NBC Sports Philadelphia is budgeting to add a courtside voice to its Sixers broadcasts ahead of LeBron James\u2019s arrival this season, network vice president of content Alexandra Matcham told the Philadelphia Inquirer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you need a voice on the court where Alaa [Abdelnaby] and Kate [Scott] can\u2019t be to give us insight, do pre- and postgame interviews, analysis, all of that,\u201d Matcham said<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a very hard job to do.\u201d<\/p>\n For years, NBC Sports Philadelphia and its predecessor, Comcast SportsNet, used reporters like Serena Winters and Taryn Hatcher to fill that kind of role for the Sixers. That stopped in 2020, when the network began eliminating in-arena and in-game reporting jobs across its properties as basketball and hockey seasons wrapped that year, according to Crossing Broad\u2019s Kevin Kinkead<\/a>. Hatcher stayed on covering the Phillies for five more seasons after that before her contract lapsed at the end of 2025<\/a> and NBC Sports Philadelphia cut the position rather than renew it. Kinkead later reported <\/a>that the network and Hatcher had discussed a freelance arrangement that would have let her take on other work at the same time, but the talks ended without an agreement over what Kinkead\u2019s sources described as a standard contract disagreement, not any real conflict between the two sides.<\/p>\n That left NBC Sports Philadelphia without anyone in that role for the Sixers\u2019 2025-26 season, and the roster now taking shape gives the network far less room to go another year without one.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you get a generational talent on your team, it could easily become a situation where the people that work for us are burnt out by December, and you don\u2019t want that,\u201d Matcham said. \u201cYou need extra help.\u201d<\/p>\n The shape of the new role hasn\u2019t been decided, and Matcham said she\u2019s been deliberate about not defaulting to the title NBC Sports Philadelphia has used for that kind of position in the past. The network cut its last remaining in-arena reporting jobs across its properties, including the Sixers, starting in 2020, and whatever gets added back now won\u2019t simply be a return to that old model.<\/p>\n \u201cAs I\u2019m talking to my colleagues, I\u2019m not even calling it a reporter role because I feel like it\u2019s going to give them a stereotype I don\u2019t necessarily mean,\u201d Matcham said.<\/p>\n Among the options Matcham described is bypassing a generalist Sixers reporter altogether in favor of someone hired specifically for James\u2019s orbit, someone with an existing relationship built from prior coverage of him rather than of the team broadly.<\/p>\n The Scott-Abdelnaby broadcast finished 29th out of 30 teams in AA\u2019s 2025-26 local NBA announcer rankings<\/a>, the third straight season in that spot. The most common grade fans gave them was a C, and roughly six in ten voters gave them a passing grade at all. Several comments also cited the absence of Hatcher as a drag on the broadcast.<\/p>\n