The Stan Van Gundy experiment went poorly during his one season with the New Orleans Pelicans, but he didn’t take long to find a new gig around basketball. The New York Post’s Andrew Marchand reports that Turner is re-hiring the NBA coach as an analyst after spending a season in the booth with them in 2019.
Van Gundy was well-received on the NBA regular season/bubble broadcasts a season ago, now Turner is ready for round two in their relationship as Marv Albert retires and Chris Webber exits broadcasting. Van Gundy’s brother, Jeff, is a part of ESPN’s lead NBA broadcast team.
The 61-year-old produced well when paired with veteran play-by-play man Ian Eagle. SI’s Jimmy Traina asked Eagle about TNT’s hierarchy for their broadcast teams now that Albert has hung up his headset.
“I think the way these jobs work is they don’t come around all that often. When something opens up, and you think you might be a good fit, of course, it crosses your mind. But, you also recognize there’s other people that feel the same way,” Eagle told Traina. “With Turner, they’re in a really advantageous position. They have a lot of great broadcasters in their stable. How it all plays out, what the pairings look like, I’m not even sure they’re necessarily going to say this is our A crew, this is our B crew. My goal is to continue and keep working for them and do big NBA games when those are available to me.”
Eagle, Kevin Harlan, and Brian Anderson lead TNT’s top three broadcast teams. The first two are handling opening night duties for TNT as Anderson is Turner’s top MLB broadcaster. Grant Hill and Van Gundy could partner with Eagle or Harlan. Anderson and Jim Jackson have shown strong rapport in the booth over their time together.
The familial ties were short-lived last year, but the Van Gundy family now has two of it’s own at the top of NBA broadcasting.