Nostalgia? Oh, yeah, a big helping of it, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Patrick Ewing and Reggie Miller all appearing in an opening tease paying homage to the NBA’s roaring past, leading up to John Tesh’s iconic “Roundball Rock” theme music.

Gen Z? Yeah, that too, as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (born the year Jordan won his last NBA title) and Victor Wembanyama (born the year after Jordan retired) were featured in the same fantastic opener to the broadcast, laughing at an off-camera interviewer asking, “When I say the NBA on NBC, what memories come to mind?”

It had been exactly 8,532 days between NBC’s last NBA broadcast — a 113-107 Lakers win over the Nets in Game 4 of the 2002 NBA Finals — and Tuesday’s double overtime thriller between the Thunder and Rockets in the opening game of the NBA’s 2025 Tip-Off. If you wanted a human through-line from 2002 to 2025, you saw that at halftime as Jordan, now in his role as an NBC Sports special contributor, debuted his first installment of “MJ: Insights to Excellence,” a series that will air throughout the season.

The verdict?

The game coverage felt big — particularly the lineups being introduced live by the home team PA announcer. NBC loaded up on experienced voices for its game broadcast and the Rockets-Thunder featured Mike Tirico (play-by-play), Miller and Jamal Crawford (analysts), and Zora Stephenson (sideline reporter). It was Tirico’s first national regular season broadcast since May 8, 2016 (when he worked at ESPN), and he called the game as if he had done the NBA all last year. The booth trio found an easy chemistry, particularly Miller and Tirico.

The production, led by coordinating producer Frank DiGraci and director Pierre Moossa, delivered early with a shot of Rockets guard Amen Thompson having his toe on the 3-point line to eliminate a point for Houston. The graphics popped, and we quickly learned this was a new era of NBA broadcasting as Tirico waxed about the talent from the NBA’s other media partners (something you would not have seen in the past).

The opening game itself was fantastic — a 125-124 Thunder win punctuated by Gilgeous-Alexander’s game-winning free throws following his Houdini-like ability to draw a foul on Kevin Durant, who produced his own viral moment in overtime.

“We’re obviously going to lean into the past, but we’re going to build forward and grow the game and grow with the game,” NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood said earlier in the week. “If we went all the way back and did our old-school telecast, you wouldn’t see the scoreboard in full-time. You wouldn’t see a lot of things that are common in sports now. … It’s a different expectation from an audience, so we’re going to make sure we meet those expectations as best we can.”

Was everything Jordan-esque? No. NBC’s pregame show, “NBA Showtime,” looks like a work in progress. (“NBA Showtime” will precede every NBA game on NBC and Peacock aside from “Sunday Night Basketball.”) Making any long-term assessment of a pregame show off a first night is nonsense, so take all of this lightly.

What was effective on Tuesday in the pregame was being on the court prior to the game to give viewers the immediacy of being at the Paycom Center, especially speaking with Thunder guard/forward Jalen Williams close to tipoff. The on-air group (host Maria Taylor and analysts Camelo Anthony, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady) had plenty of energy but one of the things that has always made “Inside The NBA” great is that there is no equal distribution on who speaks. If a segment is just Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley speaking, so be it.

“NBA Showtime on Tuesday often was about getting everyone air time on every question, which might be a first-night thing. There were also significant audio issues in the first five minutes of the studio show as McGrady’s mic sounded like it had been stepped on by King Kong Bundy. Then Taylor’s mic had issues. (The group was much looser during halftime of the Lakers-Warriors when there was no noise on the court of an empty Paycom, as they interviewed Thunder forward Chet Holmgren.)

I’d argue having Jordan as part of your sports broadcast network is a huge value-add, given he is so famous that the prospect of making news exists every time he speaks. There’s also value in being in the Michael Jordan business for any media company.

As for something newsworthy on Tuesday night during “MJ: Insights to Excellence”, well, we didn’t exactly get that. We did get an amusing story about Jordan shooting a free throw for the first time in many years, and he also acknowledged be hasn’t played a competitive game of basketball in years. NBC is clearly going to stretch these interviews out, but one hopeful thought is that at some point, Jordan will offer opinions on the state of the game and the players playing. Because that could really be interesting.

Due to the overtimes in the Thunder-Rockets game, the start of Lakers-Warriors shifted to Peacock, NBC’s streaming service and a big part of the NBA’s new media deal. For those who did not have Peacock, NBC picked up the Lakers and Warriors in the second quarter upon the conclusion of Thunder-Rockets. That broadcast featured Noah Eagle (play-by-play), Grant Hill (analyst), and Ashley ShahAhmadi (sideline reporter). Eagle and Hill sounded as if they had worked together for years — a great sign.

One of the biggest challenges for the NBA this season will be educating its audience on when and where national games are airing. There are more national TV broadcast windows than in previous years, and viewers have access to a seven-day-a-week regular season schedule of nationally televised games. We probably cannot list the below chart enough this season:

NBC’s calling card will be inventory. The company will air 100 regular-season games including on theree consective nights: “Sunday Night Basketball” (which begins Feb. 1, 2026); “Peacock NBA Monday” (which debuts next Monday) and a Tuesday package tagged “Coast 2 Coast Tuesday.” The Tuesday night schedule has a unique broadcast wrinkle: For games tipping off at 8 p.m. ET, viewers in the Eastern and Central time zones will watch on NBC. If you live in the Pacific or Mountain time zones, the game will stream on Peacock. For the back end of the Tuesday doubleheader, viewers in the East and Central time zones will need Peacock to watch those games, while Western-based viewers will watch on NBC.

One of the reasons the NBA returned to NBC (money was obviously the biggest reason) was the promise of reach, which remains an advantage of broadcast television. To that end, broadcast television concluded September with 22.3 percent of overall television viewing, per Nielsen, which put it ahead of cable on an unrounded basis for the first time ever in Nielsen’s The Gauge measurement, which tracking began in May 2021. (Streaming continued to dominate TV usage with 45.2 percent of total watch-time in September.)

Maybe it was the nostalgia kicking in, but Tuesday felt bigger than usual for the NBA. One night down for NBC, 11 years to go on the media contract.