With growing national commitments, Ian Eagle will be scaling back his role on Brooklyn Nets coverage this season.
Appearing on the latest edition of the Sports Media Watch Podcast, Eagle said that his Nets assignments “will go down considerably from what they were at one point” thanks to his new “sizable” role as the lead NBA voice for Amazon Prime Video. Eagle said he will probably call in the range of 10-15 games, down from about 40 in recent years, while Ryan Ruocco will “assume the majority of the responsibility.”
As for Prime Video, Eagle said he will work “in the neighborhood of 50 games” across the regular season, NBA Cup, NBA Play-in Tournament and NBA Playoffs. As the lead voice for Amazon, he is set to call conference final games on television for what would be the first time in his career. Prime Video has a conference final every-other-year starting in 2027.
Eagle said that nothing will change on the college basketball front, where he is the lead voice of CBS/TNT Sports NCAA men’s basketball tournament coverage.
Eagle has called Nets games on television since 1995 after a previous year doing so on radio and has remained a constant even as the team has moved cities and networks. This season marks the first time during that tenure that he has held a #1 position on any national NBA game package.
At one point, Eagle’s Nets commitments were “as high as 82 [games] because the Nets did not appear on national TV,” before dropping to 70, 60, 52 and eventually 40. “This year, it’s really a sliding scale, depending upon availability and then how often they need me,” he said.
Beyond the schedule news, Eagle discussed many other topics in the podcast, including his early days producing Mike Tirico’s radio show in college, his new partnership with CBS NFL analyst J.J. Watt, expectations for year one of the NBA on Amazon Prime Video, and being the father of an up-and-coming star in son Noah Eagle. Listen below: