The GM's Suite

Stan Van Gundy says David Stern kept him off ESPN’s NBA studio show

A few months ago it was announced that former Orlando Magic coach Stan Van Gundy was bringing his “Pepsi swig” to ESPN’s NBA pregame show, “NBA Countdown.” But then something happened at the deal was no more. Stan Van Gundy appeared on Dan LeBatard’s show on Wednesday and shared his theory as to why the deal was pulled and he’s pointing the finger to David Stern:

“No one at ESPN will tell us what happened. Certainly the NBA office isn’t going to tell us what happened. One of the quotes from ESPN in there – we had discussions, but couldn’t agree on a role … as is usual, that’s a bunch of BS from ESPN.

We actually did agree on a role, but then they came back and pulled that. That’s when we knew something was up.

Nobody is going to give a straight answer because … that’s just the way a lot of people operate … nobody there has the guts to say anything, so that’s what you deal with.

What I find fascinating … you have to give David Stern and the NBA a lot of credit … ESPN pays the league, and then the league tells them what to do. It’s more ESPN’s problem. You gotta have no balls whatsoever to pay someone hundreds of millions of dollars and let them run your business.

Just say what happened. Who cares? Who cares if I’m on there or not. Just come out and say this is what we decided and why … [ESPN’s quote] that’s just a flat out lie. Why would you do that? I don’t understand. We agreed on something, you changed your mind and pulled the offer. Don’t say we couldn’t come to an agreement. We did.”

Politics… Ironically, Stan’s brother Jeff is apart of the ESPN broadcast team, I wonder if he’ll weigh in on the situation during the season. Probably not if he wants to keep his job though, right?

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