The return of the NBA on NBC has been widely met with appreciation by most basketball fans.
The “Roundball Rock” theme and appropriate doses of nostalgia have warmed the heart. The focus and celebration of today’s game and athletes has been a welcome shift from overly negative, drama-filled coverage of recent years. And the national television exposure for the NBA has been incredible; who would have ever thought you would see a midweek Miami Heat-Minnesota Timberwolves matchup on national television?
But there is one area of NBC’s NBA coverage that has fallen drastically short: the contributions of Michael Jordan.
Before the season, NBC announced Jordan would be a “special contributor” to the network’s basketball comeback. Given the glory days of the NBA on NBC coincided with the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty, it felt like the perfect pairing. Combine that with the fact that we haven’t heard Jordan analyze today’s game or stars, and there was huge anticipation to finally get his detailed thoughts on the state of the NBA in the mid-2020s.
But with the NBA season already approaching the halfway point, Jordan’s role at NBC has been contained to one previously recorded interview with Mike Tirico that has been aired in snippets throughout the campaign.
The excitement to see Michael Jordan on NBC has now given way to confusion and disappointment. And that has only been exacerbated as Tirico confirmed this week that his one interview with Jordan is all that NBC currently has from their “special contributor.”
Clearly, expectation has not met with reality when it comes to Jordan’s role at NBC.
Serious questions have to be asked about the arrangement, because clearly NBC has over-promised and under-delivered when it comes to Jordan being a part of their NBA coverage.
In fairness to NBC, it’s hard to call it a “bait-and-switch” given the nebulous title of “special contributor” assigned to the GOAT this past spring. Jordan was unveiled in that role at the network’s upfront presentation to advertisers and the accompanying announcement was very light on details of what exactly he would do.
Would he serve as a studio analyst? Would we get his thoughts on major storylines as they developed throughout the season in more of a one-on-one capacity? Would we be able to get his live thoughts for games as they developed? Given Jordan’s sizable business interests, it wouldn’t be fair to expect him to be chained to a studio desk each and every week. But there was palpable excitement. Surely basketball fans were well within their rights to expect a lot more than one generic interview pre-taped months ago.
At some point along the way, NBC had to know that the perception of the arrangement would go sideways. You simply cannot promote something as significant as Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all-time, becoming a special contributor for your network, and then have it turn out to be such a disappointment. And the fact that there are no further interviews scheduled with Jordan makes that even more true.
One has to wonder whether or not NBC had the full details worked out with Michael Jordan ahead of the announcement and this was the best they could do to work around his schedule. If that’s the case, the network should have pivoted and been honest with fans that they had just the one interview to work from. It would have been much better off to air the interview in its entirety. Make it a primetime special. Give it all to us unfiltered at one time and it would be guaranteed to create buzz and generate headlines. Getting to hear from His Airness has been great, but the drip, drip, drip approach is producing rapidly diminishing returns as fans have caught on to the truth and largely tuned out to its importance.
Better yet, airing the interview in its entirety wouldn’t paint the network as being disingenuous with their plan around his appearances. Perception is everything in the media industry and right now the perception is that NBC pulled a fast one on fans who thought Michael Jordan would actually contribute his perspective all season long. It’s hard to sell someone as a “special contributor” when you are solely relying on work done months ago.
Surely, this could not have been the plan all along. And if it was, then NBC drastically miscalculated what the fan reaction would be to the setup of seeing Michael Jordan give vague thoughts that couldn’t possibly account for what would actually happen over the course of an entire NBA season.
Furthermore, what’s NBC’s plan moving forward? Are they going to try this again next year? Will Michael Jordan record more pre-tape segments like he’s Tom Brokaw announcing the death of Gerald Ford? Will he have to prepare for the possibility that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t meet the 65 game threshold for MVP because he gets eaten by wolves?
If NBC can’t get Michael Jordan back in front of the camera at some point this season, it will go down as one of the biggest anti-climaxes in all of sports media.