NBC’s roster for the Rio Olympics continues to expand, with the network following up the announcement of Mary Carillo and Jimmy Roberts as correspondents with a release this week outlining the big names they have lined up for men’s basketball. Marv Albert will call Team USA men’s games, with Doug Collins on color and Craig Sager on the sidelines. NBC also announced that Marc Zumoff, Ann Meyers and Ros Gold-Onwude will be working the Team USA women’s games. From the release:
Legendary basketball play-by-play broadcaster Marv Albert returns to the Olympics to call Team USA men’s basketball for the first time since the U.S. men captured gold in Atlanta in 1996. He will be joined by former NBA head coach and 1972 U.S. Olympian Doug Collins, and reporter Craig Sager, working his fifth consecutive Olympics for NBC. NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad begins from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Friday, August 5.
The 2016 Rio Olympics mark Albert’s fifth NBC Olympics assignment and third calling men’s basketball, as he was courtside to chronicle the gold medal-winning U.S. “Dream Team” in Barcelona in 1992. Albert also called Olympic boxing for NBC in 1988, 1996, and 2000. Collins and Sager each take on his fifth consecutive Olympic broadcasting assignment, since the 2000 Sydney Games.
Coverage of Team USA women’s basketball will be handled by CSN-Philadelphia’s Marc Zumoff (play-by-play) and 1976 U.S. Olympian Ann Meyers (analyst). They will be joined by reporter Ros Gold-Onwude, who works Golden State Warriors telecasts for CSN-Bay Area.
Zumoff, the play-by-play voice of the Philadelphia 76ers since 1994, makes his Olympics debut. Meyers, a 1993 inductee into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and a silver medalist as a member of the first-ever U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team (1976), works her fifth consecutive Olympics for NBC (since 2000). Gold-Onwude, who competed in three Final Fours and was 2010 Pac-12 Co-Defensive Player of the Year while playing for Stanford, makes her Olympics debut.
There haven’t been a lot of sport-specific lineups announced by NBC yet, but this is a significant one. Albert, Collins and Sager are all big gets, and it’s particularly interesting that Sager has signed on despite his cancer no longer being in remission. It’s also notable to see Albert returning to Olympic men’s basketball after a 20-year absence; he obviously has plenty of experience with the sport from working as Turner’s lead NBA announcer since 1999, but it will be interesting to see him calling the international game again. The women’s lineup looks solid as well. Basketball will likely be one of the big-draw sports this summer, and it seems like NBC has lined up plenty of top talent to handle it.
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