Noah Eagle And Dwyane Wade Are Making It Clear That They Should Be NBC’s No. 1 NBA Booth

NBC is getting back into the NBA game. As part of the league’s new media rights deal, NBCUniversal came in with a monster bid to get the league’s “B” package, which means that the NBA is returning to a network that it called home for more than 20 years. Also: Roundball Rock is coming back! That’s good as hell.

Anyway, the No. 1 thing that NBC (and Amazon, as well) will need to figure out is its presentation for big games. Yes, the studio show is important, especially if one of the networks can figure out how to get Charles Barkley on board. But as we’ve seen, investing in making sure your broadcast feels like a big deal can go a long way — this was a major gripe we had with ESPN’s presentation of the NBA Finals this past year.

A good announce team can go a long way in this regard. How you define “good” is up to you, because while some folks want a duo that features a play-by-play who stays out of the way while the analyst tells you on the fly everything about the nitty-gritty of basketball, others just want a few people who are having fun and scream when cool things happen. There’s no right answer to what makes a good broadcast booth — well, other than “have Mike Breen involved” — but generally, you can tell when you’re listening to something good when you throw on a game and pay attention.

All of this is to say that NBC appears to have something special with Noah Eagle and Dwyane Wade. The pair are calling the biggest Olympic basketball games together in Paris, and have been fantastic on the few occasions (to this point) that we’ve heard them on the call. There is an obvious chemistry that the two share — I have no idea how much time they put into building up that chemistry in the lead-up to the Olympics, but if you told me they worked hard on it, I’d totally believe you.

Eagle, the son of Ian Eagle, has been a rising star in sports media for quite some time, as he’s called a handful of sports — including basketball for the Los Angeles Clippers’ radio crew — and currently is with NBC doing Big Ten football and basketball. Wade is not perfect as an analyst, as he got a little overzealous in going to his newfound catchphrases over and over (“I know him personally, and his pronouns are he/him”, Bam Adebayo’s name, etc.) during the first USA game. But he’s also brand new to this, so these little quirks that he’s figuring out in real time are all totally fine.

The important thing: It is very clear that both of them love this, and they’re celebrating the athletes and the game of basketball every time they’re on the call. You can go a long way just off of passion as a broadcaster, and both Eagle and Wade have that, along with the crucial mix of the polish of veterans and the breath of fresh air that can only come when you’re new to an audience. Listen to how much fun both of them are clearly having in some of these clips.

To bring this back around to NBC getting NBA media rights starting in 2025, it’s pretty clear to me from listening to these two work together that they should undoubtedly be the No. 1 booth for the network. Mike Tirico, who is good at calling every sport, is apparently in line to take over as the top play-by-play man, while it seems safe to assume that this is serving as Wade’s audition for the top color commentator spot if he wants it.

Don’t get me wrong, a Tirico-Wade booth would be great, but why mess with what’s working? Eagle and Wade are getting one of the biggest stages in sports and knocking it out of the park already, and are showing signs of being the sort of partnership that NBC can (and should) rely on for years. NBC has plenty of time to figure all of this out, and hopefully when they do, they keep this booth together and let it carry them into the future.