The NBA’s debut on NBC gets rave reviews, despite glitches and a bad use of AI

NBC managed to do the unthinkable — making a regular-season NBA game feel big.

Broadcasting their its NBA game in 23 years, NBC made the league’s season opener between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets feel like a playoff game. The crowd was loud, the camera work and graphics were crisp, and enough can’t be written about John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock.”

The opening was just about perfect, balancing nostalgia for the NBA of the 1990s with current stars like LeBron James and Joel Embiid, who had “no idea” when asked about his memories of the league during that era. (Embiid was 2 years old when Jordan won his fourth NBA championship in 1996.)

“TNT — as good as it was, as comfortable as it was — never made Opening Night feel as much as an event as tonight," wrote Sports Media Watch’s Jon Lewis, adding “the moments leading up to tipoff felt bigger than during the Finals last year. And that’s not me taking shots at ESPN, it’s just kind of obvious to me.”

Then there’s Mike Tirico, who has developed into an announcer whose voice makes a game feel bigger.

Other than practice games with the Sixers and Boston Celtics last season, it was Tirico’s first time calling a national basketball game since 2016. You would have never known it — Tirico knew the rules and was on top of every call. Officials missed Kevin Durant’s call for a timeout when the Houston Rockets had none during the closing seconds of overtime, but Tirico was all over it.

“Tirico doesn’t miss much in terms of intricacies,” wrote the Athletic’s Andrew Marchand.

Tirico was part of an entertaining three-person crew alongside Reggie Miller and Jamal Crawford, which is likely a preview of how NBC will handle this season’s Western Conference Finals.

“We don’t really have a lead crew,” NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said on a recent episode of the Sports Media Watch Podcast. “Jamal and Reggie are equals, and so you’ll see us going two-man crews and three-man crews at different times. And then we’ll see how the season goes.”

There were also nice touches during the broadcast, like NBC’s scorebug showing an animated hand after three pointers and shaking following a slam dunk.

The question is whether it will all be enough. NBC is reportedly paying $2.5 billion a year over the next 11 years for its NBA package, and the Wall Street Journal reported parent-company Comcast is projecting losses between $500 million and $1.4 billion during the first few years of the deal.

“It’s a long-term deal. We’re not trying to measure this based on quarters but the next 10 years,” Matt Strauss, chairman of NBCU’s media group, told the Wall Street Journal.

The idea of Michael Jordan, NBA pundit is interesting. After all, who wouldn’t want arguably the greatest player in the history of the game dishing on the league’s current players and situations?

Viewers, apparently. Jordan appeared via a pretaped segment for three minutes during halftime, where he told a nice story about the last time he shot a basketball and not much else.

“I wish I could take a magic pill, put on shorts, and go out and play the game of basketball today,” Jordan said.

Is it an improvement over quick-hit segments where studio analysts hurry through banal comments so networks can squeeze in as many sports gambling ads as possible? Yes, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear.

The good news is NBC plans to air more segments featuring Jordan’s interview with Tirico in the weeks to come. NBC said he’ll be back next Tuesday to discuss load management, a subject Jordan — who played 82 games nine times in his career — has strong views about.

Beyond that, it’s unclear how often Jordan, promoted as a special contributor, will appear on NBC this season.

Older NBA fans probably felt something was off with Jim Fagan’s voice during the opening of Tuesday night’s broadcast.

That’s because the longtime NBA on NBC narrator died eight years ago.

NBC got permission from Fagan’s family to create a deepfake version of Fagin’s voice to intro games and provide promos for upcoming NBA games, as well as on other sports airing across NBC.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

It isn’t the first time NBC has leaned into using artificial intelligence. During last year’s Olympics, NBC used a deepfake version of veteran announcer Al Michaels for personalized recaps on Peacock. But Michaels, who currently handles play-by-play on Amazon’s Thursday Night Football, is still alive.

As for NBC’s pregame show, it was largely forgettable. Despite featuring three NBA hall of famers — Carmelo Anthony, Vince Carter, and Tracy McGrady — nothing memorable was said.

In fact, the most notable part was the technical issues that plagued the first few minutes, including some audio issues and a couple of bad microphones. At one point, host Maria Taylor slammed her microphone down on the desk after McGrady asked her to repeat a question, causing static to overrun the broadcast for a few seconds.

“Hey, this is the first night, so it’s not going to be perfect NBC family, but we’re going to get it right,” McGrady said.

While the pregame show lacked much interest or excitement, at least NBC decided to take the high road and avoided sideshow antics involving shouting pundits and LeBron James vs. the world debates.

It is just the first game of 82, after all.

Embiid and the Sixers open their season Wednesday against the Boston Celtics on NBC Sports Philadelphia, with Kate Scott and Alaa Abdelnaby back calling the bulk of the team’s games.

The Sixers are scheduled to appear exclusively on NBC five times, beginning with their Nov. 11 matchup against the Boston Celtics at the newly named Xfinity Mobile Arena. They’ll also play exclusively on Peacock on Jan. 5 against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets.

Here’s when fans will see the Sixers on NBC and Peacock:

» READ MORE: A milestone for NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Alaa Abdelnaby as the NBA launches new TV schedule