On Monday evening, the Cleveland Cavs evened up their series against the Detroit Pistons with a comfortable home win in Game 4, knotting things up at 2-2 heading back to Detroit for Game 5. This game featured an epic performance from Donovan Mitchell, who scored an astonishing 39 points in the second half, and 43 for the game, en route to the win.
The game was broadcast by NBC, and at one point, play by play commentator Noah Eagle, son of legendary commentator Ian Eagle, made an interesting call regarding Cavs guard Max Strus, one that Bill Simmons of The Ringer was not a huge fan of.
“‘The Strus is loose with the juice’ …. what’s going on? We might need to have an intervention with NBC soon,” noted Simmons on X, formerly Twitter.
NBC’s coverage of the NBA this regular season and playoffs has come under immense criticism, despite hopes that they would provide a breath of fresh air from the often monotonous nature of ESPN and TNT in previous years.
At one point in these playoffs, NBC incorrectly displayed a timeout for the New York Knicks in their Game 2 loss against the Atlanta Hawks, which caused a firestorm of unnecessary hate spewed in the direction of head coach Mike Brown due to the broadcasting error.
Many fans also panned the network when it was revealed that their billing of Michael Jordan as an analyst for this season was actually just going to be sporadic clips from the same interview aired over the course of the campaign, which was viewed as false advertising.
Clearly, NBC still has a lot of rust to shake off in its first season back as an NBA broadcasting partner in multiple decades.