Hard to make sense of ESPN decision

NEW YORK -- While recently going public with their new NBA broadcast teams, ESPN's Bristol Faculty didn't add laser beam focus on why they unceremoniously dumped Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, who teamed with Mike Breen for nearly two decades as the network's No. 1 NBA trio.

During that time, the three voices authored a memorable partnership. Historically speaking, they will go down as one of the best microphone combinations in the industry and the best ESPN has presented in any sport.

It's rare for a network to strike this brand of gold. Even rarer to strike gold than flush it down the toilet.

Under ESPN's watch, Van Gundy became a star. Nonetheless, the suits decided their NBA product could do without his unique personality, something that can't be taught or duplicated. Both JVG and Jax are genuine.

Yet the sum of this gang was greater than any individual part. It was a compelling team, in the truest sense. At any moment, the insight -- or humor -- could be delivered by any one of the three.

If there was any ego, it didn't come across on the air. While JVG wasn't averse to shining a light on NBA controversy, that might have not played well in the league office, the broadcasters never attempted to become bigger than the game or the stars that play it.

Chemistry is a word that gets blown around like feathers in the wind. Van Gundy, Jackson and Breen actually had it. Considering the way ESPN suits were kvelling about their performance throughout the NBA Finals, they never lost it.

During a recent conference call, David Roberts, ESPN's head of event and studio production who is in charge of NBA coverage, mentioned the importance of "chemistry" as it applies to ESPN's "new" No. 1 and No. 2 NBA broadcast teams.

"When you find chemistry that actually matches with the quality of the product, meaning the NBA games, then it's an opportunity I would not pass up," Roberts said.

But ESPN already had unparalleled chemistry in its No. 1 NBA booth. So is any "chemistry" talk at ESPN now just lip-service? Or was ESPN brass' decision to dump Jax and JVG simply an unconscious decision made in a conscious state of mind?

The decision results in ESPN teaming Breen, with veteran analyst, Doris Burke and coach/broadcaster Glenn (Doc) Rivers. ESPN has also created a new No. 2 team featuring play-by-play mouth Ryan Ruocco, Richard Jefferson, and NBA gadfly JJ Redick. ESPN is positioning the No. 2 unit as its No. 1 team of the future.

Considering ESPN's NBA rights contract expires following the 2024-25 season, and the status of the network's future relationship with the NBA has yet to be determined, that "team of the future" characterization is presumptuous. It also isn't great for the moral of Breen/Burke/Rivers to be shadowed by this No.-1-team-in- waiting.

The ultimate demise of JVG and Jax sends a signal to the Free World that at ESPN, excellence behind the ESPN microphone is no guarantee of keeping one's gig. The suits have stuck to their mantra of JVG and Jax being part of company-wide layoffs; voices simply caught in a money crunch.

The spin has now been refined to position the transactions as a restructuring of ESPN's total NBA team -- from game voices to studio show personnel. Still, could the dismissals have anything to do with JVG, and his sometimes-controversial commentary, being perceived as an irritant to the NBA hierarchy? Was this a case of ESPN's Faculty wanting nothing, no matter how small, serving as an impediment to its ongoing NBA negotiations?

"I need to emphasize that they [Adam Silver and Co.] were not involved in the decision-making process," Roberts said. "... Like any good partnership, they're aware of what's going on and they offer their input."

The extent of that "input" remains unknown. But from this outpost, there's reason to believe no one in the league office attempted to convince the Bristol Faculty that jettisoning Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson was a dreadful decision.

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Crypto Market Leaders and Laggards: The Biggest Movers of the Week

The CoinDesk Market Index of 183 assets – a broad-based indicator of crypto market sentiment – is down 1.4% for the last week. But that is just a blip in its 60.1% growth year to date.

Let’s take a look at the bigger picture of the top-10 and bottom-10 assets based on their performance month on month.

Culture and entertainment assets and currencies predominated the leaders. Small gaming and metaverse protocols including Yield Guild Games (YGG), a global community that bands gamers together to play, and HighStreet (HIGH), a decentralized metaverse and massively multiplayer online role-playing game, as well as LivePeer (LPT), a decentralized video streaming network protocol, made a huge impression in the top 10 leaderboard. But their impact overall was not so large. As these are all small players, the culture and entertainment sector, which is market-cap weighted, was pretty flat month on month (down 0.4%).

The spectacular up and down of Yield Guild Games is a story still in progress. On Aug. 3, the guild announced the launch of its fourth audience-building campaign that features numerous quests and rewards. The token rose a dizzying 600% over the next four days, but on Aug. 7 began to plummet as rumors that the guild’s initial backers were using the opportunity to take their money out. “It appears to be a pump and dump,” said CoinDesk Indices Data Analyst Reilly Decker.

Stellar (XLM), XRP (XRP) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) were the biggest currency leaders over the last week.

Stellar is building on a research report it released in July that supports the narrative that XLM is one of the most well-connected and integrated USDC cash off-ramps.

XRP is still benefiting from a U.S. judge’s ruling last month that the sale of XRP tokens on exchanges do not constitute investment contracts (and therefore are not covered by securities laws).

Just this month, Shiba Inu (SHIB) announced it would tie digital identity services across all of its platforms, another sign of its effort to distance itself from its meme coin origins and become a serious DeFi protocol. Recently, a shiba inu investor – believed to be a founder or founders holding 10% of the token’s total supply – moved some $30 million worth of their stash to eight wallets, on-chain analytics tool Lookonchain said in a tweet.

Going the other way, the two biggest laggards month on month were also in culture and entertainment and in currencies. Augur (REP), a decentralized prediction market, otherwise known as betting, and Pepe (PEPE) is a meme coin. Both of these tokens seem to have lost investors’ interest lately.

Another tumbler was Curve Finance (CRV), which suffered a $70 million hack in July, at one point raising doubts as to its viability as a going concern.

In crypto, there are always winners and losers, often massively so.

Other Ticker Symbols:

BNT: Bancor

OP: Optimism

MKR: Maker

ASTR: Astar

MULTI: Multichain

MXC: MXC

LCX: LCX

RPL: Rocket Pool

CVX: Convex Finance

STORJ: Storj

ZBC: Zebec

This story originally appeared on Coindesk