Wall Street Fired Jeff Van Gundy

But his boss still made the call

It’s bloody Friday at ESPN/Disney, and some surprisingly big names are getting let go from the company. Perhaps the most shocking ouster is Jeff Van Gundy, their top NBA game analyst on a broadcast the company seemed really committed to branding as a triumvirate. It’s been 16 years together for that group of Van Gundy, Mark Jackson and legendary play-by-play man Mike Breen, and it’s finally broken up by, mostly, the economic fallout from strategic missteps at parent company Disney.

If you’re wondering why it had to be the performatively cantankerous Jeff Van Gundy and not his perhaps-less-popular co-analyst Mark Jackson, the answer is, as it so often is in these matters, some behind-the-scenes guy you’ve never heard of. In this specific case, the behind-the-scenes guy loves Mark Jackson, to a degree that other ESPNers find bizarre. We’ll get into that, plus the larger dynamics at play as ESPN restructures itself.