While we'd all love to see Stan Van Gundy stalking the sidelines for an NBA team this season rather than sitting at home after getting fired by the Orlando Magic back in May, most NBA fans have been very excited by the prospect of the famously irascible coach joining ESPN's "NBA Countdown" broadcast. The rumor, first reported last month by Sports by Brooks, that Van Gundy would add his strategic smarts and acerbic wit to a studio show that often seems like it could use more of both seemed inspired, and maybe too good to be true.
So it was kind of a bummer (if not a shock) to read Wednesday that an ESPN spokesman had told Jason McIntyre of The Big Lead that SVG and the Worldwide Leader "differed on potential assignments and we moved in another direction." While failing to come to terms with ESPN doesn't preclude Van Gundy from finding other TV work, the EJ-Kenny-Charles-Shaq squad at TNT doesn't seem to have much room for new blood and saddling up with Rick Kamla nightly on NBA TV doesn't seem like something the ex-coach would be too interested in (though I know Eric Freeman would love it). Less than three weeks left before Opening Night, this could mean no big-time national gig for Stan heading into the regular season, which would be disappointing for anyone interested in seeing and hearing more SVG (READ: any right-thinking individual).
McIntyre notes that ESPN is a broadcast partner of the NBA, with the network paying nearly $1 billion for the right to show NBA content, and wonders whether Van Gundy's longstanding frostiness (and, in more recent settings like this ESPN.com podcast, outright animus) toward NBA Commissioner David Stern had something to do with the scuttling of the deal. (Van Gundy's also had less-than-kind words for an ESPN personality in the recent past, too.)
It all seemed like the kind of inside baseball that media types find interesting, but doesn't really go anywhere after the fact. Except that, after the fact, Van Gundy did go somewhere — to "The Dan LeBatard Show" on Miami sports radio station 790 The Ticket, where (at about the 28-minute mark) he discussed the TBL report with his trademark tact, reserve and hahahahaha, no, just kidding, he broke out the napalm.
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