Tracy McGrady says his NBC deal was for one year, future with network unclear

Tracy McGrady’s future at NBC is uncertain.

Speaking with Front Office Sports, McGrady revealed that his deal with the network covered only one season, and it’s currently unknown whether he will return to NBA Showtime next year.

“I give ourselves a B+,” McGrady said of the group’s performance. “And we have a lot of room to improve. I only did a one-year deal, so we’ll see how that goes moving forward. But I would love to be back.”

The candid self-assessment is more generous than the one Awful Announcing offered. As AA’s Brendon Kleen noted in late May, NBA Showtime — the studio show anchored by Maria Taylor alongside McGrady, Carmelo Anthony, and Vince Carter — never found its footing in year one, struggling to generate the chemistry analysis that NBC’s otherwise strong NBA coverage deserved. The trio of Hall of Fame scoring forwards shared perspectives and friendly history, but that familiarity never translated to compelling television.

McGrady was the standout of the three — unfiltered in the way he was on ESPN’s The Jump in its early days, wading into live storylines like his allusion to Jaylen Brown potentially leaving Boston — while Carter was the odd man out, universally liked but rarely willing to say anything the audience could hold onto. Anthony’s lowest moment came when he credited disgraced Mavericks GM Nico Harrison for Cooper Flagg’s Rookie of the Year award and kept defending the take even as his co-hosts laughed, assuming it was a joke.

NBC is paying roughly $2.5 billion per year for its NBA rights and has earned widespread praise for the look, feel, and production of its game coverage. NBA Showtime has been the clear weak point, and McGrady’s one-year deal structure gives the network maximum flexibility to reshape the desk this offseason. Whether that means bringing McGrady back in a different configuration or pursuing outside talent more aggressively remains to be seen.