If you are of a certain age and fondly remember the NBA on NBC and the Michael Jordan Era, there is one iconic thing that stands out – the player introductions of the Chicago Bulls.
It wasn’t just the success of the Bulls dynasty with Jordan on the floor, it was the mystique of the team with the greatest player intros of all-time. The iconic voice of Chicago Bulls PA announcer Ray Clay and the incredible instrumental of “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project created an aura that has been unmatched in sports before or since.
There’s a reason why if you go to YouTube today, the player intros of the Chicago Bulls from their many NBA Finals appearances in the 1990s still have millions and millions of views.
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But were it not for the NBA on NBC, and the network’s willingness to make those player intros a part of their broadcasts, the world would have never come to fully appreciate the awesomeness of that moment.
And unfortunately, they are not part of modern NBA broadcasts, where lineups for playoff games are quickly mentioned, usually with some kind of ad placement.
However, with the return of the NBA on NBC, the network has given their first hint that they would like to bring the feeling of those days gone by.
In an interview with Alex Sherman and CNBC Sport, NBC Sports president Rick Cordella cited the intros of the Jordan Era Bulls as one of the ways in which the network hopes to bring a big game feel to its NBA coverage, specifically for their Sunday night games on the network that will follow Sunday Night Football on the calendar and hopefully beyond.
Our goal at NBC Sports is to make big events feel big and be big. And so we’re going to bring a lot of that back, show the atmosphere of the arena. Like, here’s another example: Michael Jordan’s player introductions. Very, very small amount people were actually in Chicago stadium, you know, hearing “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Project and “6’6 from North Carolina”, etc. The reason why people know it so well, because NBC showed it. And so I think that’s part of it, too. Like, let’s get in and show the atmosphere. Make this seem like a big game. And so you’ll see that. And you know, we’ll have our talent on site at the arenas on Sunday nights. We have Sunday night basketball to just again, make it feel like this is a big thing. And similar to Sunday Night Football it is the game of the week.
This might sound absurd to say, but is one of the reasons why the NBA is currently lacking in starpower behind LeBron James and Steph Curry because none of the networks make them look like stars by showing their pregame intros? These intros made Luc Longley looked like one of the coolest dudes on the planet because he got to walk out with Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan to an awesome song and the crowd cheering his name.
What would this kind of environment do to increase the status of someone like Anthony Edwards or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Jayson Tatum if we saw a packed arena going nuts for them with an awesome song playing in the background? Yes please!
Can you name one team’s player introductions this millennium? Does any team or franchise stand out as having a personality in that regard? When everything is rushed through and pregame talk and ads take up so much broadcast real estate, it’s easy to forget the players themselves that should be the focus.
We can’t wait for NBC to make this a reality to make NBA games feel like big events and the players feel like big stars like they did years ago. And maybe ESPN can take note and give us something like this for the NBA Finals once again instead of just making everything a YouTube TV ad.
