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NBA’s return to NBC on opening night Tuesday received rave reviews.
Integral to the network’s opening night success was its pageantry; NBC brought back the ‘90s NBA on NBC theme song Roundball Rock and aired the in-arena starting line-up introductions. The grandeur replicated the network’s NFL coverage, an unsurprising approach considering it will replace Sunday Night Football with Sunday Night Basketball in February.
Amazon, which has streamed Thursday Night Football since 2022, is also poised to bring its NFL chops to the NBA when it airs its first doubleheader Friday.
WNBA legend Candace Parker, a basketball analyst for Prime Video who had worked for TNT, NBA’s previous media partner, since 2018, told Front Office Sports that an innovation she’d like to see in NBA coverage would be to replicate how NFL analysts cover schemes at a high technical level.
“I’m a big football fan and I feel like I learned a lot from the blitz coverages and the drop two, the different defenses I never saw until they started showing it with technology,” Parker said last week at an Amazon media event. “I think sometimes, as players, we see things and we expect fans to see the game the same way. But to be able to kind of like hint to fans that what’s coming. … I think that would be magical.”
Parker’s sentiments are similar to many other players, current and former, who have been clamoring for basketball-focused coverage. LeBron James said he launched the Mind the Game podcast after noticing national NBA coverage skewing away from basketball. James said audiences needed “a different approach to understand the essence of the game.”
James offered rare praise for ESPN last week after it launched its Coaches Corner segment on NBA Today where analyst and former 10-year NBA veteran Tim Legler sits down with NBA head coaches to discuss game film.
“Love to see this. Hot take culture so tired,” James wrote on X. (James is currently in an extended dispute with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who recently said “I don’t like his ass” about James.)
All eyes will be on Prime Video on Friday to see whether it can create a similar feel as NBC for its debut. It is clear, however, that the NBA’s newest partner intends on providing positive coverage.
“Sometimes there’s too much weird negativity out there, when really, we should be celebrating how good these guys are,” Jay Marine, Prime Video’s head of global sports, said at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit last month. That echoes what NBA commissioner Adam Silver said about NBA media in April: “Sometimes, I think, they don’t spend enough time talking about why people love this game.” NBC and Amazon are now out to spend plenty of time doing just that.
