The NBA on NBC is an American television sports presentation show broadcast by NBC. Television broadcasts of National Basketball Association (NBA) games produced by NBC Sports have aired on American broadcast network NBC, under the NBA on NBC branding throughout three incarnations in its history.
The NBA was first televised by NBC from 1954 to 1962. In 1990, the NBA returned to NBC under a multi-year contract which coincided with the dynastic run of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls; the league rose to unprecedented popularity, with ratings surpassing the days of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the mid-1980s. NBC's coverage ended after the 2001–02 season after a 12-year run, when NBC was outbid for the broadcast television contract by Disney (via ABC).
In July 2024, it was announced that NBCUniversal had regained rights to the NBA under a new contract, beginning in the 2025–26 season, under the title NBA on NBC and NBA on Peacock respectively, which will see coverage on NBC and streaming platform Peacock. NBCSN was later added in November to televise Monday and some playoff games.
History First iteration (1954–1962) NBC's first tenure with the NBA began on October 30, 1954, and lasted until April 7, 1962. NBC's very first NBA telecast was a game between the Boston Celtics and Rochester Royals in Rochester.
For the 1954–55 season, Marty Glickman and Lindsey Nelson called all games except on April 9 (Fort Wayne at Syracuse during the playoffs), when Glickman worked with Jim Gordon. Nelson would later write in his autobiography, Hello Everybody, I'm Lindsey Nelson that NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff would travel to the televised games and, when NBC needed to get in a commercial, he would go up to one of the coaches and say, "Call a timeout," and they had to, since the commissioner ordered it. On March 19, 1955, during the playoffs, NBC gave the national spotlight to the New York Knicks and rising Boston Celtics at New York City's Madison Square Garden.
For the first year of NBC's tenure, the first five weeks of coverage followed a Canadian Football League game. That contract decreed that the network show 13 games (along with presumably the Grey Cup) on Saturday afternoons beginning in late August, and was signed one week after NBC had lost the rights to NCAA football to ABC.
The following year, Lindsey Nelson was paired with Curt Gowdy on commentary for all games except on February 25 (St. Louis at New York), March 3 (Minneapolis at Rochester with Nelson working with Joe Lapchick), and March 24 (Fort Wayne at St. Louis with Nelson working alone). On March 31, 1956, NBC broadcast the first nationally televised NBA Finals game, which was Game 1 of the Philadelphia-Fort Wayne series.
Gowdy and Nelson were retained as the primary broadcast team for NBC in 1956–57 except on March 23 and 30 (St. Louis at Boston), when Nelson worked by himself. While the team of Gowdy and Nelson again did most games in 1957–58, Nelson worked the December 14 telecast (Syracuse at Detroit) with Chick Hearn, who in return, worked the January 11 telecast (Syracuse at Cincinnati) with Gowdy. For the January 18 telecast (Detroit at St. Louis), Nelson worked alone while on February 1 (Syracuse at Minneapolis), Nelson was paired with Bill O'Donnell. Meanwhile, Gowdy worked alone on March 1 (Cincinnati at Philadelphia).
NBC also during the 1957–58 season, broadcast a game in Detroit between Cincinnati and the Pistons on March 15; after this game, on the flight home to Cincinnati, that Maurice Stokes became ill and later suffered a seizure, fell into a coma, and was left permanently paralyzed. This was the delayed reaction from having hit his head in a game three days earlier. Stokes died in April 1970.
In the 1958–59 season, Curt Gowdy worked alone on all games except on March 15 (New York at Syracuse, when Gowdy worked with Bud Palmer), April 5 (Minneapolis at Boston with Lindsey Nelson). The 1959 NBA All-Star Game marked the first time that the All-Star Game was nationally televised. However, NBC only broadcast the second half at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, in lieu of its Friday Night Fights telecast. The fact that the All-Star Game prior to this, was almost always played on a Tuesday night meant that NBC would have had to sacrifice most, if not all, of their evening programming. In the first few years, that would have meant taking off Milton Berle's program, which was starting to slide, but still would have made more money for the network than a pro basketball game. Plus, NBA owners weren't terribly savvy when it came to working with television in this era, so they probably refused network requests to put it in a weekend afternoon slot.
During the 1959–60 season, Curt Gowdy worked alone most on Saturday games while Lindsey Nelson worked alone on most Sunday games. Nelson also worked on Saturday April 2 (St. Louis at Boston) during the playoffs. Marty Glickman meanwhile, worked alone on December 6 (St. Louis at Cincinnati), January 2–3 (New York Knicks at Cincinnati and Boston at Syracuse), February 28 (Philadelphia at Detroit), March 13 (Philadelphia at Syracuse), 20 (Boston at Philadelphia), and 27 (St. Louis at Boston), and April 3 (Boston at St. Louis). Finally, Bill O'Donnell worked alone on March 12 (Minneapolis at Detroit), 19 (St. Louis at Minneapolis), and 26 (Minneapolis at St. Louis).
In the 1960–61 season, Lindsey Nelson was alone on all games except when he worked with Bud Palmer on October 22 (New York at Cincinnati) and 29 (New York at Detroit), November 26 (Syracuse at Boston), December 3 (New York at Syracuse), 10 (Syracuse at Detroit), and 24 (Detroit at Boston). Jerry Doggett helped call games on November 5 (Syracuse at Los Angeles) and 19 (Detroit at Los Angeles). Marty Glickman contributed to commentary on January 8 (Boston at St. Louis), 15 (Philadelphia at Syracuse), 22 (St. Louis at Cincinnati), and 29 (Philadelphia at Boston), February 19 (Boston at Syracuse) and 26 (Boston at Detroit), March 12 (Boston at Syracuse), 19 (Syracuse at Boston), and 26 (Syracuse at Boston), and April 2 (St. Louis at Boston).
For NBC's final season of their first stint with the NBA, Bud Palmer worked alone on commentary on all games except for on February 3 (Cincinnati at New York) and April 7 (Los Angeles at Boston), when he was paired with Bob Wolff.
NBC's ratingsPomerantz 2005, pp.10–11 during this time period were lukewarm at best. By 1962, NBA ratings for NBC's Saturday afternoon games dipped to 4.8 (9 million viewers) as compared to Sunday afternoon NFL ratings of 10.4 (15 million viewers). As a matter of fact, CBS was at one point, getting better ratings for their National Hockey League (NHL) telecasts than NBC was getting with the NBA. One possible factor for the dipping ratings the fact that NBC's 1960–61 schedule placed the three weakest teams--Cincinnati, Syracuse, and Detroit on television a total of 14 times. In comparison, three of the NBA's best teams--Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia—appeared on NBC a total of only seven times.
Second iteration (1990–2002) Background
On November 9, 1989, the NBA reached an agreement with NBC worth US$600 million to broadcast the NBA's games for four years, beginning with the 1990–91 season. On April 28, 1993, NBC extended its exclusive broadcast rights to the NBA with a four-year, $750 million contract.
Coverage NBC's coverage of the NBA began on Christmas Day each season, with the exception of the inaugural season in 1990 (which featured a game on November 3, 1990 between the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs), the 1997–98 season (which included a preseason tournament featuring the Chicago Bulls), the 1998–99 season (as no Christmas games were played due to the 1998–99 NBA lockout), and the final season of NBC's contract in 2001–02 (which included two early season games featuring the return of Michael Jordan to the NBA, but this time as an owner and player for the Washington Wizards). NBC aired the NBA All-Star Game every year (with the exception of 1999, when the game was canceled due to the lockout), usually at 6:00 pm, Eastern Time. In 2002, NBC aired the game an hour earlier (at 5:00 pm, Eastern) due to the Winter Olympics later that evening. Starting in 2000, during the NBA Playoffs, NBC would air tripleheaders on Saturdays and Sundays during the first two weeks of the playoffs. Prior to 2000, NBC would air a doubleheader on Saturday, followed by a tripleheader on Sunday.
On December 30, 2000, NBC aired a rare second December game. The Saturday match was the only time that NBC aired a game between Christmas Day and the start of the regular run of games in February. In 2001, NBC was scheduled to air an October preseason game involving an NBA team playing an international team; that game was canceled due to the September 11 attacks. During the 2001–02 NBA season, NBC added a significant number of Washington Wizards games to its schedule (due to the aforementioned return of Michael Jordan). When Jordan became injured during the middle of the season, NBC replaced the added Wizards games with the games that had been originally on the schedule (for example, a March 2002 game between the Wizards and Orlando Magic was replaced at the last minute with an Indiana Pacers–Sacramento Kings game).
Segments
The pre-game show for NBC's NBA telecasts was NBA Showtime, a title that was used from 1990 until 2000, with the pre-game being unbranded afterward. Showtime was originally hosted by Bob Costas from the inaugural season of the 1990 contract to the 1995–96 season; Hannah Storm took over as host beginning with the 1996–97 season, who in turn was replaced by Ahmad Rashad in 2001 when Storm went on maternity leave. The video game NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC, by Midway Games, was named after the pregame show.
During the NBA Finals, additional coverage would be immediately available on CNBC, in which the panelists provided an additional half-hour of in-depth game discussions, after the NBC broadcast network's coverage concluded.
The halftime show was sponsored by Prudential Financial (Prudential Halftime Report), and later NetZero (NetZero at the Half) and Verizon Wireless (Verizon Wireless at the Half). The broadcasts also featured a segment during the live games called Miller Genuine Moments, which provided a brief retrospective on a particular historically significant and/or dramatic moment in NBA history; this segment was discontinued towards the end of NBC's coverage. The song used as the soundtrack for the Miller Genuine Moments segment was "Black Hole" by John Tesh. For a brief period in 2001–02, NBC aired a studio segment called 24, in which each analyst (at that time, Pat Croce, Jayson Williams or Mike Fratello) would have 24 seconds to talk about issues concerning the NBA. NBC (in conjunction with completely revamping the pregame show) discontinued the segment in February 2002, after Williams was arrested on murder charges.
Ratings During its twelve-year run, the NBA on NBC experienced ratings highs and lows for the NBA. In the 1990s, the NBA Finals ratings were stellar, with the exception of the 1999 Finals. In 1998, the NBA set a Finals ratings record, with an 18.7 household rating for the second Chicago Bulls–Utah Jazz series, the last championship run by the Michael Jordan-led Bulls. The very next year (after a lockout which erased part of the season), the ratings for the 1999 Finals plummeted, marking the beginning of an ongoing period of lower viewership for the league's game telecasts. In 2002, NBC set a record for the highest-rated Western Conference Final, including a 14.2 rating for Game 7 of the series between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings.