(SI.com) Van Gundy shows a different (read: lighter) side as a television analyst

[SI.com] Van Gundy shows a different (read: lighter) side as a television analyst

Nice article about Van Gundy as TV announcer:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/steve_aschburner/06/06/van.gundy/index.html

Working from the definition of an excellent TV sports analyst as "someone you'd want to sit next to on a bar stool or a couch while you watched a big game,'' Jeff Van Gundy would rank no lower than No. 37 on your list. OK, wait, maybe No. 83. Would you believe No. 116?

That, anyway, is what you might have thought basing your decision on the Van Gundy most NBA fans knew from his years on the sideline as coach of the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets. That Van Gundy, assessed from afar, would have been as much fun to have on your couch as Tom Cruise was on Oprah's, only for reasons that were polar opposite.

Never mind crazed, manic or overly caffeinated; Van Gundy as coach looked glum, frazzled, even tortured. Tightly wound even among the worry worts, he worked with a constipated expression and dark semi-circles under his eyes as pronounced as the restricted-zone arcs under each basket. When a fellow's greatest moment of levity, in a highly visible career spanning 11 seasons, is riding stowaway on Alonzo Mourning's leg in the 1998 playoffs, you sense you're not dealing with someone Ralph Kramden would mistake for a laugh riot.

Van Gundy wouldn't have had it any other way, either. When he was coaching.

"I don't know how everybody else characterizes their job, but I don't ever come in saying my job is fun,'' Van Gundy told a Knicks reporter back in November 2001, a couple of weeks before he unexpectedly quit that alleged dream job. "My job is ultimately rewarding at times and ultimately disappointing at times. I don't sit there and say it's fun. I think everybody else has this picture of sports as fun.''

Compare that now to the Van Gundy working these NBA Finals as part of the ABC crew with Mike Breen and Mark Jackson. This Van Gundy is upbeat, self-deprecating, accessible, even goofy. He is, in a word, fun.

Earlier in this postseason, Breen was carrying the network water by reading a series promo. "I'm a big Lost fan,'' the play-by-play man said. Van Gundy blurted, "You are lost!''

"Good one,'' Breen said, mockingly.

There was the unfairness he observed during Game 1 on Thursday, that venerable Lakers consultant Tex Winter should look so much better at age 86 than he, Van Gundy, looks at 46. And early in Game 7 between Boston and Cleveland in the second round, Van Gundy was incredulous at how often, and how well, Paul Pierce had been running pick-and-roll plays the past two games.

"Frankly, I didn't know he was this efficient running the pick-and-roll,'' the former coach said. He waited a beat with a comic's timing, then added: "That's probably why I'm sitting down over here, watching the game.''

Most coaches-turned-broadcasters, you can close your eyes and picture what they must be like in a timeout huddle or a halftime locker room. Hubie Brown is the lecturer, the schoolmaster, imparting wisdom from a lifetime spent in gyms. Doug Collins is almost surgical in his analysis, opening his operating arena to some casual observers. You figure they coached the same way, only a little more blue. But Van Gundy? No way could he have been this wacky.

He attributes the difference in how he's perceived -- stressed grinder vs. loopy sidekick -- to the difference in the jobs. Then there's the fact that most fans know him in snapshots, rather than the long hours he spent behind the scenes with his players or even media that covered him on a daily basis.

"If they describe you as this obsessive, somber coach, that's who you become, no matter what your personality is like,'' Van Gundy said. "I never got into much trying to defuse that.''

Sometimes, though, even those on the scene with Van Gundy are surprised. In his first stab at broadcasting, back in 2002 when Marv Albert and Mike Fratello were loosening him up for TNT's audience, Van Gundy recalled an Indiana playoff game that he worked and a pre-telecast meeting with Pacers coach Isiah Thomas.

"So he comes in -- and I've never really talked to him, just hellos -- and now I'm sitting with him and he goes, 'You know what? I didn't know ... well ... uh ... I don't know how to say this,' '' Van Gundy told Dave D'Alessandro of the Newark Star-Ledger. "So I said, 'You didn't know I have a personality?' And I can see he's relieved and he goes, 'That's it!' ''

Said Breen, having fun himself: "I always thought that he was much more funny when he was coaching, and he's much more serious and more morose as a broadcaster. ... But I would vouch for what he has said about [how] he really doesn't judge what comes out of his mouth. Mark and I both feel that ESPN should have a reality series of just following Jeff around for a day and have his stream of consciousness brought to America.''

It's not enough, of course, for a color analyst to be Rodney Dangerfield or Dennis Miller (except occasionally on Monday Night Football). Van Gundy's insights are sharp, concise and frequently prescient. He can sum up in a word all his feelings about the Lakers' good fortune in their February acquisition of Memphis' star power forward: the Pau Gasol "donation,'' Van Gundy calls it.

There was a play in that Celtics-Cavs finale last month, 79-72, eight minutes left, when Cleveland's Sasha Pavlovic -- left alone in one corner -- lined up and nailed a jumper with one foot on the three-point arc.

"That's a bad mistake by Pavlovic,'' Van Gundy said immediately. "You have some time to get your feet set, get behind the line. Know where you are. You don't shoot long twos. That three-pointer is going to be a big factor.'' It was, too, when the Cavs got as close as 89-88 with 2:20 left but never pulled even, never quite wrested control from the home-court Celtics.

Good as he can be in offerings like that, Van Gundy demurs when discussing the second of his NBA careers. He praises a guy like Collins, whom many consider the top game analyst -- at least until the Bulls' coaching vacancy gets sorted out.

"He's so smooth, into and out of commercial breaks,'' Van Gundy said. "Me, I'm stumblin' and bumblin', trying to listen to a guy in one ear count me down, hoping that I'm not talking 10 seconds after I'm supposed to be off the air.''

Again, it's a different game, one without a W or an L instantly attached. "Satisfaction -- not having the result right after -- has probably been the biggest thing to adjust to,'' he said. "Me being a total non-pro at television, I don't know. ... Mike has been in it so long and Mark being so good at it, they know when we've done well and when we haven't. I really don't see the difference a whole lot.

"The enjoyable part is, I'm dealing with two guys I really, really like and really respect. It would be a total different level of enjoyment if I was doing it with people I wasn't comfortable with.''

Time for a Van Gundy moment: If Jackson talked on the air about "people he wasn't comfortable with,'' his old Knicks coach would teasingly confront him: Name names! "You're right. That's me,'' Van Gundy said.

After a teleconference this week in which he artfully sidestepped a couple of awkward questions about some NBA and network policies, Van Gundy laughed about it later in a private phone chat. "I almost threw up at how political I was,'' he said.

While Jackson criticizes coaches more than players, in Van Gundy's view, he goes the other way, admitting to a "code'' about coaching. "I know how hard the job is, to coach. I have an idea how hard it is to play in this league. And it's hard to be a successful referee,'' he said. "To me, I have to call it the way I see it. And yet I don't want to be mean-spirited. Because I've been on the other end of mean-spirited. So I want to be fair, I want to be objective.''

Now there is some role reversal for a guy who squabbled with, at times even manipulated, the New York tabloids.

But then, Van Gundy's term as a media guy figures to be brief, compared to the years he has spent and will spend as a basketball coach. And what is a network analyst job if not a bullpen for revolving head coaches? Granted, the flurry of openings this spring -- Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit -- didn't bring Van Gundy back into the ranks; he has said repeatedly that he wants to stay out at least for another season. In time, though, his name will get dropped into the umpteenth rumored list of candidates somewhere and that rumor will be true.

"I do see myself as a coach,'' he said. "That is my profession. This is what I'm doing. I don't think I'm particularly adept at it. I certainly wouldn't be confused with a savvy TV professional.''

Given his lifetime sense of overachieving even as an assistant coach at Rutgers and Providence, the way he got promoted by the Knicks (Don Nelson's surprise firing in 1996) and his absence of polish now as a talking head, what is the more improbable scenario: Van Gundy as an NBA head coach, one of only 30 in the world, or Van Gundy beating equally long odds to become a prime-time television personality?

"They're both so highly unlikely,'' he said. "I'm a Division III guy, small-college roots. That's where my dad [Bill] coached. Believe me, I would have been more than content, more than happy, to coach at a great Division III school my whole life, or in high school. I just got a fortuitous break that coaches who are better than me never got.''

Which requires the snappy retort: Names, Jeff! Name names!