The 2025-26 season will bring some substantial changes to how we watch NBA basketball, as the new national TV broadcast deal goes into effect and shifts rights to two new networks.
That has led to an arm’s race between NBC and Amazon as they fill out their studio and game broadcast crews, with both networks bringing in some fresh faces and big names to the NBA media world. Carmelo Anthony, Dirk Nowitzki and Blake Griffin have been announced as former stars that will debut next fall as part of the new coverage teams, but the biggest splash of them all came Monday when NBC announced it was getting Michael Jordan to be a “special contributor” to its coverage next season.
Jordan’s presence on the court made the NBA on NBC iconic to everyone that watched basketball in the 90s, as NBC was among the many beneficiaries of the dominance of Jordan’s Bulls. Now, he’ll lend a hand to NBC once again by making his debut as a broadcaster.
What makes this move so fascinating is we haven’t seen much of Jordan on camera talking about basketball over the last two decades. Even when he was owner of the Charlotte Hornets, Jordan didn’t meet with the media regularly and certainly didn’t opine about the state of the league beyond what Charlotte was doing. You were far more likely to see Jordan do an interview talking about his racing teams, golf, fishing or cigars than talk basketball.
Now, a year removed from selling the team, Jordan apparently misses being around the NBA game and will come back to the league in his new role as “special contributor,” If that title seems seems vague and undefined, that is likely by design to allow Jordan to pop in when his schedule allows and do things he’s interested in. We could see him join the studio team some times, he could do interviews with players or perhaps simply produce some pre-taped vignettes about the NBA without having to travel anywhere at all.
Whatever the case, when Jordan speaks people watch and listen, and landing him as a contributor, no matter how infrequent, is a huge get for NBC and the NBA as a whole.
