Jay Bilas is getting a significantly larger role in ESPN’s NBA playoff coverage than seemed likely even a week ago.
Michael Malone’s surprise departure for the North Carolina head coaching job last week left ESPN with an immediate problem. Malone had spent the better part of this past season establishing himself as one of the network’s most valuable NBA voices and was positioned to call several first-round games beginning Saturday. That assignment now belongs to Bilas, per Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy, who will call at least three or four playoff games in Malone’s place.
Per FOS, ESPN’s postseason announcing structure heading into the NBA Finals on ABC breaks down as follows. Mike Breen anchors the No. 1 team alongside analysts Tim Legler and Richard Jefferson and reporter Lisa Salters — the group that will call all games from the Eastern Conference Finals onward, with Breen poised to call his record 21st NBA Finals. Dave Pasch and Doris Burke form the No. 2 team. Ryan Ruocco calls games with Bilas as the No. 3 team. Salters and Malika Andrews are locked in as sideline reporters, and ESPN could mix and match announcers and analysts outside of the top team depending on the matchup, according to McCarthy.
As Awful Announcing’s Brendon Kleen detailed last week, Malone’s exit is the most recent in a pattern of ESPN NBA talent losses that has left the network noticeably depleted heading into the postseason. Bob Myers left. JJ Redick left. Doc Rivers left for the Bucks. Both Van Gundy brothers are gone. Malone was essentially the only significant hire ESPN made to offset those departures, and he lasted less than a full season before North Carolina came calling with a six-year, $50 million deal. The network paid more money for fewer games under the new NBA rights structure and has less talent than it had three years ago to fill them.
Bilas brings an obvious credibility to the role, even if NBA game work remains a relatively new part of his portfolio. He has been one of ESPN’s signature college basketball voices since joining the network in 1995, and has anchored the network’s NBA Draft coverage since 2003. His first NBA game came in 2014, when ESPN paired him with Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy as part of an analyst crossover experiment. The more serious transition came this past season, when ESPN gave him roughly 20 regular-season NBA games before he made his playoff debut last spring, calling Timberwolves-Lakers alongside Mark Jones and Jorge Sedano.
He called four playoff games in total last year and came away wanting more. Now, he’s getting them.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.