Dwyane Wade aced his audition as a game analyst at the Paris Olympics ahead of a big hiring cycle for NBA broadcast teams by ESPN, NBC and Amazon.
And his Olympics broadcast partner at NBC saw enough to believe Wade would be excellent in the booth, no matter where he lands.
In an interview on the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast released Thursday , NBC Sports announcer Noah Eagle supported Wade’s work ethic and performance on the call, saying, “It’s good for broadcasting” for a legend like Wade to call games.
“I actually thought he got better and better with each game because he was coachable. So if he does want to do this, and I would love for him to do it because I think it’s good for broadcasting in general, I think he’d be really good,” Eagle said. “He’s going to have options to do it; there’s no question about it. I think he proved more than he ever had to over the course of the two weeks in France, and if it fits into his life and makes sense for him, I think we’d all love to see it.”
Eagle praised Wade for going deep in prep in Paris, working with a vocal coach to pronounce European players’ names, watching film of teams like South Sudan in their qualifying matches, and texting contacts in the world of hoops for scouting reports on lesser-known national team players.
It sounds like the NBC men’s basketball duo struck up a friendship quickly, and Wade was transparent with Eagle from the jump about his potential future in the booth.
“When we were starting out, I think Dwyane’s whole perspective in coming into this was he wanted to try and see if he liked this,” Eagle said. “He had done studio before; he knew what that felt like, and he knew that he could do it if he wanted to, but it wasn’t necessarily something that really excited him. So he wanted to feel what it felt like to call a game.”
Eagle could see Wade light up during the big knockout games for the U.S. men’s national team, in which they narrowly eliminated the reigning NBA MVP and Rookie of the Year with huge performances in crunch time.
“Especially after the Serbia game and the France gold medal game, he really felt that,” Eagle said. “You could see it in his face; you could see it in his overall movement. His smile was ear-to-ear, really, for the entire tournament. So I think he really did enjoy it.”
Recently, NBC Sports Olympics president Molly Solomon put her support behind Wade as well . If Wade wants to continue calling games, he can likely expect an offer from NBC.
But as the likely No. 2 NBA play-by-play man Eagle said, Wade is a busy man, and the ball is in his court when it comes to his future in the media.
“A lot of it is going to be … if it works for him,” Eagle said. “He has a lot of things that he does outside of broadcasting, but I know that if he does it and he chooses to dot his full time, he wants to be great. He doesn’t just want to do it, and he doesn’t want to just rest on the laurels of he did well during the Olympics.”
TNT Sports analyst Jamal Crawford has already opted to explore free agency as the network prepares to lose NBA rights next year. Recent reports linked TNT’s Grant Hill to ESPN’s open analyst job and internal candidates like Tim Legler and Richard Jefferson.
The NBA announcer musical chairs have begun, and Wade may have cut to the front of the line by impressing his potential colleagues at NBC during the Olympics.
[ Sports Media with Richard Deitsch ]
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