The news came quick from the NBA world yesterday.

A little after 2:40 p.m. Eastern Time, reports started to come out the Milwaukee Bucks, the 2021 NBA Champions, were firing their first-year head coach Adrian Griffin. Within less than five minutes, another report then came out that veteran head coach Doc Rivers was a “serious candidate” to replace Griffin with the Bucks.

By around 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the crew at “NBA on TNT” announced that CNN Sports revealed Rivers agreed to a deal with the Bucks.

It didn’t even take 12 hours for the 30-13 Bucks to fire their coach and reportedly sign a replacement. 

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But while most of the NBA world was discussing the massive news around a top contender for the title, there was some collateral damage that wasn’t being discussed as much: What happens to Doc Rivers at ESPN?

ESPN announced that it would be bringing in Rivers in August to join the legendary Mike Breen and Doris Burke as the new trio on the call for the top NBA broadcast team. Rivers and Burke were replacing Marc Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy, who together with Breen, called ESPN and ABC’s biggest NBA games.

Rivers, Burke, and Breen were slated to call the NBA Finals this year. And now, Rivers could legitimately be coaching a team in the NBA Finals.

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What does ESPN do now?

The answer to that question is still unknown — ESPN declined to comment on this story, and the Bucks have yet to officially announce Rivers as the team’s newest head coach. Though more reports have come out today to confirm last night’s report from cited on the “NBA on TNT” broadcast.

But unless something major changes, the network will have a hole in its top broadcast team — one that it had changed after years of continuity during a summer that included a ton of on and off-air layoffs.

And ESPN is leaning toward keeping that hole vacant, according to a report by Front Office Sports. The report said that ESPN is “likely” to keep it a two-person booth with Breen and Burke rather than hire a replacement.

FOS also reported that Richard Jefferson or JJ Redick could be called up to take the spot of Rivers. The two are part of ESPN’s second NBA broadcasting crew, though they are much younger than their A-team counterparts with less experience calling games. 

They also have built a chemistry with one another that could change alongside Burke and Breen.

Where ESPN goes from here to replace someone they had just hired is certainly going to be a story to watch.

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