One of the interesting subplots to the 2024-25 NBA season is the fact that two new networks are basically having to build NBA broadcast and studio teams from scratch ahead of next season. NBC has a few people already in place, namely play-by-play commentators Mike Tirico and Noah Eagle and (potentially) studio host Maria Taylor, but don’t have any analysts in place. Amazon, meanwhile, has had to completely start from scratch, and as such has been pretty aggressive over the last two months.
The Prime Video crew has already built a studio show of Taylor Rooks, Dirk Nowitzki, and Blake Griffin, while adding Ian Eagle, Kevin Harlan, and Cassidy Hubbarth to their game coverage crew. NBC, meanwhile, has added Reggie Miller as their lead game analyst to join Tirico, with Jamal Crawford also signing on as a lead game analyst (potentially in a three-man booth with Miller at times).
On Thursday, we learned the first studio hire by NBC, as they made a splash by bringing in Carmelo Anthony for their studio show, according to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic. Marchand also reports NBC had talks with Charles Barkley but ended those, indicating there will not be a sudden change of the current plan for Inside the NBA to continue as constructed in a licensing deal with ESPN.
As for Anthony, he’s shown his skills on the microphone with his podcast, 7PM in Brooklyn, and seems well-suited for studio work. We’ll see who else NBC targets for their studio show, as Dwyane Wade has already worked with the network in the past doing Olympic game coverage with Noah Eagle this past summer. With Miller and Crawford already on board, it’s not clear if there’s still room on the top game broadcast team for Wade (who I’m assuming wouldn’t be signing up to be on the No. 2 team). That said, Wade is good friends with Anthony and if they were looking to build quick chemistry on their studio desk, it would make sense to bring in analysts that already have a great rapport off camera — and Wade spent time on TNT’s Tuesday night studio show in the past.
