Bob Costas doesn’t know exactly what to expect from Michael Jordan when the NBA legend appears on NBC as a special contributor this season, but believes that Jordan has the capacity to be a candid communicator—if he wants to be.
Costas, the legendary former NBC broadcaster who had a major role in NBA coverage during Jordan’s heyday, spoke to Front Office Sports about Jordan’s role.
“I’m not 100% sure what NBC’s overall plan is for using him. I know he’s not going to be on every game and he’s not going to be in the normal sort of role of sitting there at the desk. I think they’ll use him more selectively than that. But keep this in mind: When Michael wants to be he’s a very thoughtful observer of the game, and he expresses himself very well. I mean, think of him on The Last Dance,” Costas said.
“And whenever he sat down for an interview, not the courtside interview as the game has just ended, but a real interview, whether it was with me or Ahmad [Rashad] or whomever—I mean, he didn’t do them every week, there were too many demands on his time—but when he did them, he was really good. And he didn’t give boilerplate answers. He was thoughtful about it. So I think he’ll be as good as he wants to be.”
As Costas alluded to, Jordan was his authentic, brash, cigar-smoking self in The Last Dance documentary. Months ago, ESPN star Stephen A. Smith, who is close with Jordan, implied we would get this version of Jordan on NBC, saying he would be “brutally honest.”
Last week, NBC NFL color commentator Cris Collinsworth told Kay Adams the segments would be a “deep dive into the brain of Michael Jordan” and promised it would be like having conversations with him after a “couple glasses of wine” with “no cameras” rolling. Collinsworth works alongside Mike Tirico—who was shown in a teaser on Sunday Night Football this week for his sit-down interview with Jordan for the “MJ: Insights to Excellence” series—so one would suspect he has some reliable intel.
But would Jordan’s swagger be dialed up as much as it was in The Last Dance?
“Well, of course, The Last Dance is about his team, his era, and him. He’s at the center of it,” Costas said. “So naturally, he’s more invested in it. He has more to say—he was the firsthand witness to all of it. So you can’t expect him to have the same level of insight and involvement in talking about the Nuggets and Nikola Jokić, you know, as talking about the Bulls against [Clyde] Drexler and the Portland Trail Blazers.”
Asked whether he thinks Jordan will be critical of current stars, Costas posited that Jordan, in his pretaped segments, will be used more for “historical overview” content than immediate reactions to the NBA’s nightly happenings. In this vein, these are some questions Costas would ask Jordan if he was in the room:
- “You played baseball, what’s your take on Ohtani? How does [Friday night’s game] rank with the greatest basketball performances you’ve ever seen?”
- “Who does LeBron James compare to, if anybody, that you played against?”
- “If your Bulls had to defend Steph Curry’s Warriors at their best, who guards Curry?”
Costas acknowledged he was “a little” surprised Jordan is entering media more than 20 years after the six-time NBA champion’s second retirement, but that he was “glad.”
“He’s Michael Jordan,” Costas said. “If in 1995 Ted Williams said, ‘I’d like to go on-air and talk about hitting.’ Only an idiot would say, ‘No thank you.’ It’s hard to imagine, but let’s say Tiger Woods doesn’t play in The Masters or doesn’t make the cut, and then he says, ‘I want to do something on CBS during The Masters.’ Who wouldn’t listen?”
It’s not known yet how many dates Jordan will be on-air for NBC—his first appearance will be Tuesday night at halftime of the Thunder-Rockets game—and the role will be unlike what we’ve seen from other star athletes in media. Costas noted that for Fox, Derek Jeter is analyzing games live in the studio and Tom Brady from the announce booth. Jordan’s content is expected to be more evergreen.
Since his retirement, we haven’t heard much from Jordan—aside from The Last Dance—so there’s still a fascination with what he’s going to say.
“His mere presence is a reason to stop and then put down the remote,” Costas said.
