself! Mike Breen worked for him! No wonder ESPN rushed in to sign this guy. Clearly, everyone wants to snatch up the talent around a guy who makes racial slurs! That's what ESPN IS ALL ABOUT! Let's not forget that how Breen made a name for himself in that job was making up false news. Why didn't CBS hire this guy as Dan Rather's replacement?

OK, so he has had a brief career announcing for the Knicks, but what NBA experience does he have? 

That brings us to Marc Jackson. The guy who forced John Stockton to retire by leading the younger players in a mutiny against the veteran point guard, as Jackson went around the Jazz locker room, in the one season that he was with the Jazz, telling budding stars like Curtis Borchardt, Raul Lopez and John Amaechi that if he was playing more, they would get more shots.

More specifically, how do you suddenly get the call-up for in-studio analyst to color commentator in the playoffs. 

Are ESPN and ABC deliberately sucking?

It would seem so. These guys suck. Not as much as Steve Javie. But more than Jarron Collins.