Game Four of the Finals is tonight. Robert Horry, pictured here, is on the verge of his 7th NBA title, which would put him in an elite class – he’d have more titles than any non-Celtic in NBA history. Let’s just hope somebody is watching when it happens.

Since there’s no point in talking about the game – the series is ovah – let’s talk about media coverage and our favorite entity, ESPN. Specifically, Scoop Jackson. [* Update: Call off the dogs!! Scoop has been found! He's arrived in Cleveland - this article just went up on the .com 30 minutes ago - just in time for the Spurs coronation. We look forward to his prose tomorrow.]

Why isn’t he at the NBA Finals? We thought the tennis aficionado might have been at the French Open, but no. Monday, Scoop wrote about a tired topic, Mike Vick. Maybe the former Slam Magazine writer is obsessed with dog-fighting – that was Scoop talking about Ron Mexico on Outside the Lines, right? – and hoops is no longer his forte. Scoop’s written plenty about the NBA playoffs, but unless ESPN elected not to put a dateline on just his stories, he’s been opining on the postseason from his couch. Like a blogger!

ESPN has dispatched a small army of writers to the finals – the likes of Marc Stein, Kobe’s buddy Ric Bucher, superstar-in-the-making Chris Broussard, Chris Sheridan, Jemele Hill and probably half a dozen other characters from the Magazine and .com whose names we’re not familiar with. Should we be surprised Scoop’s not there?

Theories on where Scoop has been:

a) Prepping for Wimbledon coverage
b) Working his Chicago connections to land a Tank Johnson interview
c) Getting a jump start on US Open Tennis coverage
d) Interviewing Chicago Bulls brass extensively to get the goods on whether or not they’ll trade for a power forward or draft Yi
e) He elected to take a vacation during the biggest two weeks of the NBA season