Under a new media rights deal, the NBA will return to NBC’s Peacock-branded airwaves for the first time since 2002.
NBC will sell basketball, not paper, at its latest office.
“Roundball Rock” will ring across professional basketball broadcasts once more as the “NBA on NBC” will return for a third iteration set to tip off later this month.
In anticipation of its Oct. 22 debut, which will see the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder host the Houston Rockets in the first half of a doubleheader on its broadcast network, NBC hosted a showcase of its basketball talent and decision-makers at its sports headquarters in Stamford, CT.
On hand were a plethora of NBA All-Stars set to narrate the action: Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter, and Tracy McGrady make up the lead studio trio, while Jamal Crawford, Grant Hill, and Reggie Miller are the top game analysts next to play-by-play man Mike Tirico.
“The NBA and NBC was iconic. What those 12 years were were the peak of excitement energy,” NBC Sports executive Producer and President of production Sam Flood said. “We’re going to bring back touches of nostalgia, but we’re going to move the sport forward and move our broadcast forward. You can see by the team we’ve assembled here, generational talent across the board, ready to have fun, ready to grow the game, and ready to engage the audience in new ways.”
Among hoops fans, NBC is best known for its 13-year run of Association broadcasts between 1990 and 2002, which featured some of the most memorable moments in the game at the turn of the century, including every edition of the NBA Finals during that span.
The NBA on NBC crew! https://t.co/govW6WyG0Q pic.twitter.com/6BSg6DiItx
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) May 12, 2025
NBA on NBC Brings Back the Nostalgia
Such broadcasts were watched by several of the incoming talents while others partook in them directly. Game analyst Derek Fisher, for example, won three of his five championship rings on NBC airwaves as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. Though not present in Stamford, the legendary Michael Jordan is joining as a special contributor.
Headlining the return of one of their favorite programs was all the convincing it took for several of the major talents to come aboard.
“Some of my best moments were on this network, and when I got the opportunity to interview with them, I told them that,” Miller recalled to Ballislife. “There were a lot of ups and downs during the 90s, a lot of cheering, but some grind as well. It’s those type of emotions you want to kind of feather in and kind of send back out to the universe. Hopefully, being on this side of it, there’ll be some young player, 15, 20, 30 years down the road, saying some of my best moments happened when Reggie Miller was calling my games. That’s kind of cool for me to be in those type of shoes.”
Nostalgia was perhaps the theme and buzzword of the presentation, where “Roundball Rock,” the famed theme penned by John Tesh, blared throughout the speakers. Tesh’s tune isn’t the only thing returning from the prior iteration, as NBC will use artificial intelligence to reproduce the voice of the late Jim Fagan, who served as the program’s voiceover announcer.
But those gathered also stressed the innovations set to take place on NBC waves this season.
“Nostalgia for us is the baseline,” Anthony explained, hoping that he and his fellow new-century legends will help provide innovation. “You have the baseline, which is nostalgia, you build off of that. Then, we’re bringing just a fresh take. I don’t want to say a new take, but a fresh take on reporting, on reporting the game of basketball and its storytelling.”
A good bit of the technical innovations will appear on the games that appear on NBC’s streaming service Peacock. The broadcast table for Peacock’s Monday night showings will be metaphorically expanded this season, as game analysts will be positioned behind each team’s bench rather than center court. That showcase will make its debut on Oct. 27 when the Cleveland Cavaliers face the Detroit Pistons.
Further Innovations
It’s a setup that somewhat mirrors the “Inside the Glass” situation NBC had for its NHL offerings, a concept that has since become a staple in hockey broadcasting.
“They’re telling the story of the game through the lens of that team, having one analyst assigned to the Celtics, one analyst assigned to the Knicks,” Flood explained. “It’s never been done this way before. We thought it would be a unique way to take you inside the game that marries brilliantly with the tech that Peacock is going to have, and we’re excited about trying something different.”
Further innovations present on streaming will include “Peacock Performance View,” which will provide real-time stats and shot charts for players on the floor, as well as identifying open men. Viewers will also be able to set up alerts for their favorite players and catch up with the game they’re viewing and other showings across the league in a single stop.
90s Energy Meets Modern Game
Peacock will also add “Courtside Live” in the middle of the season, which will allow fans to curate their own angles of the game, meant to “connect [viewers] to the culture” around the showing. Star players, bench reactions, celebrity row, and “game day fashion” will take center stage under such a setup.
“You never want to take away people’s love, especially the older generation that grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, that brand of basketball, but also, [we remember] the sneakerheads and the dress fits,” Miller told BIL. “It’s a lot about entertainment now as well, too, so you want to be able to merge both. Will it be easy? I mean, I’m sure we’re going to have our bumps in the roads, but it’s all a process of what works, what doesn’t work, what sticks, what doesn’t stick, and we’ll just go from there.”
“We’re going to take some for the 1990s NBA coverage, and take a lot from ‘Sunday Night Football’ and kind of marry the two,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella added. “The Peacock product will be for the tech nerds out there that want to geek out … So it’s sort of a marriage between those two things. I know nostalgia will get people to the TV sets, but the advancements and being a 2025, 2026 media company will get them to stay.”
Under the new NBA media deal, which will also welcome Amazon into the fold, NBC and Peacock will broadcast 100 regular-season games. That will include Tuesday night doubleheaders throughout the season as well as holiday showcases on Veterans Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Once the NFL season ends, NBC will take over the weekend-closing void with “Sunday Night Basketball,” featuring marquee matchups on the Association ledgers. Those games will feature a stylized introduction from recording artist Lenny Kravitz, who has recorded a sequence at Philadelphia’s Xfinity Mobile Arena that is said to be similar to the “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” showcase performed by Carrie Underwood prior to NFL games.
Every scorebug in the history of the NBA on NBC: pic.twitter.com/uDiSnp7Z6V
— Sports TV News & Updates (@TVSportsUpdates) October 7, 2025
Playoffs on NBC
NBC will also broadcast and stream playoff games, including a full conference final in even-numbered years.
February 2026 will be particularly busy for NBC: the month opens with the opening chapter of “Sunday Night Basketball” between the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks, five days before the 2026 Winter Olympics open in Italy. “Sunday Night Basketball” will take a two-week break for both Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, CA, and the 2026 NBA All-Star Game in Inglewood, CA, before resuming with the Celtics-Lakers rivalry on Feb. 22.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
