The NBA Finals begin Thursday, and NBC could broadcast the league again before long. It’s enough to make anyone nostalgic, including the great Bob Costas, who was the league’s voice for 12 years at NBC and became one of its great storytellers with his iconic pregame monologues.
In an interview on The Press Box podcast released Wednesday, Costas described how NBC produced those signature video essays to set the stage for big games and why he believes other NBA broadcasters ignored what worked so well for him and NBC.
“Dick (Ebersol) brought a storytelling perspective to almost everything,” Costas explained. “The idea was to take an already good product and amplify everything that was appealing about it and to tell stories in dramatic ways. I think what exemplified that was the opening not to every game but to the biggest games. We had this sort of dramatic opening that was the signature of the coverage of the NBA on NBC.”
Costas believes those opens were a big part of how NBC helped bring awareness to the league’s new star players.
“To frame the league in the most dramatic fashion, to make stars out of not just Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson … but everybody, that whole constellation of stars around the biggest star, Michael Jordan,” Costas said of NBC’s approach. “We did that effectively with everything we covered: the Olympics, baseball, the NFL. But I think maybe basketball, in its own way, was the signature property for that kind of approach.”
As for how Costas went about crafting these essays, he knew drama was the point. And he wasn’t afraid to play it up.
“It was to be dramatic without being cliche, without being over the top,” Costas told host Bryan Curtis. “The producers did such a great job of the cuts, the way the thing was edited, the music that would accompany it. I think it was an amplification of the drama, the legitimate drama, the legitimate stakes, the legitimate narrative. It was an amplification of that, and I can’t tell you how many people have told me over the years, I’m sure it’s thousands by now, ‘those openings gave me goosebumps.'”
Costas did not have a great answer when asked why ESPN or TNT never produced their own versions of those calls.
“Everybody feels that they have to do their own thing, their own way,” he said. “Maybe others who got the NBA thought that they’d be copycatting if they did it that way, but I still hear about it.”
The answer is probably easier than he made it out to be. Other NBA announcers may be afraid to match the signature segment from an all-time great broadcaster like Costas.
Still, with NBC striking a new deal with the NBA and Amazon Prime Video launching NBA coverage for the first time, a window is open for these crews to bring more storytelling back to broadcasts of the sport. Especially as many wonder who will take the baton from LeBron James and Steph Curry as the “face” of the league, broadcasters can play a big part in shaping narratives around those players.
Just ask Costas.
