A few days before the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals, Kevin Harlan called Mike Breen and offered to give him the series.<\/p>\n
Breen told Dexter Henry of the New York Post <\/a>that Harlan, who had been assigned Knicks-Pacers on TNT, wanted him to have it instead. ESPN had drawn the Western Conference Finals that year, which meant Breen was headed to Oklahoma City and Minnesota while New York \u2014 the team he had called in some capacity for over three deacdes \u2014 was playing for a Finals berth on another network.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve been waiting almost three decades,\u201d Breen recalled Harlan telling him. \u201cI want you to call the games for TNT. I\u2019m gonna go to my bosses, I\u2019m gonna tell them that you should do it, and I\u2019ll go do the West for ESPN.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike Breen tells @DHenryTV<\/a> how much it meant to him that Kevin Harlan actually offered to let him call the Knicks-Pacers Eastern Conference Finals on TNT last season.<\/p>\n Full conversation \u2013> https:\/\/t.co\/fkcDCEjNqY<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/5Cm6Mts1Wg<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 New York Post Sports (@nypostsports) May 29, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Harlan had already figured out what would happen if ESPN didn\u2019t want him in exchange. Whether they used Dave Pasch or Mark Jones, he said, he was fine with it. He was willing to sit out the conference finals if it meant Breen got New York.<\/p>\n He told Breen to think it over and called back the next day. Both men arrived at the same conclusion \u2014 that going through with it wasn\u2019t the right thing for their employers \u2014 but the offer had already done what it was going to do. Harlan called Knicks-Pacers on TNT, a series everyone in the building understood was in its final playoff assignment, and Breen called Thunder-Wolves on ESPN.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was not some gratuitous \u2018Oh, let me throw this offer out there,’\u201d Breen said. \u201cHe wanted to do that for a friend. I was so touched by the fact that he thought that way. But, again, that\u2019s the man he is.\u201d<\/p>\n Harlan has never called an NBA Finals, and at 65, with a reduced schedule at Prime Video<\/a> this past season, he almost certainly never will. The Finals have stayed with ESPN since 2006, and Breen has called 20 (soon to be 21) consecutive championship series as a result, while Harlan spent those years doing some of the best play-by-play work in the sport on TNT and watching the Finals from the other side of the rights split every June. The series he was giving away last spring \u2014 which served as the last playoff assignment for TNT\u2019s NBA coverage<\/a> \u2014 was about as good as his postseason got. And his instinct, in that moment, was to hand it to Breen.<\/p>\n Breen does eventually get his Knicks<\/a> in a Finals, just not the one Harlan tried to arrange. He\u2019ll call New York\u2019s first Finals appearance in 27 years, starting June 3 on ABC, alongside Richard Jefferson and Tim Legler. On The Zach Lowe Show last week, Harlan said he has never really felt like he missed the Finals<\/a> because Breen has been such a central voice for their whole generation of announcers, that he has lived through it in Breen\u2019s eyes and voice and friendship, and feels like he\u2019s right there with him every June.<\/p>\n Harlan will watch him do it again in just a few days, which, it turns out, is more or less exactly what he told Breen he was prepared to do a year ago.<\/p>\n \t