{"id":229898,"date":"2025-10-21T18:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229898\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T18:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:06:09","slug":"nba-on-nbc-returns-with-nostalgia-for-past-years-and-michael-jordan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/229898\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA on NBC Returns with Nostalgia for Past Years, and Michael Jordan."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBack when Adam Silver was a young executive at the NBA<\/a>, the future commissioner would occasionally venture over to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where NBC<\/a> Sports chief Dick Ebersol held court.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe famously had a sign behind his desk that said \u2018storytelling.\u2019 It was just a reminder to people. I think that storytelling is just as important today \u2026 as it was 30 years ago,\u201d Silver recalls. \u201cA lot of the people that we\u2019re going to be working with at NBC were there just as I was 30 years ago in the early days of the NBC-NBA relationship. So there\u2019s a tremendous sense of partnership around the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t23 years after it last aired an NBA game, NBC is back in business with the league, with the NBA on NBC making its return to TV tonight, and the companies plan to lean into that nostalgia. \u201cRoundball Rock,\u201d the iconic theme song composed by John Tesh, will be back, and Jim Fagan, the late voiceover announcer, will have his voice brought back thanks to the power of generative AI technology.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSam [Flood, NBC Sports\u2019 executive producer] and I talked about going down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos to see how NBC produced it back then,\u201d recalls NBC Sports president Rick Cordella. \u201cAnd it\u2019s different, not necessarily better or worse than the current broadcast, but just different. So we\u2019re gonna bring a lot of that back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut alongside the vintage NBA on NBC callbacks, the company\u2019s new NBA deal is enormously forward-looking. Peacock<\/a> will stream all the games, and will have a slew of exclusive games this season.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company showed off its new NBA studios at NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut earlier this month, with enormous LED walls that Marv Albert could have only dreamed of.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re on a spaceship now, then we were on Apollo 1,\u201d quips Flood, noting that the company will be able to produce about 35 percent of the NBA games remotely from the Stamford facility.<\/p>\n

\n\tPeacock and streaming was important to the NBA too, a sport that is well aware of changing consumption habits, particularly among younger fans.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLook at all the changes \u2014 Peacock most importantly \u2014 that have happened over the years, so I\u2019m really looking forward to this partnership,\u201d Silver says.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the pressure will be on.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhatever we do, it has to be reliable, and it has to work all the time at scale, so it has to be incorporated into everything that we build,\u201d says Jim Denney, chief product officer for direct-to-consumer at NBCUniversal.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the talent will be just as important. And just as the original run back in the 1990s and early 2000s featured talent like Magic Johnson, Julius Irving and Pat Riley, the new roster is just as star-studded, with talent like Grant Hill, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd of course there\u2019s Michael Jordan, the great of all time, whose contributions are still being kept under wraps aside from the fact that the network wants to make sure his appearances are special.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe just did a class photo next door, and you know, you kind of pinch yourself,\u201d Cordella said, gesturing to the NBA on NBC talent sitting at the side of the studio. \u201cLook at the guys over here that are part of the NBC Sports team. Building a new property from scratch happens once in a career, and so we\u2019re lucky to have these guys as part of us. We\u2019re lucky to have the executives here in front of us. And we can\u2019t wait for October 21.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back when Adam Silver was a young executive at the NBA, the future commissioner would occasionally venture over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,7817,5250,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-229898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nbc","12":"tag-peacock","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}