For the third straight season, ESPN will feature a different three-person broadcasting crew for the NBA Finals, as Richard Jefferson debuts alongside fellow analyst Doris Burke and play-by-play announcer Mike Breen.
Jefferson replaces JJ Redick on the network’s No. 1 NBA team, as Redick became the Los Angeles Lakers head coach after last season. A 17-year NBA player, Jefferson joined Breen and Burke throughout the 2024-25 regular season before ESPN officially announced he would be on the Finals call – which starts June 5 at 8:30 p.m. ET between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers – in February.
Redick and Burke were already a makeshift analyst pairing next to Breen. ESPN’s initial plan, following the 2023 firings of longtime top-game analysts Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, was to have Burke and Doc Rivers as the No. 1 crew. But Rivers quickly jumped back into the coaching ranks with the Milwaukee Bucks, allowing Redick to join the top team.
‘When it’s two (analysts), it’s not just my chemistry with Doris and my chemistry with Richard Jefferson, it’s their chemistry together, and that’s what makes it much more of a challenge,’ Breen said of a three-person booth on a May 27 episode of ‘The Sports Media with Richard Deitsch’ podcast. ‘Richard, I think, has been a much better fit in a three-person booth than Doc was. Doc, I think he’s a great analyst, but he had never really worked a lot three-person.’
Breen, Van Gundy and Jackson worked together for 17 years and became known for playing their roles perfectly – Van Gundy the complainer, Jackson with the catchphrases and Breen conducting it all.
Working with Redick and Burke last year, Breen said, the trio started to build chemistry but called roughly a dozen games together by the time the playoffs began.
‘And I thought, again, the growth with Doris and JJ last year, we really started getting a great feel for each other,’ Breen told Deitsch. ‘And now all of a sudden, JJ is the Laker coach. So now you bring in this year, and we tried a whole bunch of different people.
‘It’s difficult, and I feel it’s much more difficult when it’s a three-person booth as opposed to just two. You can get chemistry fairly quickly. For me, if I’m working with just one analyst, you pick up on that so quickly.’
Could this be another one-and-done for ESPN’s NBA Finals team?
Burke has been with ESPN since 1991 and became the first woman to call a major men’s sports league’s championship series in 2024. Jefferson, per The Athletic, is an upcoming free agent and has drawn interest from Amazon, which begins holding NBA rights next season.
‘I think it’s what Richard and Doris have done in a short time this year, their chemistry just keeps getting better and better,’ Breen said, ‘and it’s been really fun.”