By Jared Weiss | The Athletic, 2026-05-28 11:00:54
体育电视转播的职责是呈现赛场上的精彩对决。但如何在世界各地的任何角落、任何尺寸的屏幕上，捕捉并传递出让比赛重焕生机的魔力？这才是真正的终极目标。
如何让观众无论是坐在客厅看电视，还是在火车上刷手机，都能瞬间身临其境？
萨姆·弗拉德 (Sam Flood) 在筹划重返NBA转播时找到了答案，他既回望过去，也审视当下。
弗拉德 (Flood) 是NBC体育（NBC Sports）的执行制作人兼制作总裁，负责监管从《美国橄榄球之夜》（Football Night in America）到英超联赛转播的所有内容。在NBA全新签署的为期11年、价值760亿美元的全面媒体版权协议的第一年，正是他负责带领NBA重回NBC的荧幕。
NBC重返NBA，需要在对过去的怀旧情怀与这项运动面向未来的演变之间找到平衡。NBC与20世纪90年代的迈克尔·乔丹 (Michael Jordan) 时代紧密相连，正是那个时代开启了NBA延续至今的全球扩张之路。如今，圣安东尼奥马刺队球星维克托·文班亚马 (Victor Wembanyama) 作为这一全球化成果的结晶，已经登上了历史舞台，并有望成为下一个时代的领军人物。
随着联盟和电视网试图探寻文班亚马的崛起对他们的未来意味着什么，他们正透过乔丹当年初次校准的镜头来审视这一切。这并非十全十美。乔丹本人曾作为NBC回归宣传的一大卖点，但最终只是在赛季初的节目中穿插了几次简短的采访。而在分区决赛中，用于半场开局的无人机机位镜头更是引起了极大的争议，至少可以说褒贬不一。
但总体而言，NBA重回NBC是成功的。在常规赛期间，该电视网在每支球队的场边替补席都安排了分析师，为观赛体验带来了不同的视角。它还借鉴了《周日橄榄球之夜》（Sunday Night Football）的做法，让客队球员进行自我介绍。NBC甚至举办了复古之夜，不仅在视觉包装上大做文章，还请回了20年前的解说嘉宾，如鲍勃·科斯塔斯 (Bob Costas)、道格·科林斯 (Doug Collins)、迈克·弗拉特洛 (Mike Fratello) 和汉娜·斯托姆 (Hannah Storm)。
此外，NBC还极力渲染围绕文班亚马展开的、正在悄然兴起的狂热关注。他们在整个赛季中灵活调整并转播了多场马刺队的比赛，并将这场与俄克拉荷马城雷霆队的西部决赛对决，视作超越两支优秀球队强强对话的宏大盛宴。
“我们把自己的愿景看作是在制作音乐剧，”弗拉德说。“我们构建并讲述一个更宏大的故事，以一种不同于去剧院看话剧的方式吸引人们参与进来。音乐剧有不同的音符，能让每个人都乐在其中。”
远程观赛最缺失的东西就是声音的沉浸感。在球馆里，你置身于比赛环境之中，感官会被其完全淹没。而转播只是那个世界的一个缩影，因此弗拉德采取了一种独特的方法来塑造节目。
弗拉德在跳球前的一刻找到了直击观众内心的通道。在90年代，你会听到约翰·特什 (John Tesh) 创作的NBC版NBA主题曲《圆球摇滚》（Roundball Rock），那段巴甫洛夫反射般的“哒-哒-哒-哒-哒-哒-哒-哒”，并开始为赛场上的英雄壮举而肾上腺素飙升。那时，人们会有一种旅程即将开启的仪式感。
“只要听到那段音乐，你就准备好迎接篮球了，”弗拉德说。“所以我们都知道，这是重返NBA并实现增长的重要元素。”
除此之外，NBA比赛从未在宣称的时间准时开球。从国歌仪式、球员出场介绍到真正的跳球，赛前活动需要7到12分钟的时间。转播商通常利用这段时间进行“开场秀”（open）——这是一个紧凑、精彩的迷你节目，充斥着现场报道、战术分析、精彩集锦和预热宣传。
但弗拉德还记得芝加哥公牛队出场仪式的魔力：随着阿兰·帕森斯计划合唱团 (The Alan Parsons Project) 的经典乐曲《天狼星》（Sirius）节奏渐强，乔丹从黑暗中缓缓走出，现场观众爆发出雷鸣般的欢呼。那种灵魂出窍般的震撼体验，在世界上只有少数地方才能感受到。因此，当NBA在NBC的转播回归时，他们削减了赛前的一些繁琐环节和广告，直接转播球馆内的球员出场仪式，将观众带过屏幕，融入现场澎湃的能量中。
解说员并不会在这时抢话。现在不是进行深度分析的时候。他们只是让这一刻的情感席卷而来，沉浸其中。这与当今比赛以及几乎所有娱乐形式被碎片化分割的做法背道而驰。
“我们只是觉得，亲临NBA球馆是一种特别的体验，每个场馆都有自己独特的方式，我们很乐意去呈现这一点，”弗拉德说。“然后我们借鉴了《周日橄榄球之夜》的球员头像介绍，创造了这种混合模式：客队通过大头贴式的阵容介绍呈现，而主队则保留现场播音员（PA）的出场介绍，并穿插一些主队在现场播放的暖场视频，以此来调动球馆内观众的情绪。”
这一切的讲述者是迈克·蒂里科 (Mike Tirico)，NBC的全能现场解说员。2002年至2016年期间，他在ESPN/ABC积累了丰富的NBA解说经验，曾与名人堂成员休比·布朗 (Hubie Brown) 搭档担任现场解说，担任ESPN的NBA节目演播室主持，甚至还解说过NBA总决赛的广播电台直播。他于2016年加盟NBC，承担了广泛的角色，包括担任《周日橄榄球之夜》和奥运会的解说配音。如今，他也是“NBA on NBC”的代言人，并在周二刚刚荣获体育艾美奖最佳现场解说奖。
“我还记得勒布朗刚职业生涯早期时的情景，我觉得维克托身上也有那种感觉，”蒂里科说。“因为当你坐下来与桌子这边的每一个人交谈时，他们都会用最赞美、最具震撼力的词汇来评价他。”
但最重要的是，蒂里科还记得自己在今年2月第一次解说文班亚马的比赛时，内心所感受到的那种震撼。
“虽然这听起来有些不可思议，但电视转播根本无法完全展现他的震撼，”蒂里科说。“这就是‘奥古斯塔效应’。任何第一次去奥古斯塔（大师赛举办地）并亲眼目睹的人都会感叹：‘天呐，这和电视上看到的完全不一样。’而在电视上，它已经足够令人惊叹了。他也是如此。”
如何通过转播完美呈现这一真实感受，将观众带入文班的“奥古斯塔”？这就是蒂里科以及一直解说西部决赛的“NBA on NBC”团队所面临的任务。
在整个系列赛中，蒂里科身边有三届最佳第六人得主贾马尔·克劳福德 (Jamal Crawford) 和名人堂成员雷吉·米勒 (Reggie Miller) 协助，并采用了NBA中罕见的双场边记者配置——阿什利·沙阿马迪 (Ashley ShahAhmadi) 和佐拉·斯蒂芬森 (Zora Stephenson)。这两位分析师是来自两个不同时代的投手，也是自NBC最初转播时代以来篮球运动演变的产物。克劳福德的运球技巧曾激励了全国各地街头球场上的整整一代人。而米勒则是90年代伟大的得分后卫，也是三分球时代的先驱。他唯一的遗憾或许就是生不逢时。
“有时候，我会抱怨我的父母：‘看着今天的比赛打法，你们为什么要把我生得这么早？真拿你们没办法，索尔和凯里！’”米勒开玩笑地朝天空挥了挥拳头说道。“但我对这项运动的发展方向、球员的演变以及比赛的基本功感到兴奋。”
米勒是连接NBC两个篮球转播时代的桥梁。在他关注联盟的岁月里，能让他兴奋得从座位上跳起来的球员屈指可数。首先是斯蒂芬·库里 (Steph Curry)（“他一在球馆停好车，比赛就进入了‘活球’状态。你根本不知道他会从哪里出手。”）接着是乔丹（“一个在空中漫步的家伙。我们以前从未见过这样的场景。有些人曾接近过，但我们从未见过有人拥有那种气场。”）还有魔术师约翰逊 (Magic Johnson)（“在快攻中，他就像神一样。”）以及阿伦·艾弗森 (Allen Iverson)（“你根本无法把视线从他身上移开。”）
如今，轮到文班亚马了。
这种震撼让米勒想起了他第一次与库里坐下来交谈时的情景。
“你就是能感觉到伟大的时代即将到来，”米勒说。“你虽然看不见，但能感觉得到。我在他身上感受到了这一点，因为他的信念如此坚定。转眼到了今天，他成为了这项运动中最伟大的投手，保持着无数纪录。但我当时能真切地感受到这一点，就像我现在在维克托身上感受到的一样。”
正如库里是他的进化版一样，米勒将文班亚马视为前辈大个子的进化版。米勒现在希望，作为他在NBC解说生涯第二春的一部分，那些留下自己印记的球员也能记住，他曾是他们这段旅程的见证者。
“我很荣幸能解说维克托·文班亚马的第一场季后赛，这是我会告诉我的孩子们的事情，”米勒说。“很酷的是，作为一名篮球运动员，我最辉煌的一些时刻都是在NBC度过的。我希望在5年、10年、15年、20年后，当我早已结束解说生涯时，维克托·文班亚马、斯蒂芬·卡斯尔 (Stephon Castle) 这些家伙还会记得他们在NBC的第一场比赛，并希望他们会说：‘噢，天哪，雷吉·米勒当年解说过我们的比赛！’我希望自己能拥有那样的影响力。”
NBC在捕捉这轮系列赛的戏剧性冲突方面做得非常出色。当文班亚马撞到切特·霍姆格伦 (Chet Holmgren) 而杰伦·威廉姆斯 (Jaylen Williams) 做出令人捧腹的反应时，转播方用慢镜头为我们呈现了这一幕。暂停时战术板前慷慨激昂的演讲？拍到了。谢伊·吉尔杰斯-亚历山大 (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) 试图让队友们保持冷静？近距离特写。
NBC的这种尝试无疑收到了回报。根据尼尔森大盘数据（Nielsen Big Data + Panel）和Adobe Analytics的数字端官方数据，雷霆对阵马刺的首场双加时史诗对决，在NBC各平台的总观众人数达到了920万。据NBC称，这使其成为有记录以来收视率最高的西部决赛首战。
归根结底，文班亚马要想帮助缔造一个像乔丹时代那样备受推崇的NBA电视转播时代，他必须做一件事：赢。他和马刺队目前大比分3-2落后，总决赛入场券悬而未决，这正是决定他传奇之路走向的关键时刻。无论结果好坏，这都将成为他职业生涯故事中的重要篇章。
“在NBC，我们无法凭空制造一个明星。我们不能直接对观众说：‘这就是你们必须关注的人，这就是NBA的超级巨星。’你必须自己去赢得这一切，”弗拉德说。“文班在球场上的表现让他有机会成为联盟的代言人。他必须保持下去。但他目前所达到的水平，以及他对比赛的热情，就是那张‘黄金入场券’。现在的关键在于坚持下去，赢得总冠军，然后再赢一个总冠军。
“‘毫无压力’，但这就是比赛的生存法则。”
由生成式 AI 翻译，译文内容可能不准确或不完整，以原文为准。
点击查看原文：How NBC is using inspiration from its past to bring Victor Wembanyama, NBA to life
How NBC is using inspiration from its past to bring Victor Wembanyama, NBA to life
The job of a sports television broadcast is to show the action on the floor or field. But capturing the magic that brings it to life on any screen, of any size, in any random place across the world? That’s the real goal.
How do you transport the audience into the scene from the TV in their living room or their phone on the train?
Sam Flood could see the answer as he scouted his return to the NBA, looking both to the past and to what’s in front of him.
Flood is the executive producer and president of production for NBC Sports, overseeing everything from “Football Night in America” to the Premier League broadcast. He’s the one in charge of bringing the NBA back to NBC in the first year of the league’s comprehensive new 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal.
NBC’s return to the NBA came with a need to balance the nostalgia of its past and the sport’s evolution into the future. NBC is most closely associated with the Michael Jordan era of the 1990s, a period that launched the NBA on a path of global expansion that continues today. Now, San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama has arrived as a product of that growth and as the potential face of its next era.
As the league and network try to understand what Wembanyama’s ascension will mean for their futures, they are looking through a lens that Jordan first calibrated. It hasn’t been perfect. MJ himself was hyped up as a part of NBC’s return, but it turned out to be only a few brief interviews sprinkled into segments early in the season. The drone cam to start halves in the conference finals has been polarizing, to say the least.
But overall, the return of the NBA on NBC has been a success. The network put analysts on each bench courtside during the regular season to bring a different aspect to the game experience. It has the visiting players introduce themselves a la Sunday Night Football. NBC even did retro nights that went beyond the graphics bringing back the commentators from 20 years ago like Bob Costas, Doug Collins, Mike Fratello and Hannah Storm.
And it has leaned heavily into the budding fascination that is Wembanyama, flexing in several Spurs games throughout the season and treating this Western Conference finals clash with the Oklahoma City Thunder like something grander than a matchup of two excellent basketball teams.
“We think of our vision as we make musicals,” Flood says. “We make a bigger story and we tell a bigger story to get people engaged differently than going to the theater for a drama. A musical has different notes that are welcoming to all.”
The biggest thing missing from watching a game remotely is the immersion of sound. In the arena, you exist within the game environment. Your senses are overwhelmed by it. The broadcast is a vignette into that world, so Flood took a distinct approach to shaping the program.
Flood saw the gateway into the heart of the viewer just before tip-off. In the ‘90s, you would hear John Tesh’s “Roundball Rock” NBA on NBC theme song, the Pavlovian “duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh,” and start building up the adrenal response to some hardwood heroics. There was this feeling that a journey was beginning.
“You’d hear that music, and you’re ready for basketball,” Flood says. “So we all knew that was an important element to growing and returning to the NBA.”
Beyond that, NBA games never start at the time they say. Pregame events, from the anthem to the intros to the actual tip itself, require between seven and 12 minutes to sift through. Broadcasters use this space to do the “open,” a tight, colorful mini-show full of reports, analysis, highlights and hype.
But Flood remembered the magic of the Chicago Bulls introductions, with Jordan emerging from the darkness as the intensity of “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project built up into a thunderous explosion from the crowd. That out-of-body experience only exists in a few places on earth. So when the NBA on NBC broadcast returned, it chipped away a few extra frills and ads just before the game to broadcast the arena’s player introductions, bringing the viewers through the screen and into the energy of the arena.
The broadcasters don’t try to talk over it. It’s not the moment for analysis or depth. They just let the moment wash over them and get lost in it. It is the antithesis to the way the game, and just about all forms of entertainment, have been broken up into bite-sized pieces of content.
“We just think being at the NBA arena is a special experience, and every building does it their own way, and we love the fact that we can lean into that,” Flood says. “We then stole from Sunday Night Football with the talking head lineups and created this hybrid model where the visiting team gets the talking head lineups and the home team gets the intros with the PA announcer and with a little bit of the video thrown in of that home team video that hypes up the folks in the arena.”
The narrator of all of this is Mike Tirico, NBC’s do-it-all play-by-play announcer. He cut his NBA teeth from 2002-2016 with ESPN/ABC, serving as a play-by-play announcer alongside Hall of Famer Hubie Brown, a studio host for ESPN’s NBA coverage and even doing the NBA Finals radio call. He left for NBC in 2016, taking on a wide variety of roles that include being the voice of Sunday Night Football and the Olympics. Now he’s the voice of NBA on NBC as well, and he just won the Sports Emmy for outstanding play-by-play personality on Tuesday.
“I remember the ground floor of LeBron and what that was like, and I think Victor has some of that feel to it,” Tirico says. “Because when you sit and talk to individual people on this side of the table, they talk about him in the most glowing of terms, the most impactful of terms.”
But more than anything, Tirico remembers being wowed by the sensations he felt when calling his first Wembanyama game in February.
“It’s almost impossible to say this, but TV doesn’t do him justice,” Tirico says. “It’s the Augusta factor. Anytime somebody goes to (The Masters course at) Augusta (National) for the first time and sees it in person, you’re like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so different than TV.’ And on TV, it’s amazing. He’s the same way.”
How do you somehow do justice to that reality through the broadcast, to bring the audience into Wemby’s Augusta? That’s the task for Tirico, and the NBA on NBC crew that has been calling the West finals.
Throughout the series, Tirico has been flanked by three-time Sixth Man of the Year winner Jamal Crawford and Hall of Famer Reggie Miller, with a unique approach in the NBA of dual sideline reporters Ashley ShahAhmadi and Zora Stephenson. The analysts are shooters from two different eras, products of how the game has evolved since the original NBC days. Crawford’s handles inspired a generation of asphalt dwellers in neighborhoods across the country. Miller was the great shooting guard of the ‘90s, the harbinger of the 3-point era. His only curse was that he was born too soon.
“At times, I curse my mom and dad like, ‘Why did they have me so early with the way the game is played today? Damn you, Saul and Carrie!’” Miller says with a facetious shaking of the fist to the sky. “But I am excited where the game is headed and how the players have evolved and the fundamentals of the game.”
Miller is the bridge between NBC’s two eras with the sports. He has a short list of players in his time around the league that could make him jump out of his seat. There’s Steph Curry (“As soon he got out of his car in the arena, he’s live ball. You don’t know where he’s going to shoot it from.”) There’s, Jordan (“A guy that walked on air. We had never seen it before. Some people have come close, but we’ve never seen a guy have that type of aura.”) There’s Magic Johnson, (“On a fast break, was like a God.”) There’s Allen Iverson (“You couldn’t take your eyes off of him.”)
Now, there’s Wembanyama.
The sensation reminds Miller of the first time he sat down with Curry.
“You just got a sense that there was greatness on the horizon,” Miller says. “You couldn’t see it but you could sense it. And I sensed it in him because his conviction was so strong. Fast forward to today, he’s the greatest shooter of our game and the records that he holds. But I could sense it then very much in the way I’m sensing it with Victor now.”
Just as Curry was an evolution of him, Miller sees Wembanyama as an evolution of the bigs that came before. Miller now hopes that, as part of the NBC revival in his second career as a broadcaster, the players who leave their mark will remember that he was a part of the journey, too.
“I’m honored that — something I’m going to tell my kids — I called Victor Wembanayama’s first playoff game,” Miller says. “What’s going to be cool is some of my best moments as a basketball player were on NBC. I hope that five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, when I’m long gone from my broadcasting days, Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, those guys will remember their first game on NBC and hopefully they’ll be like, ‘Oh s—, Reggie Miller was calling our game!’ I hope I have that type of longevity.”
NBC has done well to capture the drama of this series. When Wembanyama bumped Chet Holmgren and Jaylen Williams had a hilarious reaction, they gave it to us in slo-mo. An impassioned speech in the huddle? Got it. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander trying to level his teammates? Right up close.
NBC’s approach is certainly paying dividends. The double overtime classic of Game 1 of Thunder vs. Spurs had a total audience delivery of 9.2 million viewers on NBC’s platforms, based on official Nielsen Big Data + Panel and digital data from Adobe Analytics. That would make it the most-watched Game 1 of the West finals on record, per NBC.
In the end, for Wembanyama to help build an NBA television era as revered as Jordan’s, there is one thing he has to do: win. He and the Spurs are down 3-2 with a trip to the finals on the line, the kind of moment that shapes his legacy’s path. This will be a chapter in his story, for better or for worse.
“We can’t make a star at NBC. We can’t say, ‘This is the person you’ve got to care about. This is the star of the NBA.’ You have to earn that,” Flood says. “What Wemby does on the court is giving him the opportunity to be the face of the league. He’s got to keep doing it. But the level he’s doing it at, his passion for the game, that’s the golden ticket. Now it’s a question of staying at it, winning a championship, winning another championship.
“No pressure, but that’s how the game works.”
By Jared Weiss, via The Athletic