NBA on NBC

• 1. Introduction

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  NBA on NBC is the branding under which the National Basketball Association's games have aired on the American broadcast network NBC, across three separate runs spanning from 1954 to the present day. How does a sports franchise on television go from lukewarm Saturday afternoon ratings to setting all-time records, then lose everything to a competitor, and finally return after a 23-year absence? Those are the questions at the heart of this story. The first NBA game NBC ever put on air was a contest between the Boston Celtics and the Rochester Royals, played in Rochester, on the 30th of October 1954. What followed was nearly seven decades of basketball television history, shaped by dynasties, financial losses, and a theme song that became one of the most recognized in American sports.

• 2. The Early Years

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  Marty Glickman and Lindsey Nelson called the very first season of NBA games on NBC, in 1954-55. Nelson later described in his autobiography, Hello Everybody, I'm Lindsey Nelson, how NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff would travel to the televised games. When NBC needed to get in a commercial, Podoloff would walk up to one of the coaches and say, "Call a timeout" and they had to comply, since the commissioner had ordered it. The first year of NBC's tenure also carried an unusual scheduling constraint. Coverage followed a Canadian Football League game, under a contract requiring 13 games on Saturday afternoons beginning in late August. That contract had been signed just one week after NBC lost NCAA football rights to ABC. On the 31st of March 1956, NBC broadcast the first nationally televised NBA Finals game, Game 1 of the Philadelphia-Fort Wayne series. Curt Gowdy and Nelson became the primary broadcast pairing through much of the late 1950s, with a rotating cast of contributors including Chick Hearn, Bud Palmer, and Bill O'Donnell filling in on specific dates. The 1959 NBA All-Star Game marked the first time that game had been nationally televised, though NBC only broadcast the second half at 10 p.m. Eastern Time. The network gave way to its Friday Night Fights program for the first portion. NBA owners, by the source's account, were not particularly skilled at working with television in that era, and likely refused network requests to move the game to a weekend afternoon slot. The 1957-58 season carried a grim footnote. NBC broadcast a game in Detroit on the 15th of March between Cincinnati and the Pistons. On the flight home to Cincinnati after that game, Maurice Stokes became ill and later suffered a seizure, fell into a coma, and was left permanently paralyzed, the delayed result of a head injury from a game three days earlier. Stokes died in April 1970. By 1962, the numbers told a stark story. NBA ratings on NBC's Saturday afternoon games had dipped to 4.8, representing around 9 million viewers, compared to Sunday afternoon NFL ratings of 10.4, drawing around 15 million viewers. CBS was at one point drawing better ratings for NHL hockey telecasts than NBC was getting for basketball. NBC's own scheduling choices contributed to the slide: in 1960-61, the three weakest teams in the league appeared on NBC a total of 14 times, while three of the best teams appeared only seven times combined.

• 3. The Deal That Changed Everything

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  On the 9th of November 1989, the NBA and NBC reached an agreement worth $600 million to broadcast NBA games for four years, beginning with the 1990-91 season. That deal arrived at a moment when the league was riding the popularity of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Ratings surpassed even the peaks of the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird era in the mid-1980s. NBC's coverage began on Christmas Day each season under this arrangement, with a handful of exceptions. The 1998-99 season produced no Christmas games at all because of the NBA lockout, which also shortened the regular season to 50 games. On the 28th of April 1993, NBC extended its rights with a four-year, $750 million contract. The peak of the ratings came in 1998, when the second Chicago Bulls-Utah Jazz Finals series drew an 18.7 household rating, setting an all-time record for the NBA. The very next year, after the lockout, the 1999 Finals ratings collapsed, marking the start of a prolonged decline. In 2002, NBC set a different kind of record, the highest-rated Western Conference Final in history, including a 14.2 rating for Game 7 between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings. NBC's highest-rated regular season game during this entire run was Michael Jordan's return from Minor League Baseball in March 1995, when a game between the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers scored a 10.9 rating.

• 4. The Broadcast Team

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  Marv Albert and Mike Fratello formed NBC's first broadcast team of the 1990s era, with Ahmad Rashad as sideline reporter. Bob Costas hosted the pre-game show, NBA Showtime, from the inaugural 1990 season through 1995-96. In 1992, shortly after announcing his retirement, Earvin "Magic" Johnson joined as a top game analyst. The reception was not warm. Complaints centered on what critics described as poor diction, a tendency for stating the obvious, habitual references to his own playing days, and an overall lack of chemistry with his broadcast partners. Johnson was slowly phased out after helping commentate the 1993 NBA Finals. In 1997, an embarrassing sex scandal forced NBC to fire Albert before the start of the 1997-98 season. Studio host Bob Costas moved to play-by-play, with NBA legend Isiah Thomas replacing Fratello as color commentator. Thomas was singled out for a soft voice and what some considered stammered analysis; Doug Collins was brought in midway through the season to share the analytical load. The team of Costas, Thomas, and Collins called the 1998 NBA Finals, which set that all-time ratings record. Albert returned for the 1999-2000 season and called that year's Christmas Day game between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Lakers from Staples Center. Two days before NBC's 2002 playoff coverage was set to begin, both Marv Albert and Mike Fratello were seriously injured in a limousine accident returning from calling a Philadelphia 76ers-Indiana Pacers game on TNT. The network juggled its announcing teams that week, with Bob Costas and Paul Sunderland covering some early-round games. Albert recovered to call Game 1 of the Western Conference Semi-finals between the Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings. For its 2025 revival, NBC Sports appointed Mike Tirico as lead play-by-play commentator, the same role he had held for ESPN and ABC from 2002 to 2016.

• 5. Showtime and the Studio

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  The pre-game show was called NBA Showtime from 1990 until 2000, after which it went unbranded. The name proved durable enough that a video game, NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, was released by Midway Games in its honor. Hannah Storm took over as studio host from Bob Costas beginning with the 1996-97 season, and was in turn replaced by Ahmad Rashad in 2001 when Storm went on maternity leave. During the 2001 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Philadelphia 76ers, NBC crossed over to its then-popular quiz show The Weakest Link for two 10-minute editions during halftime of Games 2 and 3. Bob Costas, Bill Walton, and Steve Jones appeared as contestants alongside Charlotte Hornets guard Baron Davis and Los Angeles Sparks center Lisa Leslie. A segment called Miller Genuine Moments ran during live games, providing brief retrospectives on historically significant moments in NBA history. The soundtrack for that segment was "Black Hole" by John Tesh. NBC also aired a studio segment called 24, in which each analyst had exactly 24 seconds to address issues facing the league. The analysts at that time were Pat Croce, Jayson Williams, and Mike Fratello. NBC discontinued the segment in February 2002 after Williams was arrested on murder charges. In June 2002, Ahmad Rashad told the Los Angeles Times that he would be ending his 20-year run with NBC Sports after hosting the pre-game show for Game 3 of the Finals.

• 6. Why NBC Lost the NBA

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  NBC made a four-year, $1.3 billion bid in the spring of 2002 to renew its NBA rights. The NBA instead signed initial six-year deals worth $4 billion with ESPN, ABC, and TNT. The mathematics behind NBC's departure were not flattering. NBC began losing money on the NBA after signing a new media deal in 1998. The network lost $100 million on the NBA in the 2000-01 season. By December 2001, NBC was projecting a $200 million loss on the 2001-02 season. NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol was direct in his response: "The definition of winning has become distorted. If winning the rights to a property brings with it hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, what have you won?" NBC Entertainment president Jeff Zucker offered a different framing, noting that NBC had previously lost football and baseball and remained the top-rated network. He pointed out that losing the NBA would allow NBC to program Sunday nights without scheduling around basketball, something it had not been able to do for several years. Charles Barkley offered his own summary during halftime of Game 1 of the 2002 NBA Finals: "If y'all hadn't wasted all that money on the XFL, y'all would still have basketball." NBC had lost $35 million on the failed XFL the previous year. The final NBC telecast closed with a montage of highlights from the network's 12-year run. Bob Costas delivered the closing words: "For one last time, you've been watching the NBA on NBC." Within two years of NBC losing the NBA rights, the network dropped to fourth place in prime time television rankings for the first time in its history.

• 7. Roundball Rock

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  "Roundball Rock" is the name of the theme music composed for NBA on NBC broadcasts by new-age artist John Tesh. Tesh composed the piece in 1990 specifically for NBC, and it soundtracked the network's NBA coverage from 1990 to 2002. During the years when NBC did not broadcast the NBA, the network continued using the theme for its Olympic basketball coverage, first in 2008 and then in every Summer Olympics from 2016 onward. Jim Fagan provided the voice-over work for NBC's NBA coverage, most notably the introduction "This is the NBA on NBC." Fagan died in 2017. When NBC revived its NBA coverage in 2025, the network revealed that it had received permission from Fagan's family to digitally clone his voice for on-air use in broadcasts and promotions. "Roundball Rock" returned as the theme music for the revived coverage. Sunday Night Basketball will also feature a reworked version of Elvis Presley's song "A Little Less Conversation," performed by Lenny Kravitz.

• 8. The Return

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  On the 23rd of July 2024, NBC parent company Comcast confirmed during a conference call with investors that NBC Sports had secured an 11-year media rights deal with the NBA beginning in the 2025-26 season, marking the league's return to NBC after a 23-year absence. An official announcement followed the next day alongside other deals with incumbents ABC/ESPN and newcomer Amazon. The agreement is valued at $2.5 billion per season, with NBC Sports carrying a total of 100 regular season games per season. NBCSN relaunched on the 17th of November 2025 to televise Monday and some playoff games. NBC revived the NBA Showtime title for its pre-game show. Before the season began, NBC announced that Michael Jordan would join its coverage as a special contributor, appearing in one-on-one interview segments with Mike Tirico under the title MJ: Insights to Excellence. Those segments were filmed as a single long-form interview and are being aired as individual excerpts throughout the season. Maria Taylor serves as the primary studio host for Sunday and Tuesday night games, having previously held the same role for ESPN's NBA Countdown. Among the new studio analysts are former NBA All-Stars Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter, and Tracy McGrady. For the revival season, Telemundo will air 10 of NBC's 11 Sunday Night Basketball games, the 2026 NBA All-Star Game, and the NBA's Mexico Game, under the broader 11-year agreement NBC's parent Comcast completed through its October 2001 acquisition of Telemundo Communications Group.