Joey Votto doesn’t watch the NFL very much. He doesn’t tune into the NBA regularly either. But his favorite sports show is Inside the NBA, and when the former Cincinnati Reds first baseman explained why on The Jim Day podcast this week, he broke down exactly how he plans to approach his new role as an NBC studio analyst.
Votto can’t watch every game before his NBC debut in March. He doesn’t have the bandwidth for that. But in the week leading up to it, he said it only makes sense to watch a little beforehand. That’s when he got into talking about Inside the NBA and why Kenny Smith stands out to him above the other three — Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, and Shaquille O’Neal.
“Probably my favorite of the four—Ernie is fabulous—but Kenny is probably my favorite,” Votto said. “Charles is hilarious, of course, and Shaq. But the two of them, Shaq and Charles, will say, ‘I don’t watch the games. Like, I’ll just kind of check in. I don’t know the players. I don’t know this, I don’t know that.’ And that to me, I can relate to because I think it gives you, there’s an authenticity to the moment when they’re on, when they’re talking about the teams.”
Votto isn’t breaking any news when he says Shaq and Charles don’t watch every game. Kendrick Perkins has been saying it for close to a year — possibly longer — and Shaq proved him right last March in spectacular fashion when he tried to break down the Pistons and credited Chauncey Billups as their head coach.
Inside the NBA has never pretended to be a deep basketball analysis show. That’s not what it’s selling. It doesn’t matter if they know the roster or who’s coaching which team. They’ve turned that lack of preparation into content with segments like “Who He Play For?” where they quiz each other on random players and get the answers wrong. The audience doesn’t care. The show is entertaining because the personalities are entertaining, not because they’re breaking down zone defenses or explaining rotations.
Votto understands that model works for Charles and Shaq, but he knows it won’t work for him.
“I do think what made me good in baseball was my preparation, my attention to detail,” Votto said. “And I don’t think that I’m going to do something like this and not carry those same characteristics into any sort of TV work. Two reasons: first of all, I owe it to the watchers because I don’t want to waste people’s time the second I open my mouth. And second of all, I think anytime I’ve got any credit for anything I’ve said publicly, which led to this job, I was prepared, like I could speak to it and was passionate about it.”
And that’s exactly why he gravitated toward Kenny Smith as the person he wants to emulate on Inside the NBA.
The show moved to ESPN this season after Warner Bros. Discovery lost NBA rights and elected to license the show to the Worldwide Leader. The substance of the show hasn’t changed, even if Inside the NBA now airs only 20 nights during the regular season, mostly around ABC Saturday primetime coverage, plus playoffs and the NBA Finals. The transition has been rocky — to say the least — but the show remains what it’s always been: the gold standard for studio sports programming.
Joey Votto will try his best to emulate that in his own right, even as he tells Day that he still doesn’t know exactly what his role will be. NBC announced that Votto, along with Clayton Kershaw and Anthony Rizzo, will serve as pregame analysts for the Wild Card round and appear on select Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts during the regular season alongside hosts Bob Costas and Ahmed Fareed. Whether Votto would be considered a “local analyst” for the Reds remains to be seen, but NBC is expected to use a rotating group of analysts with ties to the teams playing each week, similar to what they did with Sunday Leadoff on Peacock from 2022-23.
Part of what made Votto apprehensive about broadcasting in the first place was the question of whether what he loves about baseball translates to TV. He’s obsessed with specific parts of the game, having played 17 years in the majors. But are those the parts casual fans care about? And can he explain why they should?
Joey Votto has shown he can be great on TV in limited appearances. The personality is there. The dry wit is there. The baseball IQ is there. Now he’s trying to bring the preparation and attention to detail that made him a six-time All-Star and 2010 NL MVP to the broadcast booth. He’s trying to be Kenny Smith — someone who shows up prepared, understands the game at a high level, and can explain it in a way that respects the audience’s time. That’s the goal. We’ll find out on March 26, when NBC’s first broadcast airs, if he can pull it off.