After appearing in the NBA Finals four times as a player, Richard Jefferson is returning to basketball’s biggest stage, this time as a broadcaster. According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, the former NBA swingman will join ESPN’s top broadcasting team for the remainder of the current season, culminating with him calling the NBA Finals alongside Mike Breen and Doris Burke.
The addition of Jefferson brings newfound cohesion to ESPN’s No. 1 NBA booth, which has experienced significant changes over the past two years. Following the layoffs of Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson in the summer of 2023, Doc Rivers was hired to join Breen and Burke but departed to take the Milwaukee Bucks’ head coaching job midway through his first season. ESPN quickly promoted JJ Redick from the network’s second booth to fill the gap, only for him to become the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers post-season, leaving yet another vacancy as they headed into the 2024-25 season. While the network initially experimented with different commentators like Jay Bilas and Tim Legler in the first half of the season, Jefferson had remained the frontrunner for the position previously held by his former broadcast partner. Recently, Marchand reported that Jefferson would stay in ESPN’s No. 1 booth for the remainder of the season, albeit there was uncertainty about whether he would call the NBA Finals.
Now that this decision has reportedly been finalized, questions linger about the future of ESPN’s top NBA broadcast team, especially since Jefferson’s contract ends after this season. Marchand also notes that the 44-year-old has drawn interest from Amazon as the streamer strategizes its coverage plans ahead of the 2025-26 season. As Jefferson prepares to represent the network on basketball’s biggest stage, it will mark the third consecutive year ESPN has had a different NBA Finals broadcast team. Given his contract situation, it will be interesting to see if his promotion brings the stability the Worldwide Leader is seeking, or if we will find ourselves discussing a similar situation this time next year.
